Media In India/elsewhere -2

[acharya]

Pseudo-secular men in the mafia of mass media
have nearly succeeded in destroying
the soul of our nation today

* During the last 20 years we have got into the suffocating grip of a new cast iron Vicious Circle of the Pseudo Secular Mafia of Mass Media.

* The pseudo-secular mafia of self-seeking, soul-destroying and nation-decimating mass media have taken over the country as a whole for their crassly commercial purposes.

* More than 800 millions of Hindus in India in absolute majority in terms of numbers have provided a convenient landscape and opportunity to the pseudo-secular mafia of mass media to create a bestial world of national self-hypnosis.

* The newsmen in the world of mass media in India today have come close to fulfilling Napoleon's idle boast by acting as creators of pseudo events, knowing what news value is and to make news happen.

* The media doesn't aim at reporting the news; it tries to create the news, imposing its view of the news upon everyone as the final truth.

* “The Indian English media dictates against the government as if it should be the real political decision-making body in the country. (Because it is urged and influenced by other foreign agencies and academic institutions such as U Berkeley/U Columbia). It deems itself capable of taking the place of legal institutions as well, printing its allegations as truth even if these have never been entered into, much less proved in any court of law. It has vested itself with an almost religious authority to determine what is right and wrong, good and evil, and who in the country should be honoured or punished... This is called brainwashing under freedom.”

-- V.Sundaram

* * *

Excerpts:
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The very process of political and socio economic distorted development in India during the last 50 years has let loose certain inexorable and immutable forces which have made the continuous manufacture or creation of Pseudo Events not only possible but commercially viable, increasing the Supply of them and the Demand for them.

All the time we expect our newspapers to be full of exciting and heart-throbbing news. If there is no news visible to the naked eye, or to the average citizen, we still expect it to be there for the enterprising and intrepid newsman. An energetic and successful newsman is one who can scoop out an explosive story, even if there is no earthquake or a Prime Minister's assassination or a National Civil War. Even if he cannot find a story, he must be able to make or invent one through contrived journalistic dialectics, by his subtle ability to ask tricky questions of public figures, by his uncanny ability to unearth something of surprising human interest from some mundane or common place event or what is known in the world of Mass Media by the cliché of 'the news behind the news'.

“If all this fails, then an enterprising journalist must give us a think piece, an embroidering of well- known facts, or a speculation about startling things to come”. The power to make a reportable event is thus the power to create or make experience.

When we try to take a look at our favourite newspaper at breakfast everyday, we are under the delusion that we have an inalienable right to expect and even demand that it should bring us momentous events that have taken place since the night before. Later when we get into a car and switch on the car radio as we drive to work, we expect ‘exciting news’, ‘thrilling news’, ‘sexually titillating news’, about events that have occurred ever since we saw the morning newspaper at breakfast time.

The ever shifting public moods and modes are being manipulated by the combined conglomeration of self-seeking and wicked men, firms, companies, corporations and institutions, constituting the Menacing Mafia of Mass Media in India, for untold commercial gain at the cost of public interest or national good.

The story of the making of our unfounded and unnecessary illusions, 'the news behind the news', has become the most appealing and exciting news of the world.

A 'Pseudo Event' is artificially manufactured or created every second every day by the Mafia of Mass Media in India today.
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India has always been in the grip of Vicious Circle of Poverty for more than 200 years. Soon after our independence, we got into the grip of Vicious Circle of Poisonous Politicians drawn from a few selected families, with firmly established and inherited familial rights, from different parts of India.

During the last 20 years we have got into the suffocating grip of a new cast iron Vicious Circle of the Pseudo Secular Mafia of Mass Media.

I am interested in giving a graphic description of an unnatural and artificial world of our own making in India, a celluloid world in which we have abused our wealth, our literacy, our technology, our unlimited opportunity in a land of natural plenty, to create a vicious pseudo-secular thicket of unreality which stands between us and the facts of life.

More than 800 millions of Hindus in India in absolute majority in terms of numbers have provided a convenient landscape and opportunity to the pseudo-secular mafia of mass media to create a bestial world of national self-hypnosis. The tragedy is that each of us individually provides the market and the demand for the illusions which flood our experience. The pseudo-secular mafia of self-seeking, soul-destroying and nation-decimating mass media have taken over the country as a whole for their crassly commercial purposes. Criminal invaders and conquerors like Lord Clive and Warren Hastings only molested the physical body of India in the 18th century. Pseudo-secular men in the mafia of mass media have nearly succeeded in destroying the soul of our nation today.

Most of us want and believe these illusions because we suffer from the malady of unabashed and extravagant expectations. The great American psychologist Maslow, the founding father of humanist psychology, coined a term called ‘The hierarchy of needs’. In India the mafia of mass media have let loose a catastrophe of what I call ‘The anarchy of greeds’. We expect too much of the world. Our expectations are unnaturally extravagant in the exact dictionary sense of the world 'going beyond the limits of human reason, decency, dignity, decorum and moderation'. They are disgustingly, devastatingly and explosively excessive.

When we try to take a look at our favourite newspaper at breakfast everyday, we are under the delusion that we have an inalienable right to expect and even demand that it should bring us momentous events that have taken place since the night before. Later when we get into a car and switch on the car radio as we drive to work, we expect ‘exciting news’, ‘thrilling news’, ‘sexually titillating news’, about events that have occurred ever since we saw the morning newspaper at breakfast time. We expect new heroes every season, a literary masterpiece or a world shaking novel every month, a dramatically spectacular event or a hair-raising episode every week, a rare extraordinary sensation every night. We expect anything and everything. We expect the contrary, the inconsistent, the incompatible and the impossible at the same time and place. We expect small and compact cars which are spacious. We want luxurious cars which are cheap and economical. We hope to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be made literate by crassly illiterate appeals for mass literacy.

We as a people range from animals to Gods. We pray for you and we prey on you. We are bears for punishment and brutes for revenge. We want to be Everyone, Everywhere, Everything. We are creatures of moods and modes. These ever shifting public moods and modes are being manipulated by the combined conglomeration of self-seeking and wicked men, firms, companies, corporations and institutions, constituting the Menacing Mafia of Mass Media in India, for untold commercial gain at the cost of public interest or national good.

On the cosmetic surface, it may appear that MAN in India, never before in our history, has been a master of his own fate and a captain of his soul as now. Yet never has he felt more deceived, duped, disappointed, dejected, depressed and devastated than at present.

The root of the tragedy is that we are ruled by the following two categories of revolution of ever-rising expectations:

a) Expectations of what the world holds: This cannot be described better than in the words of Daniel J Boorstin: “Of how much news there is, how many heroes there are, how often masterpieces are made, how exotic the nearby can be, how familiar the exotic has become. Of the closeness of places and the farness of places”.

b) Expectations of our power to shape the world: Daniel J Boorstin describes this dimension in these words: “Of our ability to create events when there are none, to make heroes when they don't exist, to be somewhere else when we haven't left home. Of our ability to make art forms suit our convenience, to transform a novel into a movie and vice-versa, to turn a symphony into mood conditioning. To fabricate national purposes when we lack them, to pursue these purposes after we have fabricated them. To invent our standards and then to respect them as if they had been revealed or discovered”.

We keep on enlarging the landscape of our extravagant expectations by constantly seeking, harbouring and nourishing them. Consequently we create the recurring demand for the ENDLESS ILLUSIONS with which we deceive ourselves with gusto and enthusiasm. And the grim sadness of it all is that with this never-ending procession of illusions, we handsomely pay others to make the images to deceive us.

The making of the illusions which flood our experience has become the most important business of India, indeed some of its most honest and most necessary and most respectable business. This aspect or quality pervades not only the business of advertising and public relations and political rhetoric, but also the entire gamut of the business environment as a whole. It is also equally applicable to all the activities which purport to inform and comfort and improve and educate and elevate us. We find that every move or effort to satisfy our extravagant expectations simply makes them more exotic and makes our illusions more attractive. The story of the making of our unfounded and unnecessary illusions, 'the news behind the news', has become the most appealing and exciting news of the world. In short we tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by constantly expecting more than what the world can give us or than what we can make of the world.

What is a 'Pseudo Event' artificially manufactured or created every second every day by the Mafia of Mass Media in India today? The common prefix ‘Pseudo’ comes from the Greek word meaning false or intended to deceive. The very process of political and socio economic distorted development in India during the last 50 years has let loose certain inexorable and immutable forces which have made the continuous manufacture or creation of Pseudo Events not only possible but commercially viable, increasing the Supply of them and the Demand for them. All the time we expect our newspapers to be full of exciting and heart-throbbing news. If there is no news visible to the naked eye, or to the average citizen, we still expect it to be there for the enterprising and intrepid newsman. An energetic and successful newsman is one who can scoop out an explosive story, even if there is no earthquake or a Prime Minister's assassination or a National Civil War. Even if he cannot find a story, he must be able to make or invent one through contrived journalistic dialectics, by his subtle ability to ask tricky questions of public figures, by his uncanny ability to unearth something of surprising human interest from some mundane or common place event or what is known in the world of Mass Media by the cliché of 'the news behind the news'. Daniel J Boorstin has rightly observed “If all this fails, then an enterprising journalist must give us a think piece, an embroidering of well- known facts, or a speculation about startling things to come”. The power to make a reportable event is thus the power to create or make experience. I am reminded of Napoleon's apocryphal reply to his General, who had complained that field circumstances were unfavourable to a campaign proposed by Napoleon: “If ground level circumstances are unfavourable, then all I can tell you is that: 'Bah! I make my own circumstances”. The newsmen in the world of mass media in India today have come close to fulfilling Napoleon's idle boast by acting as creators of pseudo events, knowing what news value is and to make news happen.

The media doesn't aim at reporting the news; it tries to create the news, imposing its view of the news upon everyone as the final truth. To sum up in the rapier-like words of David Frawley: “The Indian English media dictates against the government as if it should be the real political decision-making body in the country. (Because it is urged and influenced by other foreign agencies and academic institutions such as U Berkeley/U Columbia) It deems itself capable of taking the place of legal institutions as well, printing its allegations as truth even if these have never been entered into, much less proved in any court of law. It has vested itself with an almost religious authority to determine what is right and wrong, good and evil, and who in the country should be honoured or punished... This is called brainwashing under freedom.” (To be contd...)

Pseudo-secular mafia of Indian mass media - I
By V Sundaram
http://www.newstodaynet.com/2007sud/jun07/040607ss1.htm
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
e-mail the writer at: vsundaram@newstodaynet.com