The MARKET RULES: Changing Structure of Media and its Ethics in India
The talk will focus on how Indian media has essentially become monochromatic, leaving very little space for dissenting views and for news about marginalized sections of society. It will trace these changes to the impact of market forces as well as a growing ideological consensus amongst the Indian elite.
Although efforts by political and corporate entities to get their messages into news coverage are nothing new, what is different now is their scale. News organizations seem less equipped to question what is coming to them or to investigate stories themselves. Increasingly the line between advertising and news is getting blurred and often it is difficult to distinguish between editors and ad-sales managers
These changes have been brought about by the restructuring of the ownership pattern and the growing corporate influence on the media; a rapidly expanding market for newspaper readership and television viewing; the changing role of the Editor; a growing ideological consensus between the State, the corporate world and the media; and the search for additional sources of revenue in an extremely competitive media market. They have transformed the nature of newspapers and TV news channels as well as journalistic practices and ethics in news rooms.
Bharat Bhushan is currently Senior Academic Consultant to the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR). He has been a journalist for over 25 years and was the founding Editor of Mail Today. Earlier, he was the Executive Editor of the Hindustan Times, Editor of The Telegraph in Delhi, Editor of the Express News Service, Washington Correspondent of the Indian Express and an Assistant Editor with The Times of India.
He was educated at Imperial College, London; Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. He was also a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University and a member, Executive Council, Indian Institute of Mass Communications, New Delhi. He was invited to be a part of the South Asian Editors Mission to Sri Lanka (2006) and of the International Editors Mission to Pakistan in 2007 to examine issues of Press Freedom in these countries.
He writes regular columns for Asian Age and Business Standard newspapers and Outlook magazine besides hosting a weekly programme on foreign affairs – India’s World – for the official television channel of Indian Parliament, Rajya Sabha TV.