The media in Manipur today is in a pitiable state. On the one hand there it constantly faces the danger of rubbing the establishment the wrong way and forsake their registration with the Registrar of Newspapers in India, RNI, for publishing underground propaganda literature without vetting them adequately. On the other hand, press establishments are also routinely under threats of being abruptly closed down, and pressmen of losing life and limbs, from various underground organisations who would have every single statement they make appear prominently in print, or broadcasted. Since life and limbs are dearer to most if not all than jobs or businesses, it is anybody`™s guess what the outcomes have been. The state media is once again under such a cloud, and those who have visited media offices or the residences of editors in the last two days will have seen the police cover given them currently. This is truly unfortunate. Making matters worse, mutually hostile splinters of underground organisations have been banning each other and the literature their rivals churn out, making it all the more difficult for the media.
But the issue does not end here. For the media losing its independence is also about losing its credibility, and this is exactly what has happened to a very great extent already. People have begun taking reportage of conflict from Manipur with a pinch of salt. Some dismiss them altogether. In the same vein, anything extra critical of the establishment that the media writes has also come to be seen as prompted, and not an independent assessment or judgment meriting serious attention. Many of us in the profession had once argued that although the media is a business, it is a different kind of business, for apart from being a business enterprise that must make profit, a media organisation also is an independent voice and conscience keeper of the society. Today, the media is coming to be by and large no different from any other businesses. Hence only those with an eye to business have remain as keen to carry on but those who were attracted to it by the promise of mission, are on an incremental basis, deflated spiritually. Being told what to do or what not to do must come across as humiliating for everybody, but for the media, for whom this freedom is virtual oxygen, developments in the past few decades have been nothing less than suffocating.
The media`™s cup of woe is deeper still. In small markets such as Manipur, the profession remains poorly paid. The fact that what media professional earn here is the standard that most in the nascent private sector job market earn can be no consolation or justification. It is unfortunate no media organisation has been able to implement any of the wageboard recommendations for journalists so far. In fact in the entire Northeast, only Assam Tribune has been religiously keeping by wageboard standards. In the case of most, this is because they were genuinely not in a position to afford the extra financial burden, their returns from the weak market being limited. But this notwithstanding, it is now time for something to be done to raise journalists`™ wage standard. The latest in this regard is the Mazithiya wageboard recommendations, which would require journalists and non-journalist employees of bottom rung media businesses to be paid a minimum of about Rs. 17,000 per month. This would again be out of range of most, if not all, media houses in the state, and the only way this can be accomplished is if their advertisement revenue increases in the same proportion the raise is sought. This should not be impossible if the government saw its own, and the state`™s interests, in making this happen. After all, it would be generating respectable jobs for much cheaper than if it were to absorb an equal number of professionals under its own direct umbrage. The proposed Rs. 17,000 per month is only a fraction of what government employees who handle similar responsibilities earn. It could for instance substantially increase the volume and tariff of the advertisements it releases to the media, and then enforce a wage standard. This will not amount to doles either for the government will also be earning its own dividends from imaginative advertisements it releases.
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam