NT BUZZ
Veteran journalist and president of the Editors Guild of India (EGI), Seema Mustafa speaking at the recent MOG Sundays Talk at the Museum of Goa, Pilerne stated that contemporary India experienced the ‘Golden Age of Journalism’ after the Emergency ended in the late 1970s.
The first woman president of EGI, Mustafa’s career in journalism spans over four decades, and she is renowned for her reportage out of conflict zones like Beirut, and also for working with leading Indian publications like The Indian Express and The Telegraph. She also served as national affairs editor at News X.
Delivering a talk on the topic, ‘Seema Mustafa on Media and Democracy’, she stated that during this particular period, journalists were highly aware of their rights and there was a sense of unity among them, with the freedom of the press fiercely guarded.
Taking the audiences into the intersection of media and democracy in a rapidly changing world, Mustafa said that there was a new drive and momentum to write during the period, when journalists were reporting from the villages and districts, and reporting on the plights of the marginalised communities.
“Investigative journalism was being conducted in full swing; this era of journalism highlighting why we, the journalists took up the profession in the first place,” stated Mustafa, while highlighting the link between media and democracy.
“What eventually followed India’s journalistic zenith was the gradual but consistent erosion of democratic values, which consequently led to the erosion of the fourth pillar of democracy – the media,” she noted.
Mustafa also spoke about the simultaneous erosion of democratic values and the media with the introduction of the television rating point (TRP) system to gauge their popularity. “In the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the widespread introduction of television in people’s homes, the focus was on television rating points (TRP) and creating stars in the media, and the focus shifted away from reporting from the poor and those in the rural areas, which became another form of censorship that continues even today,” she said.
She added that there is still hope for real journalism to flourish, citing alternative modes of publication like digital platforms as
spaces for stories to be shared without hardcore censorship.
