Calling for a media reform movement involving journalists and citizens to regain eroding credibility, Sashi Kumar, senior journalist and chairman, Asian College of Journalism, has said that the existential crisis of the media sector is compounded by the same technological advances that enabled its democratisation. He was delivering the keynote address at a seminar on ‘Issues of media freedom and technology’ as part of the ‘Freedom Fest 2023’ event organised by various organisations promoting the concept of knowledge freedom, with the support of the State government
“Technological developments in media has had a democratising influence, but it has also enabled a certain breathlessness and immediacy to media. This immediacy is highly exaggerated, as nobody is able to think out of the box and the same information is circulated across platforms. This anarchy of information leads to the problem of verification and leaves the citizen helpless in ascertaining which news is credible,” he said.
Mr. Sashi Kumar said that the algorithms in the media sphere now don’t just give information that they think people should be reading, but are also determining people’s choices. People get habituated to seeing that and are not in a position to look for anything else, having been mentally conditioned over a period of time. This has created an unprecedented situation, wherein we can’t blame those who are sceptical of the media. A strong daily dose of poison, othering and bias permeates the media. The moral compass of the bigger international media is also broken, he said, referring to The New York Times’s recent report targeting Indian news website Newsclick as well as news organisations from other countries.
