Media could act as countervailing power in democracy: Aveek

China's iconic leader Mao Zedong's famous quote of "let a hundred flowers bloom" could also be applied to the media in a democracy where it could act as a countervailing power, Vice Chairman and Editor Emeritus of the ABP Group Aveek Sarkar said today.
"Nobody explained about fake news better than former Chairman Mao Zedong of China, who said 'let a hundred flowers bloom'. The idea of media in a democracy is that hundred ideas bloom," Sarkar said speaking at the BRICS Media Forum being hosted by China's state-run Xinhua news agency.
About fake news, he said, "It is possible to make a professional mistake but fake news is something somebody consciously does for ulterior purposes."

"What does Mao's message mean. In India, as elsewhere, the media belongs to the civil society. By civil society we mean something which has nothing to do with the government," said Sarkar, who is also the Director of PTI.
"It is not news which is omnipotent. It is the state which is omnipotent. The media in a society like India is a counterfoil to the state. As the state becomes more powerful and assumes more and more authority, the media is the countervailing power and the judiciary is another countervailing power.
"These are the countervailing powers to the society. So each institution assumes power to countervail each other," he said.

"When one wing gets stronger, the other wing also gets stronger. When we speak about cooperation, we have a problem," Sarkar said.

He also said that the problem of providing a counterbalance to international media is difficult because people trust New York Times (NYT) more.
People trust an NYT report rather than a report in the Indian media, Sarkar said.
"I am sure this is true for everybody else. NYT has earned the reputation by trying to wield countervailing power," he said.
Today it is the effective voice against Donald Trump. NYT also was effective in opposing the America's involvement in the Vietnam war. So, it positioned itself away from the state and positioned itself as a correction to the state, Sarkar said.

This being the case, while media is state-owned in some countries and part of the civil society in countries like India, "there could be a theoretical difference in cost purpose at least the way we look at things, he said.
Editor of The Hindu Mukund Padmanabhan, who took part in the BRICS Media Forum, highlighted the theme of a BRICS-driven alternative media, saying that the international system which is undergoing a profound transformation, presented BRICS countries a serious opportunity for making a contribution to writing the rules for a more representative and a more inclusive global order.
He said the BRICS media should evolve a new revenue model in tune with the explosion of the digital media without compromising the basic values of quality journalism.

Media has a "duty and social responsibility" to ensure that "traditional values such as accuracy, fairness, truth, are not forsaken in the interests of speed, sensationalism, and more eyeballs", he said.
BRICS media must innovate, across multimedia platforms, in order "to remain unique and relevant so that people are willing to pay for what is produced rather than let some platform such as Google, Facebook or Twitter exploit its commercial value", Padmanabhan said.
"The BRICS, and the emerging economies could well be at the forefront of a new wave of industrialisation driven by the concept of sustainable globalisation, which is being currently abandoned by many, especially in the West," he said.

Despite diversity, the media in BRICS countries can cooperate, specially the media of India and China. There is information and perception deficit between the two countries, Padmanabhan said.
Media in the two countries has a role to promote people to people understanding by dramatically increasing the flow of news and information between the two countries from non- western media sources, he said.
Mahesh Daga, Director and CEO of news agency IANS, said despite the massive size of the media in India and China, there is a need for more correspondents in both the countries.
Leading writers of both the countries need to be invited to write for each other's media organisations for people to have a balanced and authentic news compatible with mutual sensibilities, he said.