Mind the Media !

So. We start. At this point, i should make it clear that i will be using the term 'MEDIA' in the singular and not as plural. So purists of grammar and literature need to chill.

I won't write any long complicated article here. All i wish to convey to all those who have shown faith in this idea is that the way the media functions today needs to be examined. Critically. I mean, do we need this media? Media, which is so lame that it merely ends up as a tool in the hands of corportaes and politicians, through which they can mobilize popular opinion and manufacture consent. Media, which cannot survive, leave alone function, without the support of corportaes. Do we need a media which is essentially a major profit-seeking corporation at the end of the day. All through our training, we have been fed with the fact that newspapers cannot function without advertisements and that advertisements are imperative for the survival of contemporary media. Now, is it not obvious to even the naivest mind that the news carried in such media would be dictated by their marketing departments to a considerable extent at least?

So, effectively, an entire newspaper, and not specific pages, gets reduced to an advertorial. The Times of India is a burning example of this. All they ask us to do, while we read our news, is to buy. Check out advertisements, leave the news out because its in black and white and dull and boring, as opposed to glossy, colourful ads. They publish ugly details of celebrity lifestyles and their consumption patterns, creating a covert, deceitful structure of culture industry. A structure that entices the masses by manufacturing desire and then selling these desires through content-based advertsising.

Well, let us not get carried away and blame one newspaper. At least the TOI is unapologetic about its faith in the market. That's perhaps a strong ethical advantage that the right-- economic, political as well as the cultural right--has over other ideological systems. It is explicit, overt and honest about its motives. Unlike, the so-called left 'leaning' newspapers like the HINDU. Now someone please explain to me. What the FUCK do they mean by left LEANING. If you believe in an ideology, you do it with conviction. You don't lean towards it. You have to take a stand. When struggles against the establishment are being scripted, you need to make it clear as to where you stand. With who do you choose to side? The point that i wish to make here is simple. Contemporary media is nothing but an adulterous bedfellow of the corporates, betraying the trust that billions of people invest in it.

And it is precisely for this purpose that we need to take control of any alternative avenues of generating public opinion and then believe in them and sustain them through this belief; and it is for this purpose that the subtext of our effort reads as CONTROL/ALT/BELIEVE. We need to give at least a little of our time to collective efforts like this where we can express any alternative opinions, analyses and interpretations of the news that we read or any events that we observe happening around us. Once again, to end, i would like all of us to think about this: DO WE NEED A MEDIA WHICH IS RUN BY CORPORATIONS, SUSTAINED BY ADVERTISEMENTS AND WHICH CANNOT FUNCTION AND SURVIVE WITHOUT CORPORATE PATRONAGE?

Thanks

Mahim

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