Having watched on NDTV 24X7 on Tuesday Ms Barkha Dutt's defence on Radia tapes before the four editors, I believe Ms Dutt showed herself to be a very dishonest person who refused to admit that it's absolutely impossible for a very prominent member of the media, whose corruption as an institution has arguably touched the rock bottom, not to have been in a free fall of ethical decline, which she has been in.

Ms Dutt looked desperate in trying to salvage a personal reputation that has absolutely no meaning at a time when the media as an institution has lost all credibility in the eyes of the majority of common citizens. Today, not even a fool believes that the media organizations, including NDTV, has any connection with the common citizens or their concerns or democratic rights; everyone knows that the media organisations of our times are not just owned and controlled by the wealthy and powerful but are used only to serve their interests.

Ms Dutt needs to look at her own privileges, financial rewards, etc. to get a sense of how remote she has grown from the citizens whose interests the Media should primarily be serving and how cosy she has grown with people whose interests she and her organization have been willy nilly serving. She has become just a pawn in the bigger game of power -- in fact, she might have been a more useful pawn to the powers that be than other journalists because of her supposed excellence. (This supposed excellence and relatively higher credibility, it seems, command a premium in the market!!)

Today, the Media and its role in the balance of power in India fits beautifully the 'propaganda model' proposed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in 'Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media'. Maybe Ms Barkha should take a sabbatical from her head-spinning NDTV job and read this book, among others, apart from travelling through India, particularly the semi-urban and rural parts, to get a sense of what ordinary people today think of the media as an institution, NDTV, and herself.

Ms Dutt's discussion with the editors revealved clearly that for her it has been absolutely normal and routine to be talking to a PR person who worked for two of the most powerful corporate houses and was seeking to influence public policy by trying to influence political appointments. The discussion also revealed that she was actually a willing actor in this game of influencing even though she refused to admit that.

Ms Dutt contended that she did not pass any information as is made out on the basis of her conversation with Nira Radia, but one does not have to pass on a piece of information to become a pawn. She has been a pawn all along because she failed to realise that she and her organization had not only been smiling at -- but also lending themselves as a convenient conduit in -- a network of illegal and undemocratic influence peddling by powerful people, when they should have been blowing a whistle at such goings-on.

(Ms Dutt perhaps congratulated yourself on playing day in, day out the role of a kind of privileged insider while believing that the common people out there only deserve some crumbs of information that she the great journalist of modern India will deem fit to be thrown at them.)

She failed to realise that if this is how India is run and public policy is formulated, then the poor and the weak, who make up the majority of the citizens of this country, have no chance of realising their rights.

She failed to realise that the Media owes its existence to democracy whose very rationale is to treat all people equally and give them a say in formulating public policy.

She failed to realise that she and her organization were willy nilly becoming responsible for making a terribly unequal India more unequal.

She failed to realise that all journalists ultimately owe their job and privileges to the common citizens in whose names our very imperfect democracy and the institution of media are run, not the wealthy and powerful, and that she was accountable to the common people.

She failed miserably.