The Hindu : Karnataka / Hubli News : Media asked to introspect on its failures

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Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Hubli

Media asked to introspect on its failures

By Our Special Correspondent

HUBLI, JUNE 5. Venkat Narayan, Editor of Kannada Prabha, has asked the media to introspect on their failure to assess the mood of the voters in the recent elections in the State.

Presiding over a symposium on the "Role of media in election surveys" organised by the alumni association of the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism of Karnatak University and the Karnataka Media Academy here on Saturday, Mr. Narayan said the media should have gone to the grassroots level to gauge the mood of the people.

He said journalists on the election beat should have been able to find out what the voter felt about the candidates and the political parties.

He was sad that the while the journalists of yesteryear had perfected this art, the present crop was not able to do it.

The younger generation of journalists was not studious. While journalism in the earlier days was a mission, it had become a "job" for the present generation, he said.

Gudihalli Nagaraj, president of the Karnataka Union of Working Journalists, said professionalism was lacking in the approach of journalists towards election surveys.

Why should journalists try to impose their views on the readers, instead of giving them facts and enabling them to form their own opinion, he asked. A.K. Singh, Registrar of the university who inaugurated the 20th annual meeting of the alumni association, said journalists had an onerous responsibility since people believed that what appeared in a newspaper was true.

This confidence should not be belied.

Balasubramanya, Head of the department, spoke.

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Media asked to introspect on its failures