Friday, July 24, 2009

The death of fourth estate (Media) –Lets form fifth estate to fight back

If my understanding of history is correct it is more than 405 years since the first great battle for the freedom of the press was fought by dissenters, dreamers and visionaries, who went against the wish and will of establishments. They had to pay heavy price for the act, terrible penalties. Way back Thomas Hytton was executed by William Tyndale, who translated the bible in to English. Now the time has come that to repeat the fight.

According to David Bowman, “is that, having thrown off one yoke, the press should now be falling under another, in the form of a tiny and ever contracting band of businessmen-proprietors. Instead of developing as diverse social institution, serving the needs of democratic society, the press, and now the media have become the property of few, governed by whatever social political and cultural values the few think are the second great battle of the freedom of the press.”

Now the giant public relations companies, which is employed by the state and other corporate houses which is also vested interests, now account for much of the editorial content of the media, especially, print media, however, insidious their methods and indirect their message. Their range is ideological and it is phenomenon: from corporatism to war. This is another form of embedded journalism; the crook ways to kill the truth has been institutionalized by PR agencies.

One can say that this is cry of common reporter, but how do we react to all this? How can we defend ourselves? There may be hundred answers. Ignacio Ramonet had an answer, he wrote, “The answer is simple. We have to create a new estate, a fifth estate that will let us pit a civic force against this new coalition of [media] rulers. Many international journalist and Indian writers, including Arundathi Roy proposes an international association of Journalists, academics, newspaper readers, radio listeners and television viewers that operates as a counterweight to the great corporations, monitoring, analyzing and denouncing them. I would not be surprised if the, media, like governments and the international financial institutions; itself becomes an issue of popular action in the future.

Current technology and business atmosphere does have potential to form an unofficial media which can reach to the large section of the society.

In the recent Iraq war, best stories appeared in the websites. This was done when all mainstream news media suppressed the truth. Dahr Jameel, a Labnese American reporter, who has provided a source for eye witness truth telling during the bloody occupation of Iraq, is striking example of alternative media that efficiently challenge the corporate media. Though she was not an accredited journalist, but one of the new breed of Citizen Reporters.

Some has come down and blew the whistle; there is a society which will endorse it. According to John Pilger, “One needs to realize that the world has two super powers now: the power of the military plutocracy in the Washington and the power of public opinion.”

Abu Haniyya