Credibility Crisis In The Media

Media’s Crisis Of Credibility

Ashutosh Mishra

A famous American politician once described newspaper editors as men who separate the wheat from the chaff and then print the chaff. The dig he took at editors decades ago, questioning the reliability of the content they published, continues to resonate with many till date. The credibility of the media is at an all-time low today with technology-aided (mis) information explosion.

The amazing diversification of media with the arrival of all kinds of online news platforms has thrown up tremendous opportunities but there is always the lurking threat of vested interests peddling fake news. With news travelling at lightning speed and imperatives of the market economy interfering with the rigours of the vetting process the possibility of misinformation being packaged and passed off as news is never far away.

The threat of misleading and unverified information masquerading as news stems primarily from the uncontrolled nature of modern media. Efforts at creating a regulatory mechanism to make media outlets, especially the various avatars of online platforms, fall in line have met with only partial success so far. This has thrown up a bizarre scenario where YouTubers of all hues and backgrounds are trying to enlighten people and anyone who wields a camera claims to be a news photographer. And everyone is a journalist. Lack of rigorous vetting and liberalisation of news as a business has exposed journalism as a profession to unimaginable hazards, creating a crisis of credibility.

A degree or diploma in journalism did not matter much even in the past because of the hands-on nature of the profession but today when there is a proliferation of journalism schools it seems to matter even less. Anyone can be a journalist. If nothing you can be a freelancer in your own right, writing to slake your own thirst for creativity, readers be damned. Liberalisation of media with the implied threat to credibility began long ago with newspapers in the West coming up with innovations like citizen journalists whose stories they carried. This was a marked deviation from journalism’s traditional template which would not permit newspapers to publish stories from non-staffers, certainly not stories on sensitive issues.

This was almost unimaginable in the good old days. But citizen journalists broke that mould. Ensuring editorial rigour became all the more difficult with profit-driven journalism giving in to the idea of franchise business in newspapers. While this meant more revenue for newspapers with low-cost franchise editions being financed by franchisees with vested interests its immediate casualty was the quality of the content that these editions carried. Despite all the talk of editorial control by the main edition the franchisees always enjoyed enough leeway to push in questionable content with tendentious reporting clearly in evidence. T

he franchisee demanded and got his pound of flesh. The situation is worse today with media’s credibility getting steadily eroded. While there is no denying the need for and the desirability of media to grow, it should not happen at the cost of quality of the content because ultimately that is what matters.