Every new and upcoming media has to inevitably go through what is referred to as ‘Functional displacement’ in media studies. The famed media battles during the era of the penny press between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer laid down the foundation for this paradigm to gain acceptance.
As any novel media gains ground, more and more media barons pump in their capital to cash in on the popularity of the media. Gradually, as the battle heats up, all the players in the game lower prices, adopt unfair means, sensationalise news and resort to every possible means to gain an upper hand. Eventually, the proverbial ‘survival of the fittest’ materialises and what we have is a ‘Functional displacement’ that displaces the immature and the borderline media and leaves the better ones at a totally different and evolved level.
What we are witnessing presently in the print domain in Mumbai, is the augmentation of quality with respect to content, presentation and the priorities given to news items. Till about a few months ago, the Times Of India was the numero uno – unchallenged and with a class of its own. The existing players then were too low down the path to even raise an eyebrow.
However, with the entrance of DNA and the Hindustan Times, things changed drastically. The over blown campaign run by DNA itself was enough to give jitters to TOI. Although, the pre-launch campaign was dragged tirelessly for too long and the actual launch of DNA failed to live upto even half its promise, it atleast forced TOI to dole out free supplements running into a 100 pages and regular readers could even sense a considerable change in the previously laid-back attitude of TOI.
This is what I feel is more important than the actual outcome of the ongoing media war. It is high time our media evolved to the next level and things change for good. The blatant commercialisation of news had lead to readers literally searching for news within the news. Yet, there was no light at the end of the tunnel since the leader itself was cheating its readers.
I vividly recall reading a report on the website of BBC on the Sydney ethnic riots. One of the sentences firmly etched in my memory is “atleast one person is reported to have been killed”. The way the reports are dealt with and the clarity and principles ingrained in the psyche of the western media are a pointer to the maturity that it has achieved.
This is where I foresee Indian media in the next few years. And it is only competition – regardless of whether it is healthy or not – that will lead the media towards more objectivity and responsibility. The essential forte of the media is to bring forth an unbiased and factual presentation to its populace. To achieve this level, a lot of churning within the media has to take place. Fortunately, we are presently witnessing the advanced stage of this churning process called ‘Functional displacement’ and the future might inevitably be bright!
(The author is a Media student and a Freelance Journalist).