An Open Letter To Markandey Katju
Respected Sir,
I write in response to the flurry of news reports concerning your opinions of popular media and the arguments shot back by it in its defense. I also write on behalf of the common man of our nation whose opinion was muffled and relegated to the background due to your esteemed stature and the media's raw power. I write in the hope that my words may serve not only as the voice of "the teeming millions" but also as a test to confirm or deny the impartiality of the printed word.
It might seem tautological but it is not impertinent of me to repeat two simple truths concerning the information industry- 1) The fundamental value underlying all media establishments is service to mankind through dissemination of information and 2) Most media establishments today are business enterprises with profit as their significant motive. Though there is little controversy over the definition of profit, the concept of "service" in this industry always seems to arrive at a compromised definition of itself through much struggle between all those who hold a stake in what kind of information is distributed and how it is distributed in our society.
The present debate, you will agree, is an instance of this ruction. While it is easier to sympathize with the idealist approach that seeks greater role of media in education, such an approach is counteracted with concerns of declining profit - without which no business may survive. Indeed, If the electronic media heeds your words and tries to evolve itself it will lose eyeballs at a rate more rapid than it can sustain; while on the other hand status quo will cause much chagrin to the intelligentsia whose conceptual blindfolds prevent it from discovering the truth behind the "information age".
The truth behind the "information age" is that it never officially arrived. What arrived instead, at the turn of the millennium, was "information overload age" and it presented the consumer with the never ending dilemma that comes attached with all decision making. Sir, as you know information can both entertain and enlighten us and so the dilemma was this: if the common wo/man chose enlightenment, s/he was left deprived of entertainment and if s/he chose entertainment, s/he remained mired in the darkness of ignorance.
At this juncture it becomes impossible for any sane and rational individual to call the decision made by the common man as irrational, or one that reflects inferior intellectual capabilities. Sir, if you were faced with the drudgery of poverty, squalor and all other third-world anxieties, would you not choose to spend a few precious minutes in front of the TV screen watching something funny, thrilling or shocking? Not only to entertain himself but also to change his psychological state and to shock himself into artificially induced disbelief, the common man takes the purely rational and easiest way out. S/he choses entertainment over enlightenment.
Sir, you might be inclined to say that I have got my causality backwards, and that the common man is wretched because he choses entertainment over enlightenment instead of the other way around, but I beseech you to step in the shoes of any Indian who lives below poverty line and ask yourself whether it is moral of us high-minded and judgmental intellectuals to exhort him to use his leisure time to educate himself?
Sir, the media merely traverses the gray area of ethics which lies between the desperation and rationality of the common man, it is not an industry that deserves derision but one that needs encouragement. I agree changes must come but not by taking out our frustration in public forums. The media industry knows how fickle the attention span of average human is and how little it takes for a person to change the channel and you are in a position to encourage the whole industry to use this knowledge of the consumer to trick him/her into fulfilling his learning and entertainment needs at the same time. We can accomplish precious little if the media, its regulators and the public at large work hand-in-hand but nothing will come out of blaming each other for unaccountable incompetencies.
I write in response to the flurry of news reports concerning your opinions of popular media and the arguments shot back by it in its defense. I also write on behalf of the common man of our nation whose opinion was muffled and relegated to the background due to your esteemed stature and the media's raw power. I write in the hope that my words may serve not only as the voice of "the teeming millions" but also as a test to confirm or deny the impartiality of the printed word.
It might seem tautological but it is not impertinent of me to repeat two simple truths concerning the information industry- 1) The fundamental value underlying all media establishments is service to mankind through dissemination of information and 2) Most media establishments today are business enterprises with profit as their significant motive. Though there is little controversy over the definition of profit, the concept of "service" in this industry always seems to arrive at a compromised definition of itself through much struggle between all those who hold a stake in what kind of information is distributed and how it is distributed in our society.
The present debate, you will agree, is an instance of this ruction. While it is easier to sympathize with the idealist approach that seeks greater role of media in education, such an approach is counteracted with concerns of declining profit - without which no business may survive. Indeed, If the electronic media heeds your words and tries to evolve itself it will lose eyeballs at a rate more rapid than it can sustain; while on the other hand status quo will cause much chagrin to the intelligentsia whose conceptual blindfolds prevent it from discovering the truth behind the "information age".
The truth behind the "information age" is that it never officially arrived. What arrived instead, at the turn of the millennium, was "information overload age" and it presented the consumer with the never ending dilemma that comes attached with all decision making. Sir, as you know information can both entertain and enlighten us and so the dilemma was this: if the common wo/man chose enlightenment, s/he was left deprived of entertainment and if s/he chose entertainment, s/he remained mired in the darkness of ignorance.
At this juncture it becomes impossible for any sane and rational individual to call the decision made by the common man as irrational, or one that reflects inferior intellectual capabilities. Sir, if you were faced with the drudgery of poverty, squalor and all other third-world anxieties, would you not choose to spend a few precious minutes in front of the TV screen watching something funny, thrilling or shocking? Not only to entertain himself but also to change his psychological state and to shock himself into artificially induced disbelief, the common man takes the purely rational and easiest way out. S/he choses entertainment over enlightenment.
Sir, you might be inclined to say that I have got my causality backwards, and that the common man is wretched because he choses entertainment over enlightenment instead of the other way around, but I beseech you to step in the shoes of any Indian who lives below poverty line and ask yourself whether it is moral of us high-minded and judgmental intellectuals to exhort him to use his leisure time to educate himself?
Sir, the media merely traverses the gray area of ethics which lies between the desperation and rationality of the common man, it is not an industry that deserves derision but one that needs encouragement. I agree changes must come but not by taking out our frustration in public forums. The media industry knows how fickle the attention span of average human is and how little it takes for a person to change the channel and you are in a position to encourage the whole industry to use this knowledge of the consumer to trick him/her into fulfilling his learning and entertainment needs at the same time. We can accomplish precious little if the media, its regulators and the public at large work hand-in-hand but nothing will come out of blaming each other for unaccountable incompetencies.
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