Media under fire

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Media under fire

Oinam Anand *

A bomb on the desk of ‘The Sangai Express’ by unknown hands completely black out the proceedings of the three days Assembly Session that saw the election of the Deputy Speaker and passing of the resolution rejecting the delimitation of Assembly seats on the report of 2001 census.

In addition to these, day to day progress report of the measures to control Bird Flu in the Imphal Municipality area was also completely black-out as the media fraternity stood in unison to say ‘It is too much’ and stop to run for morning news.

Without a newspaper in the morning, we feel we are cut off from the entire world. We can have English newspapers from the capital and other metros from outside the State in the news stalls at evening.

We have access to the local news from the AIR but without a local newspaper of our choice in our own language every morning our daily activities have become dull and indolent and we feel as if we are missing something in our day to day life.

As someone who has been in touch with print media as an article contributor for the last 10 years, this writer is extremely proud not only about the association with the media but also about the stupendous growth of the print media in our State.

We have got advanced technologies in printing with the coming of the computers and the number of daily newspapers have also increased, so also the number of readers.

An indefinite sit-in demonstration by AMWJU on August 1, 2007 after a gift-wrapped grenade was delivered to The Sangai Express.

One can miss the morning tea but today one hardly miss a newspaper by the side of his breakfast table.

In fact the newspaper and its subordinate activities become an industry itself and is now bustling with more information hitting every doors and many a newspaper actually are managing to survive the cut-throat competition in the collection of news and feeding the masses with the news.

The bewildering upsurge in the number of newspaper and periodicals is a sure indication that there is surely freedom of speech and it is very much valued in our society. As a columnist I would like to believe that there is something unique about print media from TV or Internet and I do believe that print media will have a major role to play in our society for many more years to come.

But still in our society, we think there is marginal section of people who believe in shutting the mouth of the newspaper if it fails to camauflage their design. And often these ugly heads raise again and again disturbing the placid environment that is between the media and the society.

It is true that violence exist in all societies in some form or others. Even in those countries where the people call themselves as the most civilized people, they are not free from crime and violence. But in contrast in our society crimes of any sort put the tag of patriotism on it by the perpetrators of the crime magnifying their deeds in the name of uplifting the society.

In our society the gun culture is on the rise. Mao-Tse-Tung’s theory ‘Power comes out only from the barrels of guns’ is still in force in our society.

What Mao had said was to use the gun properly with a sense of patriotism to snatch freedom from the oppressor with the help of power that comes out from the barrel, not to direct that barrel to the oppressed for whom they had been fighting.

But now here, every Jack and Jill becomes a patriot in a fortnight if he has got a gun under his belt. Because of that gun, with the power of the barrels he comes out in the society as a saviour of the society.

A pen cannot write against him and his mission. So for the adage ‘Pen is mighter than the sword’, it will be more fitting to say, ‘Pen may be mightier than the sword but a gun is mighter than a pen’.

In our trouble torn State, every morning people are eager to know what has happened during the past 24 hours. Most of us do not put full faith on the AIR news for the happenings related to law and order and problems of insurgency in the State.

Newspapers are the only means to get the detailed news of the happenings of death and clashes that is happening everywhere. But what we have seen in the past many years is that press and its functionaries have been caught in the cross-fire of words, between the army authorities and UG outfits, and between the factions of many outfits.

Today one group claims its upper hand in certain operations, tomorrow the other group nullifies it with a counter claim. The Press is doing its best to cover each and every words of the warring parties and leave it to the readers to which side of the story they should believe.

But a grim situation is apparent in the press today while discharging their duties. That is, the factions, the vertical split in many civil society organisations and their effort to force the media to say what they like even if they know the freedom of press and speech.

Today one group force to publish their press release without any modification or alteration. Tomorrow the other faction force to withdraw the statement, if not, with a threat of dire consequence. And media is caught between the devil and the deep sea situation.

Looking at the problems facing the press and its functionaries today, there is firm believe that there are certain elements in our society whose aim is to shut the mouth of the press for their gains and is forcing the media to sing the tune of their choice.

This is very unfortunate. This is nothing but a wedge or a stumbling block in the ethics of journalism and the role of media in the society.

Media should be kept out of the firing range of those who are using guns.

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* Oinam Anand writes regularly for The Sangai Express. This article was webcasted on August 23rd, 2007.

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