MEDIA, MEDIOCRITY, MOBOCRACY

 MEDIA, MEDIOCRITY, MOBOCRACY

Media pertain to ‘sources’ that provide news to the general public; Mediocrity relates to ‘the quality of not being good and ‘Mobocracy’ means rule by the mob. The three terms presented for title are apparently unrelated. But, strangely in India we can trace a relationship among these elements- Media, Mediocrity, Mobocracy. Our freedom in tracing a relationship between these terms has after all been strengthened by the features of the three components. The media quality not being good is strengthened by mob rule or what goes by ‘large scale belief or popular notion.   Life in India during 1950s-- about 1980s    was sedate with News reported in All India Radio and News papers. Only reporting of occurrences was done for events in and around a town or region. There was only true reporting unlike the present times when News is ‘interpreted’ to convenience to set a narrative.

It dawns to us now, that when news was largely from Government-owned AIR or Door Dharshan, greater objectivity and neutrality were vivid and listeners/ viewers had to merely receive them and there was no need to decipher or derive any inference. Also, News items were presented at just two time slots -a day in regional language and in an equal number in English. Large schedules were allotted for Culture, Traditional music/ dance, Interviews with experts in Science, Law or medicine. Regional programmes were provided for a few hours in the evening and after 8.00 PM or 8.30 pm Door dharshan centres would beam National programmes. In view of such orderly package, time was fruitfully utilized and the dramas were far more simple and sensible in theme.

News papers till around 1990s were furnishing news and now they carry views in place of news. With every medium like Newspaper with a private agenda, truth is a casualty and greater bias due to interpretative writing is visible all over.  So to say, media are delightfully, opinionating- a term so fine by its meaning. Consequently, it has turned quite simple to throw up tantrums as political discourse in building people’s mood in favour of one or the other political outfit -convenient to the media barons. Of late, this trend goes by an effort of ‘setting the narrative’. Despite the high pressure tactics of visual media, knowledgeable people ‘read through’ and stay clear that they avoid watching such media- print or visual. The malady is complex due to gullible viewers who subscribe to those views, being themselves incapable of analysis having already been sufficiently indoctrinated with those narratives rich in rhetoric, spiced with tantrums. Such sources and gullible viewers together can cause disaster to democracy. Soon enough, a new term ‘Mediacracy’ would be welcome to signify crazy media rich in mediocrity and motivated as well as opinionative functioning.  The game found its way into households through innumerable ‘melodramas’ in the name of serials that are viewed by audience with mouth wide open like dead crows, oblivious of live happenings around. Grand idiocy, mediocrity and mobocracy look to be inseparably intertwined.    

Prof. K. Raman