Can we call the media irresponsible? Well, sometimes. When the media deliberately fails to cover an important issue, expose its disparate facets, throw light on the darker sides or when it blows something out of proportions, we call it irresponsible media act. The Indian media, be it electronic or the print, frequently suffers from this disease. Quite often, especially the electronic media indulges in turning a mole into a hill while ignoring the hill as if it were a mole.
Although there are many biases of the media, the celebrity-bias is perhaps the most pervasive. For the media, only the celebrities matter. In India, when a celebrity sneezes, the whole media weeps in sympathy whereas when ordinary people die - in protests, atrocities, calamities, or even in state inflicted massacres - it's hardly a news.
Although there have been many such cases in the past of the mainstream media's obsession with celebrities while being completely tame about serious issues involving ordinary citizens, I will focus on some ongoing concerns which show the stark contrast in the media's attitude.
Seeing the overwhelming success of the anti-corruption movement led by veteran activist Anna Hazare, which - enjoying intense media publicity - compelled the central government to bow before the civil society, the ultra-famous Baba Ramdev launched the second phase of anti-corruption movement on June 4 pooling over sixty thousand of his supporters in the Ramlila Ground in Delhi. This move has been upheld by some while severely criticized by others.
Irrespective of the relevance of this agitation, which was redundant at best - as Ramdev's aides admitted that the government had already accepted 99% of their demands and politically motivated at its worst - since Baba has shown inclination to join politics and was trying use the movement as his political platform, the electronic and print media gave it their fullest publicity .
The media did not spare even a moment of the whole protest drama at Ramlila ground, right from its planning through the forceful dispersion by the Delhi police Â- using tear gas, from publicizing. The live broadcasts of the events as they unfolded followed by analyses and commentaries kept media totally engaged for at least a couple of weeks.
But why not the same is true for other protests in the country? Just a day before Ramdev's protest, in Forbesganj, Bihar, an eastern Indian state, on June 3 a group of villagers staged a protest against illegal blocking of a road connecting the village to the outside by Auro Sundaram International - a privately owned company. Their protest however, far from creating a desired impact, had an adverse effect on the villagers. When the Bihar-police was expected to help them fight against the company, the police played party to the land-grabbing company authorities.
The state police not only acted against the public interest, they cold bloodedly fired rounds of bullets on the un-armed villagers and killed five people including one woman and a six-month-old infant and an unborn baby and injured a dozen others . In their killing spree , the police chased the villagers into their homes and fired at them cornered in the houses from point-blank. But the mainstream media was strangely silent on the whole issue.
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