Media in miniskirt

Statistics are the best tool to make an argument or prove a point. At the same time, depending on the user, they can be equally deceptive. Simply put, if Siddhuism was turned on its head, “statistics are like mini-skirts, revealing the trivial, while hiding the more significant”. Until recently it was a camouflage under which governments hid their inefficiency. It has now become a trick with which the mainstream media fools the nation.
Sixty per cent Indians are “blissfully happy”, declared anchor stories of two of the largest-selling papers in India, today. About 70 per cent of Gujaratis have experienced homosexuality, said an annual survey published in the largest-selling magazine in the country a couple of weeks back. GDP growing at the rate of 9 per cent, scream headlines in almost all newspapers daily. In all these reports, fundamentals of journalism were respected, facts were checked and sub-editors did a good job. What went missing was the balance, a reflection of loss of conscience.
Those declaring 60 per cent Indians as happy probably never went to its villages where people live in utter poverty, disease and squalor. Where farmers commit suicide and tribals die of starvation. Not surprisingly, the survey was conducted by MTV. Fair for them, because they represent the urban youth. But the mainstream media? Probably, they will quote another stat to prove otherwise.
The magazine that enlightened its readers with Gujarat’s increasing orientation towards homosexuality, did not reveal that it had surveyed only 67 people in entire Gujarat. And in one production night in the press, five and half dozen people decided who the 70 per cent of over five crore Gujaratis would go to bed with.
And when papers screamed about unprecedented euphoria on the Sensex and the GDP climbing up to its 1991 high, they did not tell anyone that Asia’s next superpower’s poverty alleviation efforts have fetched an “enviable” result of 0.74 % in the past decade and a half. That on the yardstick of nutrition, India ranks third from bottom. Nepal and Bangladesh being the only two countries doing worse than India.
But such facts are generally buried on the margins of full-page ads both by the corporates and the government. And then, “newspaper is not charity, it should make proper business sense,” said one of India’s top editors addressing students of journalism at IIMC, Delhi, a few years ago. Now he has a spoof running in his name on an entertainment channel. Or as a popular RJ and friend remarked, “Common! Nobody wants to start the day with bad news.” The question is not whether we want start the day with bad news, the question is whether we want start the day with NEWS at all.