Media has degraded, the " Fourth Estate" is becoming the real estate. Says P.Sainath .

                Post-Independence, the media in India has gradually transferred to a vehicle of profit and a revenue-seeking stream with no value from a vehicle of popular aspirations once, Magsaysay award winner and journalist P Sainath has said.

            The idea that the dominant media is the watchdog of democracy is now  become a  false concept, he said, adding that private treaty was the new norm of the media.

             Speaking at a media seminar on ‘People’s right to criticise the media’, organised by the T K Ramakrishnan Cultural Centre kochi , Kerala on Saturday  27.03.2010, Sainath said Press Commissions had observed that the linkage of media with the multi-nationals had been a major threat. “There was a demand in Parliament to delink media from big business,” he said.

             Sainath said that ‘private treaty,’ a deal between a media organisation and a private corporate where the media house agrees to project the interests of the corporate in the form of journalism for a fixed value of shares from the latter, had been a growing trend in Mumbai and New Delhi.

          “The private treaty not only promotes the interests of the corporates but also gives them immunity from investigative journalism and from being exposed. The media has become a revenue seeking stream with no value,” he said.
Sainath said the media monopoly had become an arm of other vested interests.

          “The Fourth Estate is becoming the real estate. There’s very less difference between the two,” he said.   Exposing the vested interests within the media, Sainath said though two lakh farmers committed suicide during the period 1997- 2008, there had been no major news articles or discussions in major newspapers or TV channels regarding the issue.

           Sainath added that the monopoly in media should be fought.

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