By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: It is a known fact that the number of media houses in the State has increased with each passing year, but whether this increase has marked an improvement in the quality of news being published every day, is still something one has to seriously look into, observed the HNYF general secretary, SK Blah.
Stating that the media was the fourth pillar of the Constitution, Blah, who is also a faculty of Seng Khasi College expressed his hesitation to accept that media houses in the state have been able to create a big impact on governance and the society.
While speaking at a seminar on ‘The role of the media, the society and democracy in Meghalaya: progress and regress’ organised by a vernacular media house, Rupang as part of its Silver Jubilee celebration at Mission Compound Community Hall here on Saturday, Blah said that the media houses here usually adopt a conventional type of reporting, and are still lagging behind in as far as investigative journalism was concerned.
“The number of news has increased but the content of the news is something we really have to look into,” Blah said adding the media in the state is ‘centrist’ and unlike the media in mainstream India, the media here are stuck with conventional reporting and end up reporting the same news and this is reflected in all the newspapers, being vernacular or English dailies.
Furthermore, the HNYF general secretary also pointed out that the wide space given for advertisements in the newspapers was something which turned off the interest of the public.
Meanwhile, presenting his paper on ‘Media and Right to Information in Meghalaya’, RTI activist and convener of the Maitshaphrang Movement, Michael Syiem said that the news reported in the newspapers should never be taken as a gospel truth. “The media is not the judge, the jury and the executioner because the job of the media is to inform, educate and investigate,” Syiem said. He, however, stated that media here have missed out on the third aspect which is to investigate.
“Scams unearthed by any individuals or NGOs are being reported but unfortunately, no efforts have been done to follow up on that issue and based on this, the media to contributing to shorten the memory of the public on various issues,” he said.
Stating that the RTI is one weapon which can check corruption, Syiem said with the coming of the RTI, the media has access to all the important information but unfortunately, “The media are not using this tools to expose the various scams and depended on others to do the work and then goes ahead to publish the manufactured news,” Syiem lamented.