"I want to thank the media
for spreading our message to all my countrymen for the past 12 days...this is a
success for them as well." Anna Hazare.
On April 5th 2011, anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare
and his team geared for the agitation against the endemic political corruption
in India. Their hunger strike in Jantar Mantar (New Delhi) attracted the floods
of mass media which gave the larger hype to the issue. This helped team Anna to
escalate its agitation and win support for their cause.
The intervention of media, resulting in escalation of conflict is not a
new phenomenon. From the very initial era of mass media, it has played an
important role in feeding the information in the minds of people for different
reasons. The information produced by any party through media can be either
neutral or biased, but in all the cases, it is produced with some objectives.
And during the time of conflict, all the stakeholders of the conflict tend to
gain the support from the media, because winning the media’s support can help
in winning the support of the masses.
But this advent was not a natural process, it needed a large amount of
investments from the private players. This resulted in the commercialization of
media and press. Now businessmen became the owners whose ultimate aims were
profits. Therefore, the upper-middle and the elites section of the society who
can afford to purchase these technologies became the prime targets. Apart from
these two sections, people belonging to other low income classes are totally
ignored. Any event that occurs in high profile society makes a “headline”, no
mater it’s a sports, health or investigative news, one thing is sure, it will
talk about the elites. One example, is media coverage of first
“Formula 1” racing in India. Prior to the race, every news channels and
papers started talking about the history and champions of Formula 1. After,
they went further and congratulate F1 organizers for successful event. Limits
were crossed when F1 was stated better in compare to Commonwealth Games in
India in terms of organizing the event. Though it’s true that CWG games brought
many controversies, there is another way to look at the issue. Private news
channels, whose owners are the business tycoons will surely advocate for the
privatization of sports too. Even the F1 was not a clean event, many
controversies accompanied it. But elites-favourable media did its
best to hide it. One of this was the land controversy.
As stated at the beginning, stakeholders of the conflict tend to gain
the support from the media. And once media comes under control, it becomes the
tool of propaganda. The early critic of mass media Walter Lippmann in 1920s
claimed that propaganda had already become “a regular organ of popular
government”. The ‘propaganda model’ brought by Herman and Noam Chomsky in their
book ‘Manufacturing Consent’ focuses on the inequality of wealth and power and
its multilevel effects on mass-media interest and choices which states that the
money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print and allow the
government and dominant private interest to get their message across to the
public.
Back in recent history, media has been useful tool of propaganda during
First and Second World War. The present connotation of word ‘propaganda’ came
during this period. Media became the additional weapon of wars since then. One
of the best examples was, U.S government using the Associated Press to
incite U.S citizens for declaration of war. President Wilson gave the German
coded message intercepted by British Intelligence Service to AP, which was a
propaganda ‘plant’. It asked Mexico to seek adherence and military support from
Japan for a Mexican-Japanese attack on the U.S. from the Southwest if America
went to war against Germany. During the Vietnam War propaganda was used to
show that the war was between the Vietnamese against Vietnamese and the U.S
intervened in the support of democracy and freedom.
In India, the recent event of Lokpal Bill showed us how mass media can
even fulfill the purpose of propaganda for them who want the common
consent. When mass media gave its interest in team Anna’s agitation, team
Anna constantly created news events for live TV and media on the other hand
gave gigantic coverage to the team. More talks were done on the life of Anna
Hazare and other members, than the issue itself i.e. Lokpal Bill. Neither the
team itself nor anyone else would have imagined (hoped) about the support that
they were going to get due to the use of mass media. New media like internet,
text mgs, played important role in mobilizing people and made Anna Hazara a
successful campaigner and created his image of 21st century Gandhi.
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