The #MeToo movement, a global campaign against sexual harassment, is in full swing across the country. The movement picked up in India after Tanushree Dutta spoke about harassment she faced by Nana Patekar. Then it instantly spread to all fields as women from various fields started opening up on the bitter experiences they faced.
Media is no exception, but couple of questions regarding regional media and current generation:
Not only from film industry but complaints poured in from across the industries like TV, Sports, Media. Veteran journalists like M J Akbar, now the Minister in the Central government, has been accused of sexual harassment by several female colleagues. K R Sreenivas, the resident editor of Times of India, faced similar allegations. Multiple women had accused him of sending lewd messages and touching them inappropriately. He resigned to job finally. These are just a couple of incidents that came out. But here are couple of questions –
Current generation: All these incidents that came out – Akbar or KR Sreenivas – they all happened several years back. Does this mean, current generation of journalists didn’t face any such harassment? Or are they still not opening up?
Regional media: Moreover, all the incidents revealed are from the employees of national media. So should we assume the women working in regional media are very much safer and no single incident happened in regional media? Or are they also still not opening up?
Telugu media plays stunningly passive role in this issue:
We are not saying Telugu media is keeping mum on this issue. It is actually reporting “Me too” incidents on film celebrities as well as on media personalities. Of course it is not giving same screen space for incidents related to media people but that is understandable as news on film people get more attention from people. However, the main question is why our media is confining to passive role of just “reporting” the news instead of taking an active role.
Let’s see what it will be like – taking up active role
There was some Jabardast skit in which a dialogue written for generating comedy offended a section of people. Some leading Telugu channel didn’t stop after just reporting the news. It conducted debates over weekend that lasted for around 6 hours. When critic Kathi Mahesh and fans of Pawan Kalyan had some verbal exchanges on social media platforms, the same channels dedicated several hours for several days to debate on the issue ‘deeply’. On some other occasions they took calls from public in live. On some other silly issues they conducted so-called sting operations and aired those ‘secret’ visuals. These are all examples of media taking up “active” role in some issues.
Why Telugu media not taking up active role now?
Recently a lady journalist made allegations on husband of a popular Telugu singer. (https://www.telugu360.com/metoo-woman-journalist-speaks-out-on-harassment-by-a-tollywood-actor/). However, this incident did not get attention of our media. In other incident, another lady reporter made shocking allegations on a big actor that he insisted the journalist to meet in person privately for the interview. For our media, probably this is also not an important news. The media houses that allot hours of debates on silly issues like wife and husband internal problems, didn’t care to take up these kind of issues.
What is our media afraid of?
Does our media lack courage to expose such issues? Or are they intentionally underplaying such incidents. People think, probably below are the reasons for why media not taking up active role in this issues –
Maybe, they don’t want to mess up with Tollywood biggies. Because, once triggered, this movement can go out of hands of those media houses and several bitter facts may come out. Instead media wants to confine their attack on small time actors or Jabardasth actors.
Second, and most important, media may not want to dig and expose the ugly face of their own people. If they start bringing out the stories of “Me Too” in regional media and of current generation, each media house may target the incidents happening in other media house and finally all of them will be shamed When Telugu media was encouraging Sri Reddy, actress Hema questioned Telugu media whether they can say, there is no casting couch in TV and media industry. No media house or no news channel dated to respond.
Overall:
Telugu media is gradually losing respect among Telugu people. Earlier, when Godavari tragedy commission, in its OFFICIAL report, blamed media for the death of 29 people during Pushkaras, no media channel dared to give a story saying it is not their fault. (https://www.telugu360.com/te/godavari-tragedy-commission-blames-media/). Now when “Me too” happening across the industries, no media house daring to cleanse its own industry by exposing predators in their industry. When some reporters, belonging to the same media industry, reported the harassments they faced from biggies of film industry, these media houses keeping mum. Seems our Telugu media is happy with telecasting programs for several days on a snake being worshipped by people, programs on lambasting small time artistes for the silly reasons, and programs on soul of a murdered person talking to his wife.
Hope someday, Telugu media starts playing “active role” on the real issues!!!
-ZURAN (@CriticZuran)
