DEBATE OR DERAILMENT OF DEMOCRATIC DISCOURSE, A COARSE PERVERSION OF NATIONAL CULTURE ?

DEBATE OR DERAILMENT OF DEMOCRATIC DISCOURSE, A COARSE PERVERSION OF NATIONAL CULTURE ?

In a television discussion there ought to be equal representation of all parties to put across divergent views which is essential to the democratic discourse. The object ought to be to be privy to all perspectives on an issue so that viewers may arrive at an informed understanding from which they may draw their conclusions. Under no circumstances must there be a scripted agenda of a particular political party that is run from the platform provided by the television channel.

Journalism is impartial communication and not party propaganda. But over the last decade or so journalistic standards have plummeted to an abysmal low where foul-mouthed anchors rule the nocturnal roost and paid cohorts sing in coarse unison the anthem for the anchor. After all, their job needs security and promotion needs approval from party bosses to whose vanity they pander. This is a most unfortunate situation where the intellectual climate expected of a nocturnal prime time panel discussion (queerly called debate) gets reduced daily to marketplace mob mischief with the celebrated anchor leading the fray. If there is a pre-set agenda of political propaganda along a particular party line, then do not call it journalism which is a free and fair intellectual communicative exercise between the channel and the audience.

This being now the situation and power houses backing these channels with facility and finance while persecuting channels critical of them, the state of journalism, as I have said right at the beginning, has touched its nadir. And the best part of this rather nasty lowliness is that it invariably secures the approval of a vast number of educated people who are, by their assent to such filth, sending national culture to the gutters. It is against this precipitous decline that we, who pride ourselves in a semblance of good culture, ought to stand up and put up our cultured resistance by refusing to condone this garbage each night passing off as television prime time debate.

Written by Sugata Bose