Bias and the Media

Shivraj singh chauhan, the Madhya Pradesh CM, being accused of allotting land to RSS and BJP close aide’s and institutions at throwaway prices, something similar on the lines of Yeddyurappa , the former BJP CM of Karnataka.

Rajdeep sardesai, the editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN, the channel which broke the story today, has already started being at the receiving end of hate tweets from the huge Sanghi/BJP/MODIfied online population. Most of them saying Media is biased, when it comes to the saffron brigade!!!

Right from the time, when the CWG scam came into light, there have been numerous scams being unearthed from time to time. Not that there weren’t any before, but CWG brought with it a series of scams more on the lines of sequels of Bollywood movies, each different from its predecessor, yet maintaining the old flavour intact. Here the flavour was of course, scams!!

Naming all of the scams, would tend to become an exhaustive list of scams which we would be tired of reading. Of course, the politicians and bureaucrats, involved in them would never ever be tired of being in the limelight of those scams.

bias and the media

Back to where I started, about the “biased media”, the degree of biasness shifts varying degrees depending from which base camp you are looking at them. A media house may be ridiculed one day for bringing to light any corruption/criminal charges that may be involve the party whose ideology you follow or the community you represent and would be hailed for exposing the scam, the other day.

I was recently having a chat with a school friend of mine, who like many in this part of Jamshedpur is a Muslim like me. Times are such, that a discussion on politics is inevitable. In one of the discussions, he said, “Media is biased towards Muslims” which made me ask, the reasons for that statement. It was not the first time that I had heard a Muslim complaining about this, but he being a dear friend, I had no qualms throwing that question back at him. He says, “Look at the way, Modi is being branded in the media, as if he is some sort of messiah of development. How can one forget what happened in Gujarat? Those many lives lost just because of him neglecting and allowing everything to happen and now media says, that guy could be our PM??

“I just smiled and replied,” That day, when Modi will become PM will never come my friend.”

Anyways, this was his view of how media is being biased towards his community.

Time and again, whenever some news channels or some news reporters air a program or even their views against the Saffron brigade, they end up being termed as “pseudo-seculars”, “sickulars” terms one can hear, if the troll is being easy on them. There are of course other terminologies that they are subjected to, which I better not jot down here.

For the trolls, this media or section of media is biased.

When it comes to the Israel-Palestinian issue, many feel that Israel is the one at blame, while others justify it by blaming that the terrorists at work in Palestine are to be blamed for the whole fiasco. Certain sections of media use one view, while some air the other as per their choice.

And here also, lies the Biasness that people talk about.

What really is this biasness that each of them talks about??

Well, if I had to say, it’s nothing but the idea that whatever we feel like, i.e. our ideology is, correct and others are wrong. And if the media highlight the other camp, then it becomes a bias for them.

I recall, just when Afzal Guru was hanged, I shared a letter that his wife wrote around the time of his death. And just after the judgement of Supreme Court, that the “collective conscience” of the society, required this judgement. What I deemed was, this trend of the SC giving judgements on such matters is scary and may have future repercussions as well.

What followed on facebook was a long argument which solely focussed on terrorists should be treated like that and just because a few have a “back story” to end up like this, doesn’t justify it. Agreed, but then for people of the valley or even the North east, where there are numerous cases of injustice meted out by our very own Indian army, things like these are bias as well.

They assume they don’t exist for the media at all!!!

Strange are the laws of biasness!! Maybe, many would find this post to be biased as well.

The idea lies in understanding each other’s point of view and unless we try understanding that of others, this chain of blame games on being biased is going to continue.

But then there are questions on that as well. Someone said, “One man’s medicine is another man’s poison”, and looking at all of this in the same wavelength, it would take a lot to find something that isn’t poisonous if not a medicine!!

But then, living in a country like India, is that too much to ask??