The Indian mass media scene has fundamentally changed after the advent of electronic and digital media. While many have welcomed the changes, the "old order" of journalists look at the adjustments and compromises, and the tight rope walking by the mainstream media, as a dangerous trend.

Like other professions, the Indian mass media is undergoing a process of transformation. The fast-changing trends have understandably alarmed a section of the press. The senior journalists think it is a steep degeneration and cite countless examples to prove it.

Obviously, perceptions and priorities have changed. The Indian press seems to be struggling to free itself of the stranglehold of the 1947 missionary mindset shifting its focus to the bottom-line based on industrial principles.

The Indian media is a product of the freedom movement. Without newspapers, the focus of the crusade against the British would have been fundamentally different.

It is interesting to recall that the foundation of the press in India was laid by a white man in 1780. The weekly Bengal Gazette was the first newspaper published from  Indian soil, with its anti-establishment stance. James Augustus Hickey, the editor, and publisher of the Gazette had the gumption to challenge the mighty empire of viceroy Warren Hastings.

In the past 200 years, the Indian press has largely maintained this tradition, of opposition and has generally played an adversarial role. As the fourth estate, it has functioned as the driving force of opposition.  Even today one of the chief functions of the press is to strengthen civil society through continuous monitoring and exposing the wrongdoings of those in authority.

One finds nothing seriously wrong with that. But whatever has happened in the last 30 years or so, particularly after the process of liberalization and globalization triggered in the 1990s, has sent alarming signals all around.

If the Indian press today appears reduced to an appendage of the corporate culture, it may not be wholly possible to halt the downslide and a paradigm shift in its relations with the mass consumer society that is evolving. This emerging trend has caused widespread concern among social and political activists fighting for the rights of the people.

The negative trends that have crept in are demonstrated by the increasing role of commerce which has elbowed out the original goals of journalism out of the orbit of public concern. "Editors of newspapers take flak for sacrificing and doctoring content to suit fund raisers’ interests," say the critics.

Nowhere else is it more eloquently highlighted than in the functioning of the electronic media whose TRP obsession has spelled a wholly undesirable trend of misinformation and disregard for authentic facts. One can draw attention to some  cases in which the television medium went out of its way to take advantage of  serious human predicaments:

In the first case, a trader in Patiala burnt himself to death in full view of camera persons, none of whom came forward to save him. In another case in MP, family members fighting economic distress were provoked to consume poison to end their lives again in full view of the camera. And then there was this case of Puja in Surat in Gujarat, who was persuaded to walk the streets in her undergarments to draw the attention of the world to her sufferings and plight.

Those who have seen the Amir Khan production Peepli Live would agree how events are being stage-managed and orchestrated. Surely this is the misuse of liberty - something devolving into a license, point out media watchers.

The deliberate attempts to seriously skew information dissemination, over-hyping the absurd and abominable efforts of a section of society, sensationalizing or allowing page three features to confer social distinction and respectability on those who are not worthy of it to dominate the contents, information overload, class predilections, and prejudices and pathetic attempts to play to the gallery through the promotion of the superstitious and the obscurantist orientations of society, are danger signals that need to be addressed urgently, according to veteran media professionals.

To quote eminent journalist late Kuldip Nayar: “Our print media is suffering a mad disease which has played havoc with newspapers. I will call it tabloid syndrome. You open any paper in the morning. They are full of pictures of young models, supermodels, actors, and fashion designers—some names you have never heard, garnished with information on what they love to eat, what kind of dress they like to wear what they often do when they relax, what they think of love and sex and such trivia. This shallow, unthinking attitude gets reflected even in the news stories and articles that are printed in the papers. Reporters do not cross-check the information they get. They often write one-sided versions of events and about people who do not matter. Often good stories are not followed up properly. Planted stories make the front pages. Journalists have turned politicians and newspapers into projectors of a particular point of view. News columns have come to be editorialized in the name of interpretative reporting.”

But the path to doom can not be altered till those at the helm of affairs in the press world are men of vision and social commitment. Says senior media person Rajiv Saxena "The press today is dependent on hollow men of low IQ feasting on unreliable sources of information." One always thought and believed that the desired goals that the press should pursue are fostering creative ideas that lead to social cohesion, privileging facts and figures to promote rational thinking, and keeping in check the baser predatory instincts of humans, adds Pramod Gautam, chairman of Vedic Sutram.

Unfortunately what seems to be happening is just the opposite. Press barons in India do not realize that the goals and objectives of the press in a developing country like ours have to be different from those of the Western media.

Many of us mistakenly think Globalisation means westernization or Americanisation. One question that is often asked relates to the freedom of the press. The Indian press today is definitely free, but unfortunately, this freedom is misused by people in power.

Let it be stated quite candidly that the freedom of the press today does not mean the freedom of the writer or the journalist to write anything or to project views that are at variance with that of the establishment. It is essentially the freedom of the owner or the management to switch political loyalties or to often defend culprits and wrong-doers who may be mulched by the media in the form of advertisements. 

On the issue of the freedom of the press, we have had so many problems with politicians of all hues from Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajeev Gandhi to dozens of state-level leaders who have not taken kindly to the freedom of the press.