Previous Year Essay Topic: Crisis of Credibility in India Electronic Media?

The Indian television news sector, without a doubt, is experiencing a credibility crisis. There is currently no statutory regulatory framework in place for news channels, and they are governed by self-regulatory entities such as the News Broadcasters Association (NBA), the Broadcast Editors' Association, and the News Broadcasters Federation. One of the biggest consequences of India's lack of a formal regulating authority to oversee news channel programming is that viewers are unaware what content is credible.

India's media has grown so much so far that it accounts for more than 1% of the country's GDP and dwarfs several individual industries. It is viewed as the most dynamic and fastest growing media industry in the world.

Growing influence on public

In India, the media has played an outsized influence in molding public perceptions of politics, electoral outcomes, and then how power is exercised. According to recent revelations, top-level politicians, industrialists, and business strategists are increasingly rubbing shoulders with media personalities, who conspire in selecting crucial government appointments and influencing policy decisions. The low and deteriorating quality of Indian journalism is evident in a number of ways.

To begin with, this country of 1.36 billion people does not have a single international-standard magazine or literary publication. It also does not print a large number of influential publications that are operating independently and are not controlled by corporate cartels.

Secondly, the media no longer sufficiently accomplishes its primary tasks, which include educating the public and telling the truth, whereas what is does is biasly analyzing complex social, economic, and political systems, providing a forum for public debate, and serving as the people's watchdog or conscience.

Narrow outlook

Thirdly, despite rising globalisation and the opening up of Indian society and culture to foreign influences, the Indian media remains very closed off. International topics, events, institutions, and procedures receive very little media coverage. There is an unhealthy concentration with the United States, with little room for large growing economies such as China, Brazil, and South Africa.

The coverage of the South Asian region, in which India is situated in a larger-than-life manner, with which it shares so much, and on which its own social environment and security rely, is terrible. There is a compulsive obsession with Pakistan in this coverage.

Bias, censorship, and selective exclusion

Other troubling shortcomings include:

Pushing an agenda in the news sections;

Excessively skewed headlines and photo captions;

Stories written from the standpoint of the poor and vulnerable and;

Blacking out of unconventional, radical, or non-mainstream activities and organizations, such as peace, human rights, global justice, or sexual equality campaigns from mainstream media coverage;

Deliberate biased support in large sections of the media for ultra-Right-wing and religious-exclusivist political groups.

Disconnect

With a few notable exceptions, the mainstream journalistic idea in the Indian media is startlingly indifferent to the serious issues of the vast majority of Indians, particularly the underprivileged and oppressed. Its main goal is to increase the consumerist elite's "feel-good" factor and "pump sunshine" into their lives.

These developments illustrate the Indian media's growing conservatism and backward tendencies at a time when a radical revision of the conservative approach is required, as well as the exploration and examination of alternative choices.

Indian Media at a critical crossroad

The media, as it currently exists and evolves, is experiencing a credibility crisis. If it does not reform, its most valuable asset will swiftly depreciate and eventually perish. When the media loses its authenticity, dependability, and credibility, it will cease to be relevant to a huge number of people except as a source of cheap amusement and escapism. That would be a grave tragedy and a terrible disservice both to democracy and to the causes of enlightening and empowering the public.