"....journalism may be the greatest plague we face today- as the world becomes more and more complicated and our minds are trained for more and more simplification". (Fooled by Randomness, 2004)
P. Devarajan
“Journalists will have to face up to a bruising fact: The poor are not their concern any more. Reporting the rich and their ways matters. The public does not believe them any more. They do not take them seriously.”
David Foster Wallace
"TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests."
Vinod Mehta
"Since most of the media is run by brand managers, and since nearly all restaurants (excluding dhabas) are potential advertisers, it is considered prudent not to annoy them."
Asian Age on November 17 2007 reported:
" Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Friday said he found it difficult to distinguish between "page one of many newspapers and the famous page three" which, at times, was only a reference page for all the numerous pages in the day’s newspaper.
Speaking on "Media as People’s Voice — Pre and Post-Independence" at the national press day celebrations organised by the Press Council of India, Mr Chatterjee said the basic feature of post-Independence media is the change in the nature of ownership.
"Owning a channel or a newspaper is now seen as a profit-making venture, as indeed it is in all countries where advertising sustains the profitability of a channel or paper," he said.
Commenting on the change in priorities of the media, the Lok Sabha Speaker said:
"We have the spectacle of newspapers and new channels spending considerable space and their time either telling us about the latest developments in the social lives of those who are in the entertainment industry or some favourite sportspersons or giving unsolicited astrological advice or covering extramarital affairs of even ordinary people sometimes and bizarre stories from remote corners, like snake gods drinking milk in a particular home."
Note- Following picture was drawn pre-independence of India and published post-independence.
Artist: Barney Tobey The New Yorker 16 August 1947