I am not a big fan of India's prime time debates, especially those by the so-called national media. I still scour the print media for news and editorial views and social media for comments (both valid and stupid).
To me, most of the prime time debates are just one-sided cacophony and in a democracy like India these unprofessional conduct should have been regulated and punished long back. It may be the case that as a trained journalist, I can research more on the fare dished out and check facts and fake news by all forms of news media.
Such a luxury may not be available to all viewers and they then become the primary victims of targeted propaganda through social media.
Against this background, I was not at all surprised at the belligerence in which the anchor at NDTV was shouted at by an 'expert'. The discussion was about the booming stock market amidst a tanked economy and a pandemic.
Stock markets are not the best indicators of an economy. So it is ridiculous to consider stock market variations as an evidence of the health of the economy. And investors are not the 'real' experts that the media should be inviting for debates on economy and issues of farmers.
In every channel, one can see such 'experts'; some are called 'political observers'. What exactly is this 'political observer' and what is the criteria for dubbing someone as a political observer. In India, everybody has an opinion on anything under the sun. In that vein, a man on the street is also an observer.
How many poor people have you seen, except in times of tragedies or natural disasters, in TV studios? How many poor farmer leaders have you seen in prime time debates? How many poor workers, who left the cities following the lockdown, did you see on these national television studios? How many reporters interviewed them, except for suitable sound bytes for ground reports? How many environmentalists did these channels feature in their discussions?
Since we all know that the answer is No, then how can we expect these news media to serve as the Fourth Estate? There is no discretion in including 'experts' in prime time discussions on Indian news channels. To 'balance' the debate, channels include political spokespersons and 'independent' spokespersons who support a party.
But the biggest problem is including rich or successful people as experts when they are actually 'political operatives'. In the past, we have seen investors, advertisement professionals, the so-called activists, corporate honchos, and actors in news studios who are actually willing partners in the larger political script and propaganda.
When you don't practice discretion in including experts, when you try to 'balance' opinion by inviting political operatives. there is no debate, but cacophony. The viewer's right to facts gets thwarted here and it just becomes absolute waste of time and energy.
So, go back to newspapers, talk to people that you know, learn to perform your own research, abandon prime time discussions, and say no to fake news and propaganda. Indian democracy and your world will be much much better.
