PRAGOTI

The self-styled 'foremost media conglomerate of India', the Hindustan Times group are doing what the Birlas have been notorious for since their earliest avatar as Birla Brothers in the 1910s. They have launched a large-scale retrenchment of media workers in Hindustan and Hindustan times. In this, they have displyed remarkable 'quality' and innovation', their professed hallmark, in creating an atmosphere of terror and uncertainty. Physical threats, humilation and molestation are all part of the time-tested innovative practices that are supposed to counter the economic crisis.

The coverage of the terror attacks showed that when the media becomes a purely business enterprise, news becomes a commodity, serving the interests of the few. It ceases to be the guardian of democracy or the protector of public interest.

NISSIM MANNATHUKKAREN's incisive article on corporate media.The article rightly identifies the role of corporate media in whipping up emotions after the Mumbai terror strike,by airing non-stop outbursts and insensible chants like “enough is enough”.The article also asserts the fact that the same media didn't come up with a similar emotional outcry for the 1.5 lakh farmers who committed suicide in a period of mere eight years and for the travail of many crores of ordinary Indians who still live like worms.

There are occasions in history when collective trauma brings a nation intimately in contact with its deepest anxieties. Mumbai 26/11, to use the media shorthand for the horror that began one night in November and carried on for close to three days, was one such. The terrorist attacks that began November 26 and transformed swiftly into a 60-hour long siege of three landmark buildings in India’s commercial metropolis, have deeply transformed the national polity. The true consequences will take a while manifesting themselves.