International Association Of Independent Journalists Inc.

[IAIJ]

Nonchalance of media leading to citizen journalism.


By Paul Jagan Babu


In some parts of the world, media has no freedom, on the contrary in some parts of the world people have no freedom from media”, said Ace Tennis Player Martina Navratilova while speaking to media scribes during her visit to India. Though it surprises, it is reflecting the truth. It is quite obvious that mainstream journalism is neglecting the burning issues such as education, employment and poverty in rural India. It is concentrating more on the sensational issues rather than on the issues that are concerned with the overall development of the nation. In most of the states in India, print/electronic media are being run by the business magnets! Their editorials normally reflect the intentions of the management, in which content of truth is deflected so that it may serve their selfish ends to the core! It is well known that the press/media is the ‘eyes and ears’ of the society. This very fact has been buried and now it has become the ‘eyes and ears’ of the corporate organizations. The poor, underprivileged, mentally/physically challenged people have been kept on the backburner! Exposure of their issues has been on the decline gradually. Now it is very surprising that people are growing insensitive to their own issues because of no awareness and nonchalance of media and government. Since information is easy to create but hard to trust and it is easy to spread but hard to control. These are the core characteristics of information. This already has spread to the four corners of the society. It is absolute truth that “lies cost lives and truth saves lives”. Government is trying to pass the buck and it is very busy with the tackling of the growing corruption.

Now the people of rural India seem to rightly understand that the unequivocal truth expressed by Alwyn Toffler, socio-economic philosopher, “Knowledge/information is the most versatile source of corruption”. This is the point where nonchalance of media, government has triggered the concept of citizen journalism in the people of rural India. It has begun to sprout in Andhra Pradesh which is one of the states of India, where media-war has grown ad nauseam and neglected certain burning issues such as education, poverty, unemployment and eve-teasing etc., Some major media outlets such as Andhra Jyothi (We report, You decide), IBN Live have provided this wonderful opportunity for the people to contribute with a concept that ‘no one can better say than a sufferer/victim’.

One of the social institutes in Rajasthan is encouraging people to be citizen journalists with the following tag-information:

“Any common man in his capacity as a citizen of a nation takes up the initiative to report things or express his views about happenings around him then the occurrence is popularly known as citizen journalism or participatory journalism. Citizen Journalists are not bound by the conventional term of a journalist. Citizen journalists take up an initiative to express ideas irrespective of their educational or professional background. In a way this emerging form of journalism is promising a scenario of breaking free from media bias as well as taking local news on a global platform”.

It is growing and serving better and some media outlets are harboring the citizen journalism.