The Corporate media in India

"Just a few years ago, the corporate media houses, including the multinational news corporations in India were euphoric of the so called ‘growth’ of our economy and were celebrating Ambani’s, Tata’s and the other modern lords of Indian capitalism. An average Indian or “aam adami” was influenced by this gold rush which was very obviously accessible for the privileged corporate at the expenses of the vast majority of our hard working people. 

The share market was forced into the drawing rooms of those average Indian families who after paying a substantial amount of their income to their family health care, their children’s education and for the perpetually inflated food and fuel prices, were looking forward to make savings (with the obvious lack of adequate social security measures). The ordinary public were constantly exposed to the surging Sensex and have been shown the lucrative rising profits by buying and selling shares rather than their conventional ways of saving money by investing in  gold or other properties or even depositing them safely in a bank for low interest rates off course. The stories of those who lost money in the stock markets perhaps not sensational and rewarding enough for the corporate media to follow through."

"Corporate media" is termed to refer the system of mass media production, distribution, ownership, and funding which is dominated by corporations and big businesses with a motive to make profit. In simpler words, the accumulating money of huge proportions, in a corporate scale by making and selling News or information.

Traditionally the popular media like news paper, magazines, Radio and Television broadcast was controlled both by private and public or state entities, a lot according to the type of economy; in a closed economy where usually the state or the public sector play an important role and subsequently their strong influence obviously due to their ownership of the Media. Quite similarly in an open economy, the crystal clear influence of private ownership in the media and in a mixed economy both the public and private media exist together often serving their own interests which frequently reflect through their selection of news and equally important the distortion of news.

The printing press dating back to the Holy Roman Empire around the midst of the 15^th century enabled the spread of Renaissance and triggered the democratization of knowledge and the Enlightenment or Age of Reason. The printing press also set off and revolutionised the production and the concept of daily news papers and in its very beginning the news papers were mostly owned privately and was circulated within the establishment network consisting rulers, their associates and the other privileged like the traders, merchants, industrialists and the intellectuals often from a wealthy background. Nevertheless, as the widespread availability of the printing press and the following mass production of newspapers in reduced costs resulted into a wider circulation among the public.

The printing press were often privately owned in the beginning and hence the news papers. The published news was duly selected to representing the interests of the socio economically powerful groups and frequently took a conciliatory approach towards the establishment henceforth reinforcing them. Lucrative markets were created for sensational news and celebrities were created by the sensational news for it to thrive. Science, technology and industrialisation poured in the other sources of mass media including radio, Television, internet and its online literatures.

The political bias that was inherent within the mass media has hardly changed in its fundamentals, even in this modern information age. The much researched account of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988)”, employs the propaganda model, analyses the mass media- the news media in particular- and reveals that the multimillion corporate possessed news communication media, the press, radio and television are profit oriented businesses subject to commercial competition for advertising revenue and profit.  Manufacturing consent uses the terms “distortion” or “editorial bias” as an inherent part of the news reportage. The news that are being reported and also how they are being reported are all direct outcomes of the profit motives, commercial interests of those big media moguls’ and the level of its dependency over the involved parties in the news reportage.  There are also state-owned or more likely state oppressed media institutions that serve the role of the propagandist for the government/ state policies and also fulfil their need for public relations. 

It is often a Good News Procuring Practice to analyse the various stakeholders or the interest groups involved in any particular bit of news of your concern. Corporate and big businesses are funding the corporate media in India like anywhere in the present world. Therefore the news would be obviously biased towards their interests. In other words, this would encourage the corporate media, to spread the news to favourable to the privately owned big business corporations and multinationals which would be justifying privatisation of the Indian state owned companies, deregulation of petrol prices, showcasing luxury goods in the news channels, selecting and deselecting the news according to the interests of those big businesses; and above all, lobbying among the millions of households for the interests of the very tiny minority of those rich and powerful people.

Free, politically neutral and non biased Mass media is essential for a healthy and transparent democracy, from which the society could achieve the change and development in both political and socio-economic relations. The mass media could only be independent when it is publically owned under democratic workers’ control and also in the control of a wider community with the procurement of news to be more decentralised where the concept of the freedom of the press holds any meaning. Only then it could be the media of the masses.  

-Sajith Attepuram