Corporate Media Made Journalism A Revenue Stream: Palagummi Sainath
Hyderabad: Noted journalist and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner Palagummi Sainath on Sunday decried urbanization of media reporting and marginalizing rural issues. "Corporate media made journalism a revenue stream," Sainath regretted. He was delivering the V. Hanumanth Rao Memorial Lecture at Somajiguda Press Club in Hyderabad.
Sharing his experiences in rural reporting, Sainath lamented that the issues which are perturbing most of the villages have been branded as not news worthy enough to report by the media giants today.
"All the national dailies cover 67 percent of news belonging to the national capital — Delhi alone while only 0.18 percent of village-level stories are aired by the news channels during prime time news hours. Only 0.61 percent of news is related to agriculture," he said.
The agriculture correspondents cover the events and press releases issued by the Ministry of Agriculture but do not get a chance of reporting issues plaguing interior rural areas. If reported the news might not be of great interest to the media organisation for which the reporter is working, he pointed out.
Recalling his stint as a reporter in UNI when he first joined in 1980, Sainath said there used to be a labour and agriculture correspondent but the beats have got extinct as the interests of newspapers and television channels have been changing rapidly.
"It is unfortunate that an agriculture reporter has to file stories related to annual revenues of corporate bigwigs like Monsanto and news reports related to fertilizer and seed companies,” he said.
There are no beats in the mainstream media in terms of reporting farmers issues and agriculture produce. And 70 percent of India's population doesn't make news. At a time when there are professionals reporting sports — Champions Trophy and IPL tournaments, there is zero knowledge about rural problems for those who cover the beat," he said.
Ironically, definition of the farmer in India is one who works more than 108 days irrespective of ownership of the land. Quoting figures of the marginal cultivation in the country, Sainath said that there was drastic rise in agriculture workforce during the period of 2001 to 2011 but the marginal cultivation has declined.
Repercussions due to cattle sale restriction
As the BJP-led NDA government is mulling on imposing restrictions on cattle sale, there would be serious repercussions in the future, he observed. The senior journalist warned that there would a serious drop in cattle population in the next five years. The cattle wealth would be in the hands of corporates, he said.
"The government will not allow farmers to sell their livestock in the open market. Subsequently, licensed slaughter houses will crop up. If this becomes reality, the farmer will have to face problems to get his cattle certified for slaughtering where he will have to go from pillar to post to get permission certificate from Tehsildars and mandal officials. This will make the process even cumbersome. Eventually, farmers would shun rearing cattle.
