Should we still consider the media as the fourth pillar of Democracy?
Media today plays an undoubtedly large role in todays world and in a democracy. One of the main tasks that media performs today is providing people with unbiased and credible information about current affairs, so that people know the full story and can make the right decisions during important events such as elections. As such, media holds an extremely large influence on people, as the public is dependant on them for everything they know about the world today. This makes an independent and free media an extremely important pillar in democracy. However, in todays world, the media is anything but free and independent. Manipulating data, not providing full coverage of an event, etc are all practices that many news outlets are guilty of, done to favour specific parties, whether for financial gain or popularity. For example, in the 2016 Presidential election in the United States, Facebook was under fire for showing targeted ads to people in favour of Donald Trump to sway their opinion. Seeing that for something this important these practices are common, can we still consider media to be a pillar in democracy? Wasn’t media supposed to be free and independent for that? Can we even form our opinions, considering that information today may not even be particularly correct?
Firstly, to assume that in democracy media is the only thing that is imperfect is incorrect. There are many other examples malpractices in democracy that take place, such as voter fraud, voter suppression, etc. Booth capturing in India was recorded in 1957 in the General Elections of that year in Rachiyahi. Considering this, would you say that we would not consider voting to be an essential part of democracy? Would we start to assume that voting is too flawed these days to be taken seriously, hence not important and stop voting altogether? Despite the many examples of less than ideal situations, we still vote and consider voting to be the most fundamental part of a democracy. Because while there may be many instances of voter fraud, we understand that voting is still important to democracy, and if there are instances of illegal activities, they must be dealt with and removed, not the practice of voting itself. The same can be said for media. To say that what happened to Arnab is enough to say that journalism has lost its value is like saying that Donald Trump’s irresponsible behaviour in the election is enough to decrepit the role of a president altogether. The importance of media in a democracy cannot be emphasised enough, and despite the fact that wrongdoings happen in it, it must be understood that they happen in every aspect of democracy, in fact, everywhere in the world. Our goal should be to remove the practices that occur, not the credibility of where they occur. If we remove the credibility of something, we undermine it as a whole and make it something that should not be taken seriously, as if it were too unimportant to be dealt with. Media however, is extremely important, and if it is flawed, it must be fixed. Rather than dismissing it as something that no one cares about because it has issues, we should understand the necessity of it and fix it keeping in mind its importance.
Secondly, even though todays media outlets may be considered to be leaning towards or providing only one side of the story, it is important to note that for every media outlet that is favours towards one side, there is one that favours the other. For every CNN and New York Times, there is a Fox News and Washington Times. Modi is celebrated by Republic TV, but not so much by NDTV. This leads to a very interesting result; two news articles that each give their sides that of the story which give information designed to give views that justify their sides of the sides of the story in the most convincing way. For the responsible citizen, this is more than ideal. He/she gets access to an entire debate of arguments and sides to form his/her own opinion, which would be more inclusive of all points than just one simple explanation of a topic. One gets a full debate, two outlets fighting for a for and against side. And today, media is not only limited to print. People can get access to opinions on social media, data from non-profit organisations, or even straight from politicians, the way Donald Trump communicated directly with the nation through Twitter. With so many resources, people can easily form their own opinions and don’t need to worry about only getting one side of the argument.
The point here is that the assumption that malpractices in media make it impossible for people to form an opinion based of off is incorrect. People can still form their own opinions if they are wiling to make the effort of knowing the whole side of the story. By knowing this, we find that media in itself is still able to inform the responsible citizen the whole picture, which captures all sides of the argument, if one is willing to look for it. So the main function of media is still preserved, just a step has been added to it, which is to look at all sides of the debate.
As human beings, nothing that we will create will ever be perfect. Democracy will never be perfect. Yet, we must strive to become better than we are today. If there is an issue in the system, we work to solve it. That is how we become better, that is how we grow, and that is why we are where we are.
