It’s often been said about Indian cricket that its players get a raw deal. They’re made out to be ‘Gods’ after performing in one series, and then a couple of failures in the next one, and our media runs foul. They’re attacked for their technical shortcomings, their attitudes; almost anything and everything they do is wrong.
ArvindKejriwal will empathize with them. He probably knows exactly what they’re talking about. Cricket players can at least enjoy a reign of good press after a strong performance in one series. Kejriwal’s journey in the national media landscape has only been of around 3 months, and he’s already traversed both ends of the spectrum, from the highs of being the toast of the media to being their current favourite punching-bag.
What went wrong though? Yes, it is true that the Indian media is incredibly fickle. But even three months is a notoriously short time for the Indian media to completely transform the way it views a political personality. From the ‘saviour of Indian politics’, ‘the messiah of the AamAadmi’, Kejriwal is routinely dismissed nowadays as an ‘anarchist’, ‘disrespectful of the Indian Constitution’ and basically ‘deluded’. What caused such a drastic change in perception?
Let’s keep aside those allegations about paid media for once. Of course, they may be very true, and perhapsmedia everywhere in the worldleansone way or the other. But the Indian media is different from them. It does not ‘lean’ towards any principle or ideology, it only seeks to create heroes and then destroy them.
We saw it in Uttar Pradesh. Akhilesh Yadav was lauded beyond recognition for his decisive victory in the last Assembly elections. I remember reading reams and reams of newsprint gushing about how his speeches are inspirational (really?) and how he never talks in English to keep his connect with the people. If you read newspapers, you would have actually believed Akhilesh would transform Uttar Pradesh in the next five years. There were only a few wary voices that had the courage to point out Samajwadi Party’s previous history of goonda-raj, but they were mostly drowned out in the blitz of AkhileshYadav’s ‘youth credentials’.
It was the same with Mamata Banerjee, when she overthrew the Left. Readers following the media knew each and every detail about Mamata’s life, from the type of saris she wore, to the footwear she used as well as what she used to eat while campaigning. The Bengal media went berserk over the ‘aamaadmi’ connections of Mamata. This was the same media which had, in 2007, come down heavily on her for blocking TATA’s project in Singur. It was actually hilarious, then, to see the same newspapers lauding Mamata Banerjee for her pro-people policies.
One can understand why the media does it, and doesn’t tire of it. It makes for a great human interest piece. First, create an environment of complain and misery. Convince your customers that everything in India is wrong. Then, find a messiah somewhere. Hype him up as the panacea to everything that has gone wrong. Increase expectations to a level that can never be fulfilled. And when your subject stutters, come out with all knives out. The comfortable cycle is established.
Of course, that does not mean Kejriwal is not at fault. Since the man ascended the CM gaddi, he has been caught up in various issues, formost of which he deserves the short end of the stick (Junta Darbar, Somnath Bharti fiasco). But on everything else, the media seems to have reversed its previous stance. One can understand the critics decrying his failures, but the same media which once made him out to be a messiah, now picks up his failures to lampoon him.
Probably that’s whyKejriwal has stopped caring about what the media says about him anymore. He just needs to be present in the news everyday; it hardly matters to him if they’re saying nice things about him or not. He’s not alone. No one in power takes the media seriously anymore. NarendraModi has already made it clear that he prefers to completely bypass the media in his campaign trail. Most leaders have really stopped caring whether the media says nice things about them or not, they now just use the media as a tool to reach out to the voter and let them know that they’re still around.Azam Khan went so forth as to ridicule media for focusing on his lost-buffaloes case. In 2-3 sentences, he sarcastically thanked them for sparing enough time to cover the case of his buffaloes who seemed to be more famous than he was!
This is also how the Indian media is treating Modi now. First, he was the untouchable. Now, as it seems most likely that he will sweep these elections, the Indian media has changed tracks. Now theydevote enough airtime to laud him. Apparently, now he’s the strong leader who will pull India out of troubled times. Don’t get fooled by them though. Once Modi does take up the post, they’ll be waiting with bated breath for him to fall. They won’t miss an opportunity to pull him down from the pedestal they’ve created; I can even see a potential headline, ‘Strong leader image busted, Modi proves he’s just like Manmohan.’
But here’s the heartening aspect of things nowadays. The Indian citizen is coming of age. The advent of social media, for all its faults, is bringing in the real voice of the man on the streets. And the actual media is increasingly being forced to cater to the dominant opinion on social media, as recently displayed in the #AAPwedsAajTak case. When a video showing Kejriwal colluding with AajTak anchor to play up certain sections of the interview came up, most news channels did not play it until the hashtag started trending on twitter.
It is a reassuring fact that the opinions of the mainstream media which they seek to enforce on us are being challenged left, right and centre on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. Earlier, the media could decide for us and be comfortable in the notion that no one was out there to challenge them. But that’s changed now. And it’s high time the media notices this and moves on with the changing times. Otherwise, the day’s not far off when cable packages will offer Indian news channels along with other entertainment options.
Source Link: http://www.theindianrepublic.com
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