Media - A strong pillar of democracy

Media serves as an educator in any civilization. It is a responsible and demanding role. Journalists and other media personnel need to be fair and courageous in their reporting. Bias and sensationalism must be kept at bay.

CJ: Dr Dhruv Tanwani

Thu, Feb 04, 2010 11:34:39 IST

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EVERY DAY, journalists throughout the world observe, gather, write, and edit material for thousands of news stories. Local reporters, for example, cover school board meetings, fires, sports events and other local stories. Other journalists, including foreign correspondents, cover national and international news.

In democratic countries, people depend on the news media for the fair and truthful reporting of current events. These nations grant the press freedom to report news and opinions without government interference. Freedom of the press encourages the exchange of ideas among citizens, which is essential for a democracy to work. In government-controlled societies, however, the news media serve as an instrument of the state.

There are five chief fields of journalism: (1) newspapers, (2) online (3) magazines, (4) radio, and (5) television. Related fields like advertising, book publishing, and public relation are also important factors to understand journalism. Newspapers cover more stories than do any of the other news media. They also cover stories in greater detail. However, newspapers cannot compete with radio or TV to be first to report the news.

Television is the chief source of news for many households around the world. TV does what none of the other media can do; it brings us visuals of some important news events by means of filmed, taped, or live reports. Like regular radio news bulletins, daily TV news programmes provide only brief accounts of relatively few stories. But the visual aspect of a TV news story can often help viewers understand the story.

Only about 20 per cent of the world's people live in countries that have a free press. Freedom of the press exists largely in the English-speaking countries, in most European nations, and in Israel and Japan. In these countries, the news media enjoy basically much the same freedoms and duties. In India big publishing houses have specific policies to limit themselves.

This is not always a good thing. However, many bold channels have stepped beyond conservative reporting and shown tremendous courage in covering terrorist encounters and live wars. Our own home grown example is Barkha Dutta who covered the Kargil war live.

Our society needs such reporters and media personnel. The name of journalism has been tarnished by the current trend of sensationalism. Political bias also affects the quality of news a medium gives us therefore the media must show the courage to operate free of political and criminal pressure.