Patna : Though Chhattisgarh and Bihar, according to the recent survey done by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), are the two top states so far rural corruption is concerned yet the TV media coverage of corruption are minimum here. In 2010 Bihar contributed only 0.01 percent, Chaattisgarh (0.05 percent) and Kerala (0.09 percent) to the news channels for corruption coverage in their prime time between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM.
Nobody can deny that corruption is a big issue in Bihar. Even the state chief minister Nitish Kumar conceded this fact and has repeatedly promised to wage a war against it. After Orissa, it is Bihar which passed the law to confiscate the property of corrupt officers, though it is also true that till date no IAS officer has been caught under this Act.
What is more intriguing is that Biharis form the largest bulk in Hindi journalism in Delhi yet the coverage of rural corruption of the state is least. It is for the readers themselves to probe as to why is it so. Is it due to media management by the respective state governments or lack of professionalism by journalists.According to the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) report most of the channels are based in Delhi, thus the coverage of corruption was confined mostly to the National Capital Region, followed by Maharashtra.
The survey said that between 7 PM and 11 PM, the news channels have devoted 7.87 percent of their time for corruption-related stories in the period between January and March 2011, while it was 4.13 percent in 2010. This means that the time devoted was comparatively much lower in the previous years. Similarly, while it was one percent of the prime time in 2009, it was just 0.29 percent in 2008, 0.44 percent in 2007, 0.30 percent in 2006 and 0.7 percent in 2005.
The trend in the national newspapers is no different. While 10.62 percent of space was devoted for corruption-related stories in the period between January and March 2011, it was 4.22 percent in 2010.In the preceding years, the space occupied by graft stories was comparatively low, that is, 1.37 percent in 2009 and 0.94 percent in 2008.
The CMS report finds that while Hindi news channels focused more on institutional-level corruption, English news channels focused on corruption involving individuals. The CMS survey further said that most of the prime time coverage of corruption was of routine nature, such as payment of bribes, raids by CBI or Income Tax, land scams, fraud etc very little time was devoted to special drive such as corruption in politics and laws to protect whistle-blowers. साभार : BiharTimes.com
