[icernet] Media and lure of the lucre

[Arul Selvan]

  Considering its growing importance to public life, the media 
definitely needs to be brought under greater scrutiny and has to be more 
accountable to its consumers. The marketing section alone was not to 
blame for palming off trivia and promotional material ("plugs" in 
journalistic parlance) as news. Most readers (and that includes the 
cream of society such as industrialists, bureaucrats and professionals) 
have no clue of the peculiar nature of newspaper economics. Many don't 
believe that circulation income is a mere fraction of a newspaper's 
revenues. The gap has to be filled by income from advertising. Only 
after covering all costs does the question of profit arise.The line 
between readability and liveliness on one side and trivialisation on the 
other is rather thin. But all those with a stake in the continued 
blossoming of the Indian media must be conscious of the difficulties of 
treading it.

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