Between the day when Anna’s fast propelled the Jan Lokpal Bill movement into national center of attention and today, we the people have had very fruitful discussions on a variety of subjects and have collectively vented our pent-up anger against the system and the political class as a whole, but I am personally disappointed because I think the atleast the media should have given us some in-depth analysis of the Proposed Jan Lokpal Bill vs the Govt. proposed Lokpal Bill alongwith the story of our anger and the minute by minute coverage of our movement. No doubt the majority of the TV & Print media is with the movement but I still feel there has been a serious deficit of intellectual study of the actual subject matter of the movement, i.e., Jan Lokpal Bill vs Govt. proposed Lokpal Bill.
The media just jumped from one spectacular event to another, from one controversial statement to another, from one sensation to the next and never did independently analyze both the draft bills on merit. I feel it was the duty of the media to bring to us, the public, a fair and impartial analysis of the Proposed Bills on merit alone, which it has failed to do so far.
After the Govt. agreed to Ann’s demands and issued official notification of the formation of the joint committee, it was the moral duty of the media to take us to the next level, i.e., the analysis of the Draft Bill. Instead what we got from the media was short bursts of breaking news in-between advertisements and Panel discussions where no one had enough time to say anything conclusive.
I myself, like most people would not be inclined to actually sit down and read and interpret the Bills all by myself, unless I open the morning paper and there I find a neat and independent report of the merits and demerits of the Bills followed by expert comments from independent Jurists. In fact I don’t remember a single minute of cool headed meaningful discussion on the crux of the matter in a calm atmosphere in any TV channels…or maybe I have been watching the wrong channels.
For once, I hope our media sets aside some quite time to move away from mindless pursuit of adrenalin inducement and have a calm discussion on the provisions of the Bill.