A panel discussion on how the Indian media sets its bias. Whether it is or it isn’t? Was held at the ‘Chavadi’ stage of the 2nd edition of Mangaluru Lit Fest ‘19 on 29th November 2019 at Dr TMA Pai Convention Centre, Mangalore.
Atul Kulkarni opened up the tussle on bias in media stating “The difference between news and advertisement have been blurred”, further adding he said the present online news portals are headed by the ‘Big Daddys’ of older media.
Smitha Prakash, Editor in Chief of ANI, began the conversation arguing the media cant be homogenised; there is regional media, traditional media and national media. Smitha compared Doordarshan to the head of the family, as everyone would obey and follow. But in the current times, there are enough choices to opt for, people need not follow one media house, instead they could explore and rely on several media sources. Smitha further said “Believe what you want to belive and make an intelligent choice”
Barkha Dutt, in her response, elaborated on how dynamics of control happens in media. The tyranny in media according to Barkha is “The tyranny of control in state media whilst tyranny of market in private media and tyranny of the algorithm in web portals, amidst these tyrannies a person who is crushed is a reporter”.
Barkha, on media bias, argued that there exists a ‘conformation bias’ where people won’t accept the negative opinion on the content in which they already believe in. Putting forth her experience, she said: “If all sides of ideologies attack, then your story is good”. She further added, “The constant labelling of media as bias is exaggerating”.
Responding to Barkha’s argument on ‘conformation bias’, Smitha argued the conformation bias exists mostly in journalists and they vouch for stories according to their bias.