OPPapers.com

A Critique Of Indian Newspapers

CONTENTS

Introduction
Entertainment Story: Sach ka Saamna
Political Story: Omar Abdullah and a Sex Scandal
Social Story: Swine Flu
Conclusions
References
Archive

Introduction

We live in Mass Societies where most citizens have little direct involvement in politics and where politicians can only meet a fraction of the people they represent. Mass Media – and especially the news media – have thus become the main channel for communication between citizens and politicians. As a result, journalism has become to the successful functioning of democratic societies, as journalists create space for a dialogue between politicians and the public. In so doing, a key part of a journalist’s job is to define and represent public opinion.

Ever since their emergence, newspaper have been important social institutions precisely because they have provided a forum for citizens to discuss the issues that concerned them, and thereby articulate a public opinion and hold the government accountable for its actions.

“…Journalistic influence is great not so much on account of what it is in itself, as because of what it represents. The most powerful thinkers of any age are those who have most faithfully expressed the unuttered thought of thousands, and have shown to the popular mind whither its highest aspirations tended.
So, in the subordinate sphere of journalism, the Press is only great because of its power to discern, amid the dust and din of personal strife, the existence of certain great principles which represent the directing current of public opinion. The impersonality of journalism ought to be its main source of strength.
The familiar axiom that a whole is greater than its parts is sometimes strangely enough disproved, when a newspaper becomes the mere reflex of the prejudices and prepossessions of any individual mind.
The press and public opinion are, after all, but two parallel forces, mutually reacting upon each other, and either of them will be powerful only...