If there's one thing that this election has proven beyond doubt, it is that the mass media has no idea what it is talking about. Its polls are useless, its exit polls worthless, and it is more in touch with Salman Khan's gym regime than the opinion of the masses.
It all started with an election coverage where media only grudgingly conceded that they didn't know who would win [picked up by international media for what it was worth]. But that didn't stop media from cocksurely proclaiming that the winner would be: No One. They handed around a hung parliament as a foregone conclusion. And let loose conjectures about ministerial, even prime-ministerial, berths for Mayawati, Modi, Laloo and various combinations thereof.
Finally came the the exit polls which, doctored as they must have been, mirrored what MSM expected things to be - a close tie with no clear majority.
Ha!
Most of us are pleased with the surprise outcome - finally less bickering before actions. And the sensex is rising all the way to the banks. So we can probably grin at the fiasco.
But it isn't funny. Because it is tragic - the gross inaccuracy is a symptom that a leg of democracy, the fourth estate as it is called, is suffering from blindness to reality in our nation. The same blindness that has led it to ignore rural poverty, farmer suicides, caste-based discrimination and various other ills suffered by the masses in the past.
And it is not a new blindness. It was there when Chandrababu Naidu was thrown out of Andhra Pradhesh decisively and without inkling; and Shiela Dikshit remained enthroned much to everyone's surprise (and BJP's chagrin).
Now at least, media ought to wake up and wonder where they've gone so wrong; why they're so out of sync; and can they seriously pass themselves off as accurate bellweathers?
But no, no one in the media has apologised, or even wondered how come they were so wrong. The worst part is that they are blind to their blindness.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
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