A war is going on in the Indian media industry. The industry, which has hitherto been infested with leftist propagandists, appears to be slowly turning right. The once-popular newspapers and television channels lost their sheen and are on a decline. And these media houses, unable to digest the change, are heaping abuse on the new, emerging media houses for toeing the line of whom they call the ‘right-wing forces’.
What could be the reasons behind the decline of media houses, which reduced themselves to leftist propaganda machines? Well, the people no longer are ready to be hoodwinked by the tactics of the Left. They no longer get attracted by the romanticized terms such as socialism and egalitarian society, as they fully understood that the noble-sounding words can’t bring about any improvement in their lives.
The other important reason behind the decline of the left-leaning media houses is their incessant efforts to promote Islamism in the garb of liberalism. The left-leaning political parties that are not able to come to terms with the strengthening of the nationalist forces, started unleashing violence by exploiting the existing fault lines in the society. Whether it is the violence in Delhi in the aftermath of the Shaheen Bagh Islamist uprising or the riots that broke out in the United States after the death of George Floyd, the Left has played an active role in stoking violence. And people are not happy with the role played by many media houses, which went all out to give legitimacy to the violence and anarchy.
It is a well-known fact that these media houses were patronized under successive Congress governments. They, in the name of getting scoops, had unimpeded access to the corridors of power and even managed to transform themselves into power brokers. The infamous Radia Gage exposed the murky dealings involving some ‘five-star’ journalists, who sold their journalistic souls to Satan for the sake of money and power. Such kind of unimpeded access was curtailed after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) came to power. Unable to digest their reduced importance, they attacked the Modi-led government ferociously. Their strategy, however, worked to their disadvantage and led to the consolidation of nationalist forces. It even resulted in the emergence of a section of journalists who are sympathetic to the cause of nationalism.
The media houses and their journos, who are filled with their pathological hatred for the Modi-led union government, even acted as the mouthpieces of the enemy nations through their opinion pieces and social media posts. Enemy nations such as Pakistan and China leveraged the anti-India rants of these journos to portray India in a negative light in the international arena. The behavior of these journos generated a lot of anguish, which resulted in people detesting the kind of journalism they practice.
The nationalist sentiments, just like in many parts of the world, are at an all-time high even in India. People want fair and unbiased reporting. They want their media to discard ‘vulture journalism’ and stand by the country. They want their media to cease to be Hinduphobic and stop stigmatizing Hindus. And, they no longer want to patronize the leftist media, which enslaved itself to the ‘first family’ that reduced India’s grand old party into their family enterprise. They prefer to call all these journalistic creatures as Lutyens Media and detest them.
These days the Lutyens media is talking a lot about the economy and using the economic slump as a weapon to attack the Modi-led union government. In the process, they completely exonerated the Chinese Wuhan virus for the downturn. But they conveniently ignored the fact that the same Chinese Wuhan virus severely dented their business and made them lay off their employees, push their content behind paywalls, and bank on sponsored content.
As the leftist media refuses to change its ways and adamantly sticks to its agenda peddling, the new, emerging media houses, which managed to accurately sense the people’s sentiments, are racing ahead of their competitors. For example, the relatively new Republic TV headed by Arnab Goswami raced ahead of its long-established media houses in attracting more eyeballs. The latest data released by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India clearly shows how the channels owned by Republic Media Network took an unassailable lead in the English and Hindi news segment, closely followed by Times Now. The channels such as the NDTV, which gained notoriety as Left-Islamist propaganda machines, are nowhere near.
These legacy channels, however, are not ready to accept their defeat in a gracious manner. The newscasters of these channels are trying to attribute motives to the journalistic practices of the emerging media houses and trying their level best to portray them in a negative light. Their rants on social media are a manifestation of their bitterness.
Their frustration emerges from their inability and unwilling to accept the fact that this is a new India and they don’t have any other way except changing their course or sink into oblivion graciously.
