Godi Media - Lapdog journalism: was Indian TV media ever free?

1/ In 80s, national news channel was under govt.

It was showing peaceful last rites of Indira Gandhi and totally blacked out violent riots happening just a few kilometres away.

2/ towards late 80s, it was called Rajeev Darshan.

Key accused of 80s riots was made I&B minister.

Govt tried to woo hindu voters through ramayan and Muslim voters through turning shah bano decision.

TV media did not question it at all.

3/ In 90s, those who were govt employees in doordarshan, some of them became part of private journalism.

Imagine any prominent name in journalism and you will find how they cozied up to the govt.

They were govt's mouthpieces.

4/ In 2000s, when scams were broken by print media, TV channels refused to run them for many days.

They were also gifted aptly by the govt.

Just check how many "journalists" got Padma awards during this time.

They were all establishment's mouthpieces!

5/ Towards the end of 2000s, when UPA 2 scams started breaking, veteran political "journalists" were busy in running food shows!

6/ It was 2010-11, when people realised that UPA may not come back.

Movements like IAC started making its place and winds started changing.

Post 2014, all the earlier mouthpieces lost jobs and they new ones were installed.

7/ Now the old ones, who are still trained to defend their masters, call out the new mouthpieces.

Audience, who has not tracked this media history, thinks everything was hunky-dory 6 years back!

They don't realise that we always had "Godi Media", they were just less noisy!