Media literate?
Posted by: BD on: November 21, 2005
- In: Dork Media
- Comment!
I think Times of India (TOI) epitomizes tolerance of Indians – the sane minded ones at least. It already has names like Slimes of India and Toilet Paper of India, for obvious reasons. I mean no offence to the publishing house, but their antics are sometimes beyond the limits of tolerance.
A recent article “Hacking take toll of IITians” talks about how increased nightly activities of hacking, gaming, blogging and chatting are taking a toll on healthy attendance of students in the lecture halls. A good topic in my opinion, as it tries to dig out reasons for falling academic standards of an elite institution. However, what I find ridiculous is how the journalist links this observation to a suicide incident in the campus. It doesn’t stop there – the name of the suicide victim is made public, along with an account of his academic performance. The boy is no longer alive to protest – what about his family? Doesn’t the journalist have a penny worth of sensibility to understand the emotional trauma the boy’s family would be going through?
Such irresponsible reporting is not the first: The DPS scandal coverage is probably the best showpiece of dork media in action. Even NDTV, which by and large happens to be most responsible of all, entered into the dork media bandwagon. Ritesh talks about some of his observations in this regard, in his post IIT and DPS:
My question is: when this guy got already arrested by the police and suspended by the IIT, then why did the media publish his name and whereabouts (even his address!) to further ruin his future? This is a normal Indian student for God’s sake, not a criminal!!! This is exactly how criminals are born ! By giving him punishment and also making sure he lives his life as hell for the rest of future! I think this was all due to pressure from the powerful families in delhi. Notice something here, none of us know the real name (forget about the address) of the guy and the girl involved in the incident. Why? Probably coz the guy’s family has a flourishing diamond business and girl’s dad was a senior army brigadier while the IIT student’s dad is a normal government employee.
These kinds of dorky reporting mostly go unnoticed. Although blogs provide a space to criticize and discuss such issues, they are still in the minority compared to the mainstream Indian population. Media literacy, therefore, needs to be introduced in our educational curriculum in a formal way. Fran Trampiets elucidates this fact:
Media literacy is really a necessity in today’s world. We live in such a media-saturated environment. We’re continually bombarded with messages from newspapers and magazines, movie and television screens, Internet Web sites, chat rooms and listservs. We have to know how to filter out what we don’t need or want and how to access and then interpret, analyze and evaluate what’s useful. Media literacy is about asking smart questions and making smart choices; it’s about using media selectively and reflectively.
Media literate people want to know the source of a message, its purpose and the source’s credibility and reliability. They can recognize bias, distortion, stereotyping and sensationalism. They try to get information from multiple sources and to consider any issue from multiple perspectives.
Media education develops critical thinking skills. It cuts across all areas of the curriculum and can be integrated into every subject area.
Source: CNN FYI
Literacy, after all, is not just about being able to write your name.
Update:
Ritesh and Varun have written insightful posts on the same incident. Ritesh tries to probe in to the sorry state of affairs that often leaves a student with no options. Varun, being from the same institute, gives an insider’s view on the whole matter.
22 Responses to "Media literate?"
There were protests regarding the dorky DPS scandal coverage. However, they were constrained to the blogosphere, and therefore away from the reach of mainstream Indian population.
I am yet to see a blog that has commented on the IITB suicide incident. It’s a recent article, may be it’ll take time.
BD, shaddap. :p
Interesting observation, and very relevant commentary. The bit about exposing/raking up an expired student’s academic record has no relevance (per se) to the news item and could have been ommited, but wasn’t.
Our media needs to get more responsible, and TOI does truly suck in this regard.
I agree with you regarding the DPS incident … but i will differ regarding the suicide case.
Providing the name does not matter to the person anymore, and i am pretty sure his family will not be in a condition to care about ToI articles at this point of time … but it does send a powerful message to the IIT student community … much stronger than something on the lines of “a student in a prestigious engineering institution in western india” could. When you identify yourself with someone … and maybe even know him … the message is more easily imbibed. It is required … all IITians these days are guilty of the same things as Nuke.
I agree with you, especially regarding the DPS incident. However, if the IIT suicide was due to inability to handle academic pressures because to the aforementioned nightly activities, then mentioning it was justified, and giving the name, I think is still acceptable. Academic performance would be necessary in order to show that that was the probable reason, if a suicide note explaining it was not left behind; I also agree with Ted on the shock factor with regard to current students.
@Aloka
Nevertheless it remains pure speculation on the part of ToI to attribute reasons behind the guy’s suicide. I’m not sure what gives the newspaper the right to do so. To drag private lives of individuals to public for increasing readership. Petty tactics, yellow journalism — whatever you might call it.
@Ted
The mention of IIT is not the issue. IIT after all is a public institution. What I tried to point out was the mention of the guy’s name. They could have given the same message without publishing the guy’s name.
@Ted
For example: Is it morally correct to mention the real name of an HIV+ person in a report to create awarness for AIDS?
[…] Reporting of a suicide at IIT-B lets BD examine the so-called literacy of the Indian media. […]
Hey BD and all you guys,
Newbie to the blogosphere here. One of my friend’s blog entry (both he and me are currently students at IITB) was directly lifted by the TOI paper without even informing him. Is that normally accepted standards in the blogosphere? Here’s the blog – http://vikashkablog.blogspot.com
And terrible incident indeed. We, who were around the guy who committed suicide, don’t have a clue that it was academics, coz he never gave a damn to acads. And yet, TOIlet have not only assumed that to be the cause, they’ve even gone ahead and published their own results into what’s ailing IIT on that basis.
There is indeed a problem here, but hardly how TOI makes it out to be
very true BD
read my blog…smthng there
suicide is still suicide. rather selfish of the kid, I wonder did he think of his parentsor family when he killed himself? surely he could’ve foreseen that the media would balst his name again. yeah the media is out of control, but who wastes their time reading the propaganda they spred anyway? even if the media published whatever, and it was true, who would know? furthermore who would care? words cannot kill. please for such a smart kid, he could’ve thought twice.
ToI’s coverage of the issue was a hundred times better than HT’s which questioned the attendance regulations – you should have read that masterpiece!
@K
Can you elaborate on that a bit?
The masterpiece directly implied that attendance norms were responsible for the suicide and that IIT was ‘wrong’ for setting up such strict norms. I’m sure there will be a link somewhere let me search for it.
An extremely well written piece. Powerful thoughts! In the age of too many channels and papers, MSM is trying to sensationalise every bit of news it can to boost readership/viewership. What is shocking is that they are also succeeding!
There is nothing reprehensible in publishing the name of the victim. It is in fact one of the basic tenets of journalism. Only when it is a rape victim or publishing the name can scar the reputation of the person involved is there a conflict. This is important because it serves to mollify those readers who actually have their friends or relatives in IITB. It would be an harrowing experience for such a person to be reading about a death in IITB without knowing the victims name, as he/she would be worried that it might be his relation. So there is no point in arguing that a name should not be published. It also helps to have a death on record somewhere for sociologists, researchers and academicians who might be researching the topic sometime in future.
As far as the second part is concerned regarding the speculation, that is completely unacceptable. The person provides his own opinion there. The journalist was clearly being lazy by not talking to people around and getting the complete story and to make up for that she filled the piece with his own biases and speculation on the topic.
“Most of us have computers and internet connectivity in our own rooms. Though everyone chats, blogs and downloads music, it’s an addiction for some,’’ said a female student, adding that while chatting took up most of the time in the girls hostel, for boys it was gaming, downloading music and hacking.
“After a day full of lectures and periodicals, I feel I can let loose at night,’’ said a mechanical engineering student and self-confessed “gaming junkie’’. “We have inter-hostel contests sometimes or it’s just with random people online. The more geeky guys here are into coding and hacking,’’ he added.
We should be worried about this sort of a thing. Why aren’t the student’s names quoted here? What they are saying isn’t going to damage them or cause them any harm. They aren’t talking against IIT. Yet, the journalist kept the sources unidentified. This is a technique many of them employ when they haven’t spoken to anyone but just manufacture quotes out of thin air and spin yarns to suit the narrative they want to take.
Readers should protest strongly about this. One of the things that lets ToI journalist get away with such stuff is nobody protests. Since it is untenable to expect people to stop buying ToI to teach them a lesson, the least readers can do is to send a mail to the editor. Imagine if all the people wrote a letter to the editor! That journalist would be severely repremanded. Editors are extremely sensitive about the letters they receive because it means that the writer was incensed enough to take his/her time to write a letter. So this time if you really want to make a difference write a letter to toieditorial@timesgroup.com This works as is evident from the Manjunathan issue. Indian Express put the news on the front page after all his class mates sent letters to the editors at Indian Express.
@Chetan
If you single out the issue of publishing the name and see it without the speculation aspect, then probably what you said is true. However it’s the speculation part that makes me sick. Publishing a name should make them even more responsible while reporting.
Incidentally, suicide cases are exploited to the fullest by both the national and vernacular media.
suicide is murder, you just kill yourself thats all. should we hide the names of murderers? besides if someone was selfish enough to kill themself do you think that he considered what the media would do before the incident? he didn’t care so why should we bother after?
now its a personal affair of his family. for the people that are ALIVE if the media is bugging them then get a restraining order and file a case against them for propaganda. DONE!
bigger problems in the world than that guy ho killed himself
guy is already dead, why are we too dwelling on it? the media didn’t kill him, nor did the school. the journalist sucked, and??? its up to whomever wants to bother reading about him or his family if the media wishes to publish, they will. as with everything else in life there are pros and cons to the media (probably more cons but at least sometimes they serve a purpose, think about it, what else would you all be arguing about now had that article not been published, and how else would the rest of you know about the school…blogging is a form of journalism FYI 
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1 | Comment on Media literate? by I Me My
November 21, 2005 at 11:08 pm
That is shocking! A blatant violation of a person’s basic rights; complete lack of discretion on part of the media!. Was the student community a silent spectator?