A violent tropical storm hit parts of Bihar and West Bengal on April 13, killing over 120 hapless people, injuring several hundreds more and rendering thousands homeless. Large sections of the English-language media buried the news of the devastation caused by the natural calamity. One national newspaper made it a front-page brief item and another made it part of a package on natural calamities, including the earthquake in China.
The same national English-language dailies splashed the news of tennis star Sania Mirza's plans to marry Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik. The controversy over the alliance between the two sportspersons even became the lead report in one of the national dailies. In sharp contrast, on the day the violent storm killed 120 villagers in West Bengal and Bihar, an English-language newspaper published from New Delhi gave a big display to a news item on two aircraft narrowly missing each other in the Indian skies!
There were, of course, exceptions with just a few newspapers giving due importance to the sudden storm killing so many people in the two states. However, the larger point of the lop-sided news hierarchy and priorities practised by sections of the English-language media was too obvious to have gone unnoticed. The irony is that neither was this actually noticed (as evident from the absence of any public debate or comment on this matter), nor was there any popular consternation over the direction of news coverage in the mainstream media.
That the English-language media the print as well as the electronic usually accords greater priority to developments that cater to the information needs of urban India is nothing new. However, both the media and civil society in general have decried this disturbing trend, giving rise to hope that at some stage corrective action would follow. The fact of the media's relative neglect of reporting on the natural calamity in two of India's major states (one of them struggling hard to overcome its economic backwardness and the other striving for rapid industrialisation) going without any criticism seems to suggest that an aberration of the past has now become the accepted norm. The consensus seems to be that nothing much can be done about this aberration, howsoever disturbing that may be.
This seems to be an unhealthy turning point for the English-language media in this country. The emergence of a media that is increasingly becoming influenced by its business considerations has challenged the principle that news hierarchy or priorities for the media should be dictated by its unbiased assessment of what is of larger significance for the largest number of people. The comfort so far was that civil society and enlightened public opinion would question the challenge posed by the compulsions of the media business. Developments in the last fortnight make one wonder if the people of this country have lost that comfort.
The English-language media, at least, can now freely deliver news seen through its newly acquired business perspective and without compunction. The nexus between readers/viewers, advertisers and the media has become much stronger. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that news hierarchy will be determined not by what is of larger significance for a larger number of people, but by what matters more to the media's readers/viewers and advertisers. Villages in Bihar and West Bengal have little relevance for the English-language media from its business perspective. These villages constitute neither the English-language media's readership or viewership, nor the market for mobilising advertising revenues. For the same reasons, floods in Bihar or the north-eastern states have ceased to interest the English-language media.
The point to be noted here is that while the media has cast aside its traditional news perspective of what is important and what is in the public interest, it is yet to grow out of its subservience to the sources of news. The same English-language media, which conveniently ignores the issues concerning thousands of villages mired in poverty in different parts of the country, will write about poverty alleviation programmes simply because the source of the news happens to be the government, a world that makes sense to the media in many ways.
In other words, the media has created a new paradigm for its news perspective. It will write about issues that concern and directly affect its readers. Sania Mirza's wedding controversy or Iceland's volcanic ashes bringing to halt air travel is more important than 120 people getting killed in a storm in a few villages in Bihar and West Bengal! It will also present news, whatever be its content or significance, provided that news is offered to it by the establishment, be it the state or the advertising community. What is missing from all this is the age-old principle of the media deciding on the hierarchy of news depending on its significance for the people in general.
