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News as compromise: the Indian news media and the evolving trend of paid news

Faculty Advisor

Date

2014

Keywords

news media, India, ethics

Abstract (summary)

India’s media market has emerged in recent years as one of the most competitive and profitable in the world global scenario. However despite the nation’s status as the world’s largest democracy, India’s news media have been criticized for their emphasis on entertainment values at the expense of critical, pro-social, and investigative forms of journalism. A related development has been the increasing influence of political parties in the news content development, a practice which is named ‘paid news’, an Indian version of ‘manufacturing of consent’. This controversy came to the fore during the (April-May, 2009) Indian parliamentary elections when numerous overtly favorable articles and news reports emerged in the Indian media that contained no disclosure of the monetary transactions that facilitated their publication/broadcast. This development poses serious threats to the continued advancement of a vibrant Indian mediated public sphere, and instead represents a deliberate attempt to manufacture popular consensus. This article details these unethical news practices in Indian news media and argues that this form of contemporary Indian journalism is a violation of the core values of the profession and their relation to the democratic process. This research paper is a qualitative work relying mainly on textual and content analysis, which include analysis of interviews, newspaper articles and paid news contents.

Publication Information

Raj, Sony Jalarajan, Rohini Sreekumar, and Nithin Kalorth. "News as Compromise: The Indian News Media and the Evolving Trend of Paid News." International Research Journal of Humanities, 2.8 (2014): 41-49. Web. 20 May 2016.

DOI

Notes

Item Type

Article

Language

English

Rights

Attribution (CC BY)