Most journalists (she said, in a sweeping generalisation) like to think they’re challenging the mainstream, the establishment. The challenge of their job lies in the expose that reveals a large defence scam, the mafia tearing into a much-publicised Prime Ministerial project, the government programme that killed hundreds of farmers.
But recently, journalists are being co-opted into a news framework that prioritises the marketing ploys. We dig up stories for our ‘core consumer base’. So an English channel obsesses with Southern states which watch English news, and within those states targets its programming at a demographic the advertisers will love: the young, upwardly mobile, two-car, own-flat, home-theatre-owning couple. Hindi channels run riot on the sensational incidents from their core consumers - the traders, the paanwallahs and so on. Editorial priority is mostly determined by what the marketing gurus say. This, I’m told, is the Murdochisation of news.
The increase of channels and newspapers in India also, ironically, spouts a uniformity of editorial content rather than a healthy diversity. No organization wants to be thought of as having “missed the news” and so each event is whipped into a frenzy by the multiple channels and papers. You can’t afford to have a consumer, sorry, viewer, think that they missed the big story because your channel didn’t play it up as much as the others. Therein spawning hours of repetitive, identical (almost) programming across channels.
To cut a long story short, this is where blogs come in. For diversity (because they don’t care about “doing a story in a bigger way than competition”), for democracy (because they pick up small stories mainstream might ignore in favour of the “big story of the day”), for challenging the establishment (because other news is so busy with the marketing mantras).
So after an initial phase of media adopting the role of watchdog or challenger of the establishment view, came the recent Murdochisation or Foxification of news (corporate, marketing-driven) leaving the role of watchdog… to blogs. This is now the post-Fox era :-)
