[Tintin]

This is from an article in the August 7 edition of 'Sportstar' where Geet Sethi, a former world amateur billiards champion, wrote about India's chances in the olympics. He goes on describe the role media plays in the other sports getting ignored in favour of cricket :

"I will digress just a bit but it is to make the point that the media can influence public perception and viewpoints. Noam Chomsky is a rare breed of political thinker, and he is one of the few American political analysts who are severe of American foreign policy. In his book 'Understanding power' he has observed how media brainwashes people to assume certain premises, which are sometimes complete lies. He refers to the American invasion of countries like Vietnam, Nicaragua amongst others and mentions that the phrase coined by the media to refer to these attacks on foreign countries is always 'containment'.

He says that ever since the US started the offensive against these hapless these third world countries, the media has always given the impression to the unsuspecting public in the US that these were defensive strikes done for containing certain countries. The public has never questioned this assumption despite the fact that the strikes on these countries were done with pre-meditated agression and always against those countries whose rules/governments failed to follow American policy and direction.

Much in the same way, I find that in India the public never questions what is being given to it by the media.

Chomsky says 'After all, what are the media ? Who are they ? Are they "us" ? Actually they are amongst the major corporations in the country; they are not "us". They are no more "us" than General motors are "us". The question is : are the media like a sample of public opinion ? Is it that the public has a certain set of beliefs and the media are just a sample of it ? If that were the case, the media would be very democratic in fact'

They do not consciously dissect and analyse nor do they have ideological beliefs in any conscious manner. Like a flock of sheep they take the path that the shepherd wants them to. And the shepherd is media. Why cannot the media romanticise the achievements of Dhanraj Pillay, Gagan Ajit Singh, Anju Bobby George, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Anjali Bhagwat and Viswanathan Anand, in the same manner in which they build brands out of our cricketers, whose only claim to fame is one world cup triumph in 1983? The answer is not straightforward and requires some soul searching not only in the media but also by the common man.

The common man in India just like the rest of the world has stopped thinking. The public wants the media to think for them, to influence their beliefs and help them to decide what is right, what is wrong; what is acceptable, what is not and what is entertainment. The youth today blindly believe what they hear or read in the media. Sometimes what is said by a newspaper, magazine or tv channel has more authenticity than what their teachers or parents may think or want them to think. Such is the power and such is the influence of the media today that a citizen's viewpoint on a particular viewpoint will be determined not by what he thinks is right or wrong but by the opinion expressed by the particular channel that he watches regularly or by the newspaper which he glances through while having the morning tea."