‘Media failed to discharge duties as Fourth Estate’

Journalists should offer what nation has to know and not wants to know, Logical Indian Managing Editor Swetha Kothari said.

She was speaking after inaugurating ‘Article 19’, the annual fest of Manipal Institute of Communication, on the college premises.

Swetha rued that the mainstream media had failed to discharge the duties as the fourth estate of the
country.

She rued that the newsrooms had turned into battlefield in the aftermath of Pulwama attack, instead of questioning the credibility of security intelligence and its failure. A job of a journalist should be to question the failures of the government.

Condemning the CAA and NRC, Swetha said that nobody had a right to undermine the Constitutional values and the Preamble. Nobody has a right to decide the citizenship based on the religion.

‘’We have failed our own people. The narrative ‘anti-national’ had become prominent,’’ she declared while referring to the abrogation of Article 370 and internet shutdown in Kashmir.

She alleged that sedition law had been misused and it was an attempt to put a blanket on a person, who is raising his voice against the government.

Swetha said digital media had a wide scope, waiting to be explored by budding professionals of tomorrow. But there is a need of an independent agency to guarantee the efficiency and credibility of news, she said.

She regretted that media had not woken up to the horror and catastrophes of climate
crisis.