In Search of a Socially Enlightened Media

Ideally, the media is supposed to enlighten the general public on two basic questions: What is happening and how long should something continue to happen? In response to the first question that involves an “is” component, the media, through its objective reporting, is expected to bring forth different dimensions of reality in the public view. It has a moral responsibility to objectively cover positive as well as negative sides of a myriad reality in its reportage. Thus, if society is overwhelmed by the negative side rather than the positive side of reality, then the media, through its insightful and investigative foresight, is supposed to lay bare the danger of negativity taking over the larger space of the people’s mental space and the resultant action that contributes to the painful experience of gender, caste, and minority injustice in front of the public view.

In fact, reporting objectively offers an invitation to the common people to ask whether the question of objective reporting “is” grounded in the neutrality principle or not. The credibility of the media, thus, is sustained by the capacity to be objective in its reporting. The objective reporting is supposed to aid the common people to form their opinion on a particular matter and arrive at a normative judgment about what is good for the society or treat the common good as much superior to an individual’s or political party’s good. Mediapersons being objective does help the common people to develop the capacity to judge what is wrong and what is right. Ideally, sensitive mediapersons would also be concerned about the ought question, that is, what ought to be the orientation of politics? Such persons would accommodate reporting the normative thrust of politics in their media that would help the common people to firm up their commitment to democratic and constitutional values that are being threatened today by communal politics.