Experimenting with new words with the help of a thesaurus was a fad in school days. Over the years it only became a habit as a journalist. Until one day in recent past when I looked up my thesaurus for synonyms for media. The thesaurus looked sadly vulnerable. It did not list the word Radia.

Perhaps I looked up an old Collins thesaurus gifted to me by my parents as a kid. But then has media undergone a sea change it needs to be re-defined. Of all the words should it at all be identified with a word that has come to denote corruption, lobbyism and power play. Is media not supposed to play the role of a watchdog any longer? Is media no longer supposed to care and stand up for those who have no one to speak for them? Has media now prostrated before those who wield political and corporate power and wallow in giga billion dollar slush? Is its professed commitment to humanity and justice mere slogans to cover-up its shenanigans?

These days I log in to Facebook with trepidation. The debate around media is rampant. A stock pun on Facebook is aimed at journalists: Media or Radia. This is perhaps the smallest question ever framed and asked in Indian English. Worth whatever salt, but loaded with dubious meaning. This two-worded banter on social networking sites has become the most sought after greeting this winter, unlike those two words our ears are attuned to hearing during this time of the year, albeit with a vastly different intent and import: Merry Christmas.

In the role of a journalist Mohandas K Gandhi always felt and believed journalism is ‘soul communication.’ That was circa 1930. Cut to 2010. The 2G scam concern a whopping lakh and a half crore worth of public money. That a minister turned the ministry upside down, played havoc with rules and ethics, virtually ran a fiefdom from Sanchar Bhawan ( the telecom ministry headquarter in New Delhi ) speaks volumes of the kind of a responsive and an accountable government headed by Congress party’s most able man for the job of prime minister, Manmohan Singh. The 2G scam is now in the realm of not how it was conceived and executed but how a government sat blindfolded, its ears stuffed with cotton, for over a year and a half. So when the matter came before the supreme court the judges couldn’t help expressing surprise the minister still continued in office.

A Raja may have been forced to quit his post now. But the damage has been done already. As the episode climaxed more skeletons tumbled out. The nation got to know how different forces were at play and brought to bear pressure and weight upon the levers of power to get ‘their’ man into the saddle of a particular ministry. Members of the fourth estate, both from print and electronic media, were used as effective conduits, a job they did with gusto and aplomb throwing the entire media ethics into the Yamuna, some of whom valiantly defended themselves after the tell-all tape revelations, during the hectic corporate lobbying for allocation of ministries when United Progressive Alliance came to power the second time in May 2009.

The disappointing trend is a big pointer to the morass that has set in the media more so with those claiming to be national media. The little unease with which a certain section of the media has allowed itself to be pulled in by corporate and political magnet leaves little to doubt its soulful communication with readers/viewers.

In their noble world, corruption and perversity has not only become a way of life but these are now glorified as the new deities of success. A hotshot journalist-owner once defended agenda dished out on his news channel thus: don’t blame us. It’s the public which has become voyeuristic. What he meant was this: I shall never stray from the path of peddling perversity if that grabs eyeballs.
The term eyeball, here, is a cute euphemism for ‘moolah’ his brand managers will rake in through corporate advertisements and sponsored shows. Advertisements come in only if you can promise market players of an assured reach.

And with this comes in the relevance of TRPs. ( Television Rating Points ) And yet contrary to common perception the TRP is determined not in the domain of viewers but in the conference room assigned for editorial meetings where ‘marketing guys’ are taken in the loop for better ‘synergy’ to chalk out the channel’s editorial agenda.

This is the place where each potential, but uncomfortable for some, story idea is dismissed for want of space or its relative insignificance amidst the choice of stories or dumped simply for its past track record ( read TRP ). Similarly, a story with a potential for sleaze, entertainment, sex and crime is propped, marketed and flagged as the new benchmark of journalism in a nation waiting to leapfrog into stardom of ‘superpower’ stamped and certified by the United States of America.

Therefore every news item carries a certain price tag. And only the chair along with the marketing head has the uncanny knack to read the fine line. This is a price which can be measured in cash, no doubt, but it comes wrapped in more upmarket frills and mostly through the back door in the guise of a piece of land, an apartment in an upmarket suburb, stocks and shares, licences for mining, rewards and awards, Padmas and a Rajya Sabha seat to name two of those, and many more innovative rewards, of which we shall only know once more such audio tapes of tapped telephonic conversations are allowed to be leaked by government agencies and vested interests in public domain.

This tough breed of market- driven journalists are also in the forefront of defending corporate lobbyist Nira Radia’s litter of lapdog journalists whom she strung along so ingenuously. Gandhi’s soul communication comes full circle with Radia’s ‘mole communication.’

The anxiety among a section of the fourth estate is raring to burst at the seams. If in a family or ‘kutumb’ only the elders are allowed to grow and prosper and others neglected it shall only cause heartburns. Implicit in Radia’s mole communication is an aching demand by a section of journalists to be fed good and proper, to be allowed to breathe in air laden with pollen grains of corruption, just like their brethrens in at least two other institutions called upon by the Indian Constitution makers to strengthen democracy.

So be it. Only that it should come with a rider. As with those who sit in legislature, bureaucracy or the judiciary, the Right to Information Act should be tweaked to rope in journalists too in its ambit. All senior ranking journalists along with their spouses should be made to declare their movable and immovable assets, including stockholdings. Our readersviewers ought to know our true worth. We owe it to them, isn’t it?

As for the thesaurus, lying on my table as I write this, it looked beseechingly at me not to add the word Radia in the list of synonyms for media. I turned my gaze away like a husband who suffers this momentary twinge of guilt having cheated on his wife.