COMBATING PREJUDICE IN JOURNALISM

Media was once looked upon as a boon that enlightened people and made them aware of what is going around in the world. The Indian media has to follow the principles laid down in the Constitution of India. There are essentially three pillars of democracy that are the legislature, executive and judiciary and now the media has become the fourth pillar of democracy. It highlights the social, legal, economic and cultural problems of the society.
But it is painful that allegedly the tenets of good journalism are losing their meaning and relevance in today’s fast-mutating world. While a large section of the Indian media today is widely criticised for being in favour or partial towards the incumbent government, news and reportage seem to be having a bias, either for or against the government, thereby losing their credibility and integrity.
The greatest challenge of a journalist is to adhere to the basic tenets of the Journalism including the principles of truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability, as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public. True journalism is what matters most. A journalist should research events from all aspects without prejudice or heeding the bias of a single side. He or she doesn’t allow emotions to play a pivotal role. No matter how guilty a person seems, a journalist should still listen to them and give their statements in the news article as well. Instead of writing what first comes into mind, a journalist should try to look at events from a different perspective and write after confirming all of the facts. Otherwise, the chance for false or inadequate reporting is quite high.
Fairness is never guaranteed, but the journalists need to avoid blatant bias and beware of allowing people and groups with an axe to grind to get away with unfair discrimination and stick to balanced reporting. The journalism needs to be held accountable for how it portrays different groups in society, especially those who are vulnerable to discrimination.
A section of media has been resorting to biased reporting and on occasions even disseminating false information which suits to their personal interests which may be with or without considerations, for which such media persons have been reprimanded directly or indirectly by the Courts of Law.
A conception is brewing up that Media has now transformed itself into a Janta Adalats or ‘public court’ and started intervening in the proceedings of the court. The vital gap between the convict and accused is completely overlooked by the media by keeping at stake the cardinal principles of ‘presumption of innocence until proven guilty’ and ‘guilt beyond reasonable doubt’. Now what is being observed is a separate investigation done by the media itself which is called a media trial. Along with investigation, it includes forming public opinion against the suspect or the accused even before the court takes cognizance of the case. As a result of this, the public is prejudiced due to which the accused that should have been assumed innocent is presumed to be a criminal abandoning all his rights and liberty unrepressed.
The excessive publicity of the accused or the suspect in the media before the trial in a court of law, either incriminates a fair trial or results in characterizing the accused or suspect as the one who has certainly committed the crime, this amounts to undue interference with the “administration of justice”, which calls for proceedings against media for contempt of court. The rules that have been designed to regulate the journalism and journalism conduct are unfortunately inadequate to prevent the encroachment upon civil rights.
To quote an incident of such nature, it shall be appropriate to mention the judgment of the Supreme Court of India, whereby a bench comprising of CJI refused to grant any relief in a special leave petition filed in the Supreme Court by a Kannada weekly owner & editor, who had been sentenced to one month jail and a monetary fine by a Karnataka Court for defamatory articles carried by him. The court, as reported, remarked that the language used in the publication was offensive and amounted to character assassination of a personand also the accused cannot get away by saying that the publication was made in good faith. Moreover, it was pointed out as a typical case of Yellow Journalism.
Similarly, in the case of Northeast Delhi Communal Riots in 2020, a section of media spread misinformation about the identity of the Delhi riots accused Shahrukh Pathan as one Anurag Mishra who had fired bullets at head constable Deepak Dahiya during the riots and later on another section of media published a white paper on him watering down his crime and making him appear like an innocent. These biased media persons resorted to spreading half-truths and full lies about the horrifying spate of violence that had engulfed the national capital.Later a Delhi court framed charges against that person along with 9 others, observing – ‘it is limpid that the object of the assembly was to create fear and panic in the minds of the people belonging to the Hindu community, threaten them to leave the country and to loot as well as burn their properties. This clearly established a typical case of biased journalism.
Moreover, there have been cases, where the Hon’ble Supreme Court has stated that the trial by electronic, Print and social media, or any other way of public agitation are the ways where they could be described as anti-thesis of the general rule of law leading to the miscarriage of justice. Thoughts provoked by media during sensationalizing the event can also bring deviations in the civil society and can cause a serious vicissitudes in the peaceful situation.
Therefore, after understanding the way how “media trial” has previously, also recently influenced the public opinion and affected the process of ‘fair trial” it can be concluded that the effect has been mostly detrimental, than useful or fruitful to the society at large. Similarly, there arises an utmost urgent need to regulate the conduct of media and consider what contempt of the court is during the media trial.
However, Simultaneously Media Trials are not always wrong on their part, as there have been situations when media trial helped the victims of crime to get access to fair justice and enhanced process of fair trial against accused who were more influential.