Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Changing face of Campaign Journalism in India


Campaigning is a series of planned operations to fetch a desired result, politically, socially and mostly ideologically.  The art of coaxing citizens to undergo, change, elect, fight, support, withdraw, defend a target group/power/party has been a highly effective tool for centuries.

Journalism has been conducive to such partisanship. Major public figures, events in history, discoveries, war, peace, annexations, etc. have been consequential to planned propaganda by the medium of information dissemination. However post feudal structures and authoritative regimes, news making has changed. Campaign Journalism has been defined by crusading editors who spear-headed anti- bureaucracy and power abuse since the colonial times. All major nationalist political struggles have been the result of extraordinary campaign journalism. The struggle for independence provided a common structure for all newspapers and publications to incite sedition.

Post Independent India, Journalists have continued to induce campaign Journalism to bring about certain accountability checks in government reforms. The interest of these campaigns was not a product of vote-bank politics, nor were they objectified by public relations of various interest groups. Statesman’s and Indian Expresses’s editorials on anti-Mrs. Gandhi stands a testament to that. Such publications were raided, staffers were jailed and heavy fines were imposed, none of which stopped the exemplaries to carry out their journalistic ideals. However, it is hard to point out the covert interests since, these newspapers barely managed to operate (the emergency period, Rajiv Gandhi’s government, Sanjay Gandhi’s government, etc).
It is interesting to note that even though news organizations had individual policies, but nowhere till the very late 90s had that affected their credibility as a news source. More or less newspapers were either soft government fearing bodies, or carried a unified view when against it. Sabotaging for economic or political interest didn’t start yet. Rural interests, like agriculture, farmers, panchayat elections still made to the effective news category of the editorial board.

However, the spectrum of gate keeping changed. The larger debates in public that campaign Journalism created, was campaigning for individuals. Public participation in the recent decades has redefined the rules of campaigning., Since the idea of campaigning has had a larger role to play in popularizing the medium of campaigning, public debates, nationwide have started to determine the ‘right candidate’ to campaign for. Also post the great Indian Middle class dream of a super economy has evolved the dimensions of journalism as a whole has tossed.

In a democratic environment, the liberal policies have sucked up to capitalistic ideals. News organizations have multiplied, and thus it’s not the government but the economic interest that has taken up the sphere for journalistic ideals. Complex technology, access to public portal by ordinary individuals has also resulted in a more sidelined news stories, focusing on a ‘classier’ audience.

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