Double Sided Reality of Journalism : From Knight Templar of News to Jokers

I write this post in at most disgust, which was building up inside me , ever since the day I choose a profession in Journalism. 5 years ago, successfully enrolled into my graduation program, the ambitions in the field was towering. But today, in midst of chaotic surroundings of war, failing democracy, social unrest, religious fanaticism, I believe the ethical role of being a journalist had fallen deeper into nadir. What ultimately is the role of journalist?, is it skipping through the disheartening and disillusion news stories that pop up in the screens in a regular basis and be such a journalist who scavenges and bring forth stories. Or is it about being a sponsored writer, one who is very well versed in the art of biased writing in such a manner that an average reader could liken individual journalist to a particular political or bureaucratic institution. Thus here the journalist attains the role of a modern day hybrid child of propaganda and a lobby-ism.

Being a journalist in 21st century it is true that compromise is something we should learn to adapt rather than going out on a rebellious run. Often following the tight schedule, we have to come up with stories, which should feeds on the interests of the editor and those at the top of the news organisation. It is also a regular habit of feeding the public with news that is of immediate effects and often following an agenda towards public that,” World has all gone wrong and here is what you need to know to survive” more than bringing forth the true nature of world. Thus heightened interest in controversy, crime and limitless entertainment, result in the multimedia users, losing the sense of realities of life. Today journalists barely scratch on the surface of reality and rather choose an altered consumer oriented fantasy. For example, news of a tragedy would be a big news for the readers in 1950’s compared to contemporary readers who are exposed to wide array of calamities, accidents, disasters and so on from across the world. Today numbers define our reality, often if two people died, it is a general occurrence and people neglect citing another incident which killed 100 people thus dismissing the news entirely. So, with abundant news,thanks to news agencies we are fed with all kinds of unwanted news ,thus forcing many of true news savvy to search for news that matters the most. It is not kind to say abundant news and its availability is a sin, but one could say a news organisation does something sinful, unethical if they choose to willfully conceal or redact a news from the public. It is very sad to say this since we all have grown into a world of educated citizenry and reasonable thinking. Sponsored and paid writers, yellow journalism, fake news, entertainment tabloids and so on have taken place of traditional journalism making us more of a joker than what we were supposed to behold. The credibility crisis has already done the damage enough to tarnish the image of journalist and thus redefining the meaning of being a journalist.

INDIAN CONTEXT

‘The fourth pillar of Indian Constitution’, the Indian Media in general has been in hostile grounds for sometime, ever since the infamous sting operations of the magazine Tehelka, ‘ the operation west end’ which brought scuffle in Indian politics, something I felt, which brought a new dawn in Indian Journalism. It is true that process they undertook clandestinely would be questionable in an ethical sense. But it revealed another sensibility that Indian Media is either ignorant or blatantly ignores what people in power does. Series of other investigative stories which were brought out, following the similar path by many news outlets were intended to save the face of many established media giants. But on the same time Journalism flourished in every medium, the unhealthy practice of biased writing had grown beyond the boundaries and established itself as a practice in contemporary news. It is plainly visible today how online fake news, paid writing brought Trump to power and favored many others in all around the world. It is highly debatable but in overview of the 2014 election victories of Modi, one could easily notice how Modi’s image was portrayed in media through paid writings, interviews and online news portals. Here media is busy serving the Bose, they have failed in bravely sticking with the news that need immediate attention, thus people are driven off many useful and informative things. As of 2018, I have no regret saying that nothing had changed or gotten better and all I could see is we all are turning out being better at being good servants.

We were supposed to be Knight Templar of Journalism, obliged to efficient delivery and protect news that matters than the contemporary Jokers of modern Journalism.

New Bourgeois mutants are in town

According to Karl Marx, Bourgeoisie are those social class that happened to exist in all society, who creates, control and have access over all the materialistic and consumerist aspects of a society. Meanwhile the downtrodden and poor Proletariat, work their ass out in all grounds of life to barely survive to see the end of the day. Now generally speaking, those who are rich can here be somewhat classified under this very French term. I was never a real fan of Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’ after all, but to an extent was a believer of some of his ideas which shed light upon certain realities of contemporary world as well. Marx’s ideas were generally obscure Utopian fantasies to an extend which killed more people than it was supposed to save them. But on one particular aspect of ideals I always felt he was right, that is about the eternal presence of Bourgeoisie in the society. The presence of those people in power, those who have money to buy anything could actually fill into the category. But by filtering and generalizing further on the list of suitors under the tag Bourgeoisie, the modern day Bourgeoisie is rather disguised like a mutant who shows their true colors only when somebody pesters around them. In truth, the newfangled bourgeoisie’s of modern age are pretty much straightforward and different from their predecessors which Karl Marx enlightened us with.

Modern day globalization had made things pretty hard to explain Marxism in presence of various social gradations of everyday life. It is simply hard because of the numerous illegal properties and counterfeit currencies all across the world which made people act poor in eyes of the authority. But the mutant bourgeoisie I was speaking here about was moreover different, the ones that does not fit in the category of those with flesh and blood. For example, a powerful bourgeoisie I was speaking is “Social Media”.

It is actually a confusing, the way I have actually ended the last paragraph. It is true after all, to those who could read between the lines, and who could actually understand where I was actually heading into. Social media, a powerful tool these days is something we all couldn’t live without, it is also something we couldn’t argue upon. The intrusion of social media in life brought tremendous changes which we couldn’t even imagine 20 years ago. Today social media dictates our life, it shows what we are and we do. It generates celebrities, it generates revolution( Arab spring) , it generates controversies, it destroys careers and built new ones everyday. Today generally speaking nothing is offline. It had revolutionizes what we call reality and also replaced it with a dangerous ultra-reality . The ultra reality here is so powerful that it makes us a superhero or a doctor, or a fisherman or an investigative scientist in no matter of time. The abundant of your private information, your behavior pattern and private life all are thus online and is said to be ‘safe with us’, guarantees all social media service providers. But how much that is true after all as even US presidential election seems to shudder upon cyber allegations and hoaxes. Here the mutant, cyber world can be good or bad depending upon on the user. Now moving away from it let us speak more about Bourgeoisie in here. The Bourgeoisie here is none other than those who are in the helm of controlling these cyber worlds where the laws of nature or laws of physical world means nothing. They manage to attract people, learn their behavioral pattern and feed them with what they want. It is like the materialistic exploitation on working class by the capitalists so that they are kept at a distance from acknowledging the true realities of life. The social media feed us with through processes like behavioral advertising, thus making us addictive to the needs of modern day Bourgeoisie. Thus we could see the core idea of Bourgeoisie and Proletariat in 21st century, where it doesn’t actually matters whether you are living in a democratic country or in a dictatorship. We may find a way to deal with it in time and also hope that we won’t completely lost the sense of what is real.

KERALA FLOODING/PHOTOGRAPHY AMIDST A DISASTER

2018 August was a month which many Keralites( State of Kerala, India) won’t forget. The fall of flooding across the state took the life of almost 400+ people and made a devastation of more than 10,000 crore. These are some of the photographs I took during the month, even though I myself was a victim of the disaster.

LIFE OF A CLOCK: a look into our life

LIFE OF A CLOCK: a look into our life

 

We are living with a life that is defined by the time we have left. Here time is a valuable entity that fill in without our slightest knowledge and keep on driving our life forward with no magical buttons to turn backwards. We are thus constantly in struggle with the time, trying to move ahead of time with little success in most cases since we are out of breath long before we actually realize that one could not outrun the time. Time is limitless and would possibly be the most exquisite gift god may have possibly showered upon us. To every living creature, there is a particular life span that is genetically encoded to them. Be an insect, be an elephant or be a human, time here varies constantly depending on many physical factors, which I won’t we discussing but moreover be discussed upon similarity in, “Birth, Life, Death”. While the lifespan of a human being is around 70 years, it is 12-15 years for a dog and for a butterfly, it may span between several weeks to months depending on the species. Here the lifespan may differ as well as their characteristics but the underlying rule of birth, life and death governs all of them. Now consider the human beings itself as an example upon which we could discuss more.

Consider a clock and focus upon 24-hour time period which we agree without argument makes a day of our life. Now in here if we consider each hour as one particular segment of a lifetime we may come across some impressive findings. For example, consider 12:00AM as the moment a child is born, when sun has not yet shown up itself and all you could see is darkness. Now as the clock kept on moving forward things began to take shape as odd shadows began to appear as sunlight started to slowly penetrate into the world. Now here in the life of a child would be somewhere when he/she started to recognize all the characters around him even though the conscious mind has not taken shape. Now as the clocks strikes 6:00AM, the world seemed refreshed, warmer and moreover all ready to accept the new day forthcoming. Now at this juncture, a child’s growth can be easily drawn parallel to his/her conscious awakening. Here the child learns all about the realities of life but not yet ready to accept it. Now here child realizes the value of family and become closer with the family. At 8:00AM, the child is further exposed to the world outside her family and at this part the formal education commences. Now as the sunlight is shining beautifully exhibiting all colors of life, a child experiences all comforts and care of the world without anything to worry out as we call this childhood. Here the world is rather small, may be cartoonish filled with imaginable characters and fantasies of life. Now as time moves forward, realities of life slowly started to create distractions in life as the urge for more materialistic love superseded many noble thoughts. This very instant in life, teenage can be very similar to the harsh sunlight that troubles us during mid hours of a day, say 10:00 making us uneasy and restless. Now as the teenager grows up, ready to face the challenges of the world he/she is confronted by teenage sensibilities which are governed by many rational and irrational thoughts. This part in life when the puberty is in its own development can be equated to mid noon hours of a day when sun is right above one’s head. At this hour the heat is at its most and in a person’s life it would be the most chaotic but also brightest in nature. It is also the part in life when he/she will be passing through late 20s and 30s, when responsibilities of life started to carve much of the energy and time. Now as noon slowly paves way and as age crosses itself into 30s, the responsibilities of a family life started to take a toll on with the life. Now at 4:00PM, the golden rays of sunlight started to fill our life with two different sensibilities, one being the memory of a muddled past and other being that of the very thought which bring forth the priority of family. Now at this part in life, the person has many solemn duties to full fill such as fulfilling the aspirations of family relationships, society norms and so on. As clock ticks on further the person is slowly sliding into the part of life where old age defines things. Now here as the sun slowly started to disappear upon the horizon leaving deep shadows, the person would soon have started experiencing everything he had gone through in his childhood like memories and positive aspects of past life. Here his/her vision converge with fading memories and in time when darkness starts to converge people often is forced to a confined space with a need for care. Here all these phenomena are quite similar in case of a child who in his/her childhood is often put under watch by others and is confined to a particular space in life. Now at 12:00, it is finally the hour we can call the death when no more light is left for the person in the world.

Thus like a clock, the human life is parallel to many such symbolic elements that we could feel all around us. The natural pattern here exist is quiet common for all living species and many things human created had such a similar pattern to follow. Consider you bought a car and after years of active use one day it started to show problems and eventually it turns out into a state which there is no going back just as similar to the way a human life moves on from childhood to old age. Thus lifetime is a system or a mechanical phenomena with a definite beginning and definite ending to the system we call lifespan.