Workshops with Journalists from South India on developing a Socially Responsible Media

13 – 14 December 2008

Fireflies Inter-cultural Centre, Bangalore

In December 2008 Pipal Tree conducted a two-day workshop for south Indian journalist to consider the role of the Media in creating a deeper understanding of social and environmental issues that pervade detrimentally the lives of everyone, but more accurately, those of the poor.  The objectives of this workshop were to examine government and institutional policies in regard to the media and enthuse journalists to take up an in-depth posture on social and environmental reporting.

Twenty journalists from Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu participated and their diversity created a immense scope in which to address the following objectives:

• Exploring the possibility of enhancing our social and ecological reporting.
• Understanding the impact of the global economic meltdown on the poor and the marginalized.
• Beginning a south Indian and national debate on “Vision, Ethics, Democracy and Participation” in media institutions.
• Challenges of creating a south Indian journalists’ network.

There were panel discussions on:

• Social challenges and the media
• Environmental challenges and the media
• Vision, ethics, democracy and the media

A commonality in terms of observation among journalists of all the three states surfaced early in the workshop that the characteristics of mainstream media were:

• The media as a sensational product with the obvious objective of revenue generation and promoting a captive market
• Vested interests between the media, business houses and corporates for mutual gratification and financial succor, and establishment stability
• The media as a manipulative tool and readership exploitation by political blocks
• The media’s social context with overtones of religious and communal bias

Devi Bharathi and Muralidharan, journalists from Tamil Nadu, gave an in-depth picture of the alternative media which focused on social issues and how mainstream media was populist in nature and focused mainly on the film industry of the state.

Journalists from Kerala contended that their mainstream media did not preoccupy their publications with sensationalism and the film world, and that little magazines although abundant in Kerala, did not feature as bitingly as those of Tamil Nadu but did acknowledge problems the Kerala media faced with the issues of vision, ethics, democracy and participation.

K. Mujeeb Rahman presented a paper at this point which delineated the characteristics of the typical broadsheet publications in Kerala. According to him fascist communalism is a threat to Indian society played down by mainstream media due to bias or lack of moral perspective.

The Karnataka journalists, Srinivas, Sathyanarayana Karur and Yogesh Bhat from Sagar district, agreed to the need of establishing a viable journalists’ network between states to facilitate information exchange and flow to effectively grapple key issues and develop a sensitized readership on a large scale.

Ramakrishna, editor of ‘Mid Day’, a Bangalore broad sheet, provided an insight into the commercial aspect of running a news paper. The production of the paper cost more than its retail price, market competitiveness being a major consideration, resulting in complete dependence on revenues generated from advertisements. This is the case with most news papers with some variation; in some cases prominently advertisement oriented and in some cases less advertisement driven. The usual 60% news coverage and 40% advertisement ratio (e.g. The Hindu) is not observed by many papers (e.g. The Times of India). Nagesh Hegde, visiting professor of the Indian Institute of journalism was in accord with Ramakrishna’s observation.

Nagesh Hegde next spoke on the challenges related to training journalists on environmental reporting. He stressed on the importance of recognizing the extent of the imminent disaster to befall mankind precipitated by global warming and climate change and that the media had a huge responsibility to sensitize the public and authorities on efforts that will have to be made to mitigate, let alone avert, such extraneous conditions that will impact on our society and with more assured ferocity on the poor.

The proceedings of 13^th Dec culminated with Arun Subramanium’s (visiting professor of the Indian Institute of Journalism) talk on understanding the impact of the global economic meltdown on the poor and the marginalized sections of our society.

The proceedings of 14^th Dec commenced with Arun Subramanium’s presentation on ‘Vision, Ethics, Democracy and Participation’. He defined norms of regulations and preferred regulatory standards adopted by the media to avoid libel and government censorship under extreme cases of a national state of emergency.

This was followed by discussions on key issues drawn from the preceding sessions and defining the challenges facing journalists to develop a media network on social and environmental issues and triggering the blossom of a process of media reforms and ethical reporting in south India. As a finale to the proceedings of the two day workshop, the participants were in accord with Siddhartha that:

• there was a need to deepen the values, ethics, morals and vision within the media
• There was a need to enhance writing and reporting skills
• There was a need to continue working with journalists and journalism students.
• There was a need to develop a network for information exchange on issues and collaboration among journalists.

In conclusion, the workshop demonstrated that the print media lacked a unified agenda on social issues and the environment and that a stimulus was required to change the current trend and sharpen its focus on the principles of vision, ethics, democracy and participation. The workshop also demonstrated that the media has likeminded conscientious journalists who are indeed interested in working towards establishing the media as socially responsible, sensitive and a conscious mirror to society. The participants resolved that for a start, a monthly article should appear in three of the south Indian languages, factual and truthful sensitizing the readership with issues of relevance without bias.

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