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Today’s journalism loses its soul

Nava Thakuria - 11/2/2011

It was a small meeting in memory of a recently expired veteran Assamese journalist, where various speakers, after paying rich tribute to the freedom fighter-journalist Kamal Gogoi, incidentally drew a bleak picture of journalism in Assam as well as in the country, India.

Organized by Journalist Forum Assam at Guwahati Press Club on October 11, the meeting was attended by a good number of reporter-journalists of different ages, where the speakers went on narrating his commitment and dedication to the profession and the society. Hailed from Narayanpur in eastern Assam, Gogoi retired from the Assamese daily ‘Dainik Asom’ as deputy editor and functioned as the founder editor of ‘Sadiniya Prahari’ for some months. Gogoi was involved with the last phase of India’s freedom struggle and went to jail. Besides his journalism, Gogoi contributed to Assamese literature with various short stories, novels and travelogues. Gogoi, died on October 5 at the age of 87.

The speakers while described about Gogoi’s value based and courageous journalism admitted at the same time that the present day media persons have almost lost their devotion to real journalism, as the newspapers and news channels have engaged in fierce competition leaving aside the moral values of the esteemed profession.

“The daily newspapers have gone glossy to face the competition of colourful television channels. But the content of the news-report, editorial and other articles remains shallow and many times anti-social. In-depth, analytical and comprehensive articles are not welcome today by the newspaper proprietors (who actually control the editorial content!), where most of the editors can do a little,” said Hiten Mahanta, a senior journalist based in Guwahati, while addressing the meeting.

Assam has a history of over 150 years of newspapers, and the tiny State with a population of nearly 30 million, supports over 25 morning dailies and hundreds periodicals and magazines. Two recent quarterly reports of Indian Readership Survey had however shown unpleasing outcome for all major vernacular dailies of Assam, which have lost their readers. The IRS second quarter 2011 survey indicates that ‘Asomiya Pratidin’, which is the highest-circulated daily in the entire northeast India (with nearly 1.25 lakh print-orders every day), has lost 2.2 per cent readership in the last few months.

The second to ‘Asomiya Pratidin’ in circulation as well as to readership index , ‘Asomiya Khabar’ has lost combined readership of 6 lakh. Following the trend, other four major vernacular dailies of Assam namely ‘Dainik Janmabhumi’, ‘Dainik Agradoot’ , ‘Amar Asom’, ‘Dainik Asom’, ‘Dainik Janasadharan’ etc have recorded the loss of 5 to 10 lakh pooled readers in the same period. The exception is ‘The Assam Tribune’ (with nearly 70,000 print-orders every day), the oldest newspaper of the region and conservative in nature, which has registered some increase of readers. However, ‘The Telegraph’ (its Guwahati edition) lost a combined readership of 1.25 lakh and ‘The Times of India’ (its Guwahati edition) lost over 40,000 collective readers in Assam since the end of 2010.

Most of the speakers in the meeting expressed their anger against the news channels for unnecessary and repeated coverage of violence, crime, illicit relationship and sex related stories. In the name (fight) of Television Rating Points, the channels intend to forget some basic principles of journalism. The news channels simply forget that their audiences may include a whole family together including the minors, the speakers reiterated.

Rupam Barua, an independent journalist, while appreciating the self-respect of late Gogoi agreed that many editors today have to function in a difficult situation. He pointed out that the newspapers still have some space for the editors, but the television channels are run by the news producers. Many proprietors of news channels even regard their editors as mere employees, Barua concluded. Mentionable that keeping the pace with national scenario where the Indian satellite (including Doordarshan) and cable television channels increase its reach up to over 500 million people, Assam too has witnessed the sudden increase of television viewers in the last few years. The State itself supports six satellite news channels beaming news and other programmes from Guwahati in English, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese and other regional languages. Started with NE Television, Assam has seen the emergence of satellite channels like NewsLive, DY365, NewsTime Assam, Frontier TV and Prime News, which also cater the need of the entire population of northeast India. Except Guwahati, no other State capital of the region has a satellite news channel till date. Of course, over 50 cable news channels additionally telecast local news and entertaining programmes to support the rational need of around 60million populace of the alienated region comprising eight States (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya and Sikkim).

With increasing the number of news channels, the volume of working journalists has reached around thousands in Guwahati, who represent various regional, national and international print and electronic media outlets based inside and outside the country. Slowly Guwahati becomes a media hub after Kolkata in eastern India. Senior journalist and former editor of ‘Dainik Janambhumi’, Prafulla Barua argued that with less (or no) orientation, many journalists have lost their ways and simply turned the profession into a common job.

Nowadays many journalists do not bother about the media ethics and perform their duties as their employers ask for, Barua added. Another senior journalist and former editor of ‘Dainik Asom’, JP Saikia believes that Assam has increased the volume of newspapers and news channels in the recent past, but quality journalism still remain illusive. A reporter turned IAS officer turned editor, Saikia asserted that the biggest casualty in today’s journalism is its credibility. Presided over by the chief editor of ‘Prag News’, a local news channel, Jatindra Kumar Borgohain, the meeting was also addressed by
journalist Ranen Kumar Goswami, Sabita Lahkar, Chakreswar Goswami, Jagadindra Raichoudhury etc, where every one instead for timely initiative to make the journalists more enlightened about the principles of media-communication and also infrastructural supports to them to function with utmost credibility, authenticity and commitment to the society.