ABSTRACT

Indian journalists face a crisis of deference to powerful societal influences. Today’s journalism is replete with clichés about caste, politics, religion, and region—the four major, powerful entities of Indian democracy that have drastically altered the mediascape. Together, the liberalization of the economy and manipulation of the society’s value system and mores by a ruling party, ruling family, or class have reworked professional conduct and ethics for journalists whose primary job now is to appease media owners and political entities. This shift transformed their role from fact-finding to playing identity politics with influential groups. Thus, journalists struggle to use a vocabulary that balances sensationalism, consumerism, and objectivity. This chapter examines changed working conditions in Telangana, the state with the highest penetration of print and electronic media, and theorizes that media plurality, an indicator of a strong democracy, does not automatically strengthen ethics or produce objective news.