Saturday, September 11, 2010

Falling trust in media

There is the ongoing onslaught of electronic media, but what will eventually come to haunt the mainstream media more than anything else is the growing trust deficit.
Each of the consumption patterns, including electronic media, has a distinct identity wrapped around consumer lifestyle. The newspapers survived and flourished even while television was entrenching into the consumer lifestyle. The print and television media will continue to appeal to people even while electronic media claims its fair share of consumer timespace. What is accelerating the adoption of electronic media is the growing distrust in mainstream media. One particular trend of interest is the number of people adopting the electronic lifestyle by disowning the mainstream media. Having to verify what is being written in print media, or spoken on television, is an additional burden the consumer can get away with by relying on the electronic format. This trend points out that Indians are spending time digging for truth.
The traditional media outlets are not doing themselves any favour by trying to do even better what they have always been good at -- corruption. Take this article, for example, where the bit about incest in mythology was lifted verbatim from a pakistani forum indulging in hate speech. It makes one wonder if ToI really cares about its reader or its own image. Such journalistic ethics leaves consumer with no choice but to dump the mainstream media and switch to electronic sources.


Hat tip to B.Shantanu. (Link 1, Link 2)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heartily agree!
The ELM is characterized by : 1)Arrogance: They know everything and nobody else does. In reality, it is exactly the opposite.The ignorance of media "experts" is striking.
2)"They represent/know the public": They do nothing of the kind. This line, patented by the Slimes, was also used by Sagarika Ghosh in her interview with Jethmalani.
3)Their articles are characterized by extremely poor English, which they promptly blame on the "printer's devil".
Their poor English is proof of their poor/indifferent reading habits and knowledge.
4)Since they do not know, practice or respect Hinduism or Indian dharmas, they back left-wing ideology.They back our infamous "eminent historians" fully knowing that they write garbage.
5)Their faith in a pathetic, useless, corrupt, anti-national single-family-run dynastic party is a symptom of their intellectual poverty.
6)Their bravery is restricted to berating Hindus, but evaporates when threatened by anything else.
7)They have almost completely stopped writing cogent articles on international events or news. This is because of (1) foreign ownership and (2) toeing the government line on foreign affairs.
8) Despite repeated proof to the contrary, they talk nonsense about all kinds of caste combinations before elections.
9)THEIR MAIN FAILURE IS:THEY CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH, THEY CANNOT CONVEY THE TRUTH

kuttychathan said...

Sorry, on another point.

Let me draw your attention to the new harangue of Arundhati Roy...

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267040

Please read it. I wonder, if it was written by somebody else, would such a one sided harangue have made its way to the pages of a national news magazine?

kuttychathan said...

Let me add...

Arundhati was born and brought up in Kerala. But, she has never shed tears for the adivasis in Kerala, who are also equally exploited. After all, charity begins at home.

But there is a reason for her silence. The tyrants of adivasis in Kerala belong to Syrian Christian Community. The community to which Arundhati belongs.

Hindu Fundamentalist said...

raghu,
nice summary. unfortunately, media is not dispensable. so we need to work on alternatives and solutions. tough task ahead of us.

kuttychathan,
that was an unbelievably long article by susan arundhati. even after she was caught writing fiction in the guise of political commentary, i dont understand why outlook is persisting with her.
valid point on her not making noises against kerala imperialists.

Xinhua Ram said...

Problems Reported With New Voting Machines in NYC

NOT A PROBLEM! The UPA govt in India is ready to buy these. As long as you tell them how to "tweak" these.

Hindu Fundamentalist said...

xr, good spot. countries all over the world seem to have problems with electronic voting machines but india seems to have bitten the magic bullet. and our machines dont even need a paper trial for cross verification. they are perfect and they always deliver results -- for the dynasty that is.