The Cost of Lies
In India, diversification of media was started by ‘The World This Week’. A short roundup of global news that was well compiled, well produced and had a peppy ‘tabla’ performance as the opening score. Till then, Doordarshan had the monopoly over dissemination of news on TV and AIR ruled the radio waves. While print media did have an impact, the news was always a day old and the editorial remained the niche of a few.
It was proliferation of TV news channels that truly triggered the rise of the counter narrative or soon thereafter multiple narratives. These channels & networks created islands of information by creating options in terms of the ‘points of view’ available to the audience. Though this evolution eroded the credibility & effectiveness of the state media, initially, it did bring openness and accountability and established media as a pillar of democracy. However, like all fires, the system started to become self-consuming and the TRP battles paved way for greater commercial success at the cost of editorial erosion.
While the private TV channels had just begun changing the game, internet exploded and the wise ‘cookies’ democratized how people consumed information. Soon after, web 2.0 came and the net users became content generators, democratizing the way we interacted with news and generated content reflecting our opinion.
The event horizon was crossed when social media integrated the human mind with the internet and interactions became opinion, became narrative and became the truth.
The noise of these multiple mediums, exploding with Moore’s Law, has today left us in a haze of question marks. Less the few universal truths, all news today is peppered with opinion, perspectives & even lies. Media has modified its approach and seeks refuge behind the concept that they cover both sides of the story. This is the biggest deviation of the news system. The news was supposed to be the truth and the facts, but it has been evolving into the realms of opinion and perception, giving paramounce to covering what is happening over analyzing what is happening.
While it is not as simple, but there are either facts or lies. Compounded with the ills of social media and community messaging services like Whatsapp, the social engineering and narrative management today is pushing the society on a downward spiral. In the beginning, when the same was commercialized, it allowed economics to influence opinion. Now, when the same is being weaponised, binary code has become the secret of starting protests, agitation, violence & unfortunately justifying the same.
As a current example, with very little public clarity on issues like CAB & NRC, the discussion, the debates & the violence is primarily manufactured and effecting mainly the lower strata for whom this is just another issue to tackle in survival. Media, in this, instead of covering the dissent covered the events which spiraled into who is participating instead of what is the concern and how should it be addressed. So much is the media’s assumed right of covering both sides of the story that it has forgotten its duty of extracting the truth. The pedestal of being a pillar of democracy is high, the cost of lies may soon accumulate into a lack of faith and a loss of credibility, a bigger loss to the society than to the institution of news media itself.
There are a few, principle based news organisations who are trying to survive the clouds of commercial & social demands. I just pray that with ever increasing technology and socialization of internet we don’t end up using artificial intelligence made from natural stupidity. Can we please just have news.
