‘Media should be conscience keeper of the people’
Our Correspondent
Kohima, Nov. 16 (EMN): Challenges—both old and emerging ones—faced by the media fraternity were at the centre of discussion during the celebration of National Press Day in Kohima on Saturday.
Members of Nagaland Press Association, all three press clubs of Nagaland—Dimapur, Kohima, and Mokokchung—attended the programme, which was organised by the Kohima Press Club and the DIPR.
The day is observed across India on November 16 to commemorate the establishment of the Press Council of India, which was formed in 1966. The day is symbolic of a free and responsible press in India.
Dr. Asangla Tzudir, editor of Heritage Publications, while sharing her thoughts, said that media fraternity should act as a “conscience keeper of the people”.
Speaking on the power of media, she said: “The power of media lies in the fact that it is a very powerful tool for shaping the thoughts and minds of the people”.
She thought that the media in Nagaland works under pressure, for the region is a conflict zone ‘where conflict and violence seems to be a regular feature in the daily happenings’.
She was of the view that media persons will be caught between fact and truth.
“There lies a struggle in the challenge of presenting the facts and truth as well as the responsibility of how to curtail violence,” she said.
What should the media report?
When it comes to sexual violence news, media reports need to go beyond the usual and provoke the justice system, she said. Many a times, reports on such cases give more attention to the oppressor and less focus to the victim, she observed.
The media in the state, she said, is influenced somehow by “our culture and tradition”. However, she impressed upon the need for objective reporting rather than ‘enforcing the perception of the people’.
She also queried whether the ‘truth’ in the news report is based on public perception or on evidence. Further, she asked the journalists to contemplate what should the media report? ‘Should the media create information for the public or act as a medium to disseminate without filtering, just for public consumption,’ she posed.
Print media need to evolve
Saying that readers are looking for news that can provide ‘all sides of information’, Tzudir said that the print media in Nagaland need to evolve. ‘It need to evolve from the current trend of reporting, by reporting beyond what people want them to report, and not what the media themselves want to report,’ she added.
She hoped that journalists work on stories that give hope to the readers.
One of the biggest challenges of investigative journalism is defamation and patronisation, Tzudir observed. “The perception of the public might be that media is out to just crush the individual or institution but then it can be done in such a way that this is needed in a democracy,” she said.
The public should try to understand that the media is not a bloodhound but a watchdog, she added.
Former journalist and author Charles Chasie shared how journalism was like in the late 1970s and the 80s, particularly when he was the editor of Nagaland Newsreview, an English weekly tabloid back then.
Most of the journalists back then were “self-taught and often working alone”, and the “only staff”, taking the overall role of an editor, reporter, desk, manager, to collecting bills from offices etc. Being the only staff of a newsweekly, he found himself returning home in the wee hours most of the time. Since there was no transportation in those days, every field reporting was done by walking on foot.
Apart from all these, the former journalist said that they used to face challenges “both from the Naga factions as well as the Indian army. But, on the whole, we got on well with everyone, without really coming to blows or losing our lives”.
The experience he got out of being in the profession was “to treat news with the respect it deserves and that my duty to the public was to provide adequate, accurate and objective information to the best of my ability without bias or misinterpretation”.
He recalled that the editorial was the only section where comments were given in a publication and this was where the policy of the publication was reflected. “This was why the best people were usually assigned to the editorial board and it was a place of pride in any news organisation --to be an editorial staff,” he said.
Chasie said that “sensationalism and selective indignation were the two traditional sins of the media.” This does not mean the media then was without blemish, he expressed.
Having to solely depend on advertisements from government offices for revenue generation, he said, they were caught between wanting to criticise the government. Yet, they did manage to criticise government policies whenever they thought justified, he added.
Saying that there is now a very powerful social media, which was absent back then, Chasie observed that fake news has also become “rampant” and is the “new normal”. Fake news has “imposed itself as a substitute reality in the form of a far more convincing presentation of alternative facts,” he added.
Under such condition, the role of the media persons becomes challenging, especially in a society that has “experienced prolonged violence and has become wounded and broken in the process”, he said.
“For the most part, our society has become dysfunctional, our people are depressed, longing desperately for peace and wanting to hope,” observed the veteran journalist.
At this juncture, he said, media persons stand in a unique position to bring healing and give hope to the people “when peace finally seems within the reach of our people and society”. He went on to add that society is in need of becoming a functional society again’ with all the needed structures and system in place’. Chasie hoped that the media fraternity would be at the forefront of building a better Naga society.
President of Nagaland Press Association, H Chishi, who was the moderator for the panel discussion, urged journalists to report beyond events and programmes. From his experience, he said it is not uncommon for reporters to run into controversies or come across defamation cases against them, when doing investigative journalism. He encouraged journalists to work on investigative stories.
