World is waiting for a digital voice from India

Chennai:

India has the highest number of English speaking population as well as huge technical skills but it lacks a global news network to lend its voice to the world, according to an expert.

Delivering the Lawrence Dana Pinkham Memorial lecture on ‘India’s ‘Bully Pulpit’: Media in a time of digital revolution’, Robin Jeffrey, visiting research professor, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, said that world is ready and ripe for an Indian media presence.

But where is the Indian entry?, he said. Britain, United States, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, Germany as well as Arab world and China have global news organisations.

India has unrivalled international connections throughout the world. It has more English speakers than England itself besides vast film industry and a leading place in information technology. “But India’s media presence is tiny. The world is waiting for a digital voice from India --- a BBC, a New York Times or even a Chinese Central Television. A voice with global interests, global sources yet an Indian point of view,” said Jeffrey.

 Stating that the world is living in an explosive media revolution today than in the period of Theodore Roosevelt, he said the revolution throws up possibilities even more spectacular and positively disruptive than elsewhere in the world.

He said the digital revolution is posing a threat to journalism as anyone has the capacity to be a broadcaster in sound and images to anyone who owns a mobile phone.

He says old style newspapers and television are traumatised. “For middle aged journalists with debts and responsibilities, 2014 may not be the best time to be alive,” he says. He says the globally focussed news organisations will survive as there will be a need for reliable information.

He said but journalism will undergo a change. As global citizens devise new formats to tell stories, journalists will now have to add additional skills to survive in the market. “They should not only be effective story tellers bur also be able to integrate their writing skills with audio and video formats.

He said the new media world is struggling to be born. “People are creating new formats that will attract audiences, exert influence and manage to pay bills. “They may be uncertain times for media, but they are exciting times in which the individual talents will affect outcomes,” he said.

He also predicted that the media will be more inclusive in India with rise in presence of dalits and adivasis in media. The absence of dalit and adivasi voices in Indian media will be corrected in the digital age, he said.