Media and Police

I was reading the book Ramoji - Chivaraku Migiledi (The one that lasts till the end). It was about Ramoji Rao, and was written by Cherukuri Chandramouli, son of Ramoji Rao's elder brother. In that book, Chandramouli criticized Ramoji Rao for using his news paper (Eenadu) and ETV Channels for his own development rather than for the people.

I agree that, Ramoji Rao has used Eenadu to promote one political party. We also have to see, how much he sacrificed the journalism values for that, and also when compared to other news papers and TV channels. If anyone compares all the media with a neutral mind, it would be very clear that Eenadu is the one which is giving more value to journalism, and is giving better news.

I am not saying that, since Eenadu is better comparatively others, we can ignore all the bad things done by that. When we have to criticize a news paper or TV channel, we should first criticize the one which is doing more harm to the society, rather than the one that is doing least harm to the society.

Dr.Jayaprakash Narayan almost said, if we close all the TV channels, state would become normal. It took me some time to realize this.

Specifically in the last one month, almost all (Telugu) TV channels raised sentiment issues, and showed bundhs, riots, and many other similar things extensively. But, they are not showing the steps that government is taking for more than a minute (except Rosaiah's speeches). When there was a bundh last time, police arrested 800 people as a precautionary measure in one day. I am wondering how many channels emphasised this? If they show riots in different areas for 12 hours (for the remaining 12 hours, there will be discussions on riots with different people), they hardly show a minute about the actions by the police on these riots. In a remote village, if one person throws a stone at a small shop, that gets more focus and time than 800 people getting arrested. If media gives enough importance to the police actions also, then all the riots would be stopped immediately.

If all these news channels are shut for atleast a few days, then the peace would restore automatically.