Journalism for profit

In last couple of days I got involved in some other debates and hence have decided to deviate a bit from our discussion on Ethics in Mass Communication. But I am certain that I am not going to say goodbye to the debate on ethics. I will pick it up as soon as I find some peace.

What is journalism for profit? As the initiators of this debate explained to me, it is a journalism which is a product of a desire to earn profits. In other words, we can say that all journalism supported by the big business is a journalism for profit. What ever is not for profit is for public service and could be called journalism with a mission.

I am not satisfied with this simplistic analysis. I would like to give a new twist to this debate by saying that the journalism which has a mission of glorifying "the profit" i.e. the capital is the journalism for profit. Today, in this age of globalization, no one can ignore the notion of economic viability of their activity. Hence, we can say that all mass communication activities have to, in some sense, bother about profitability. However, globalization is also a process of integrating people in to one homogenized group of consumers to allow the transnational companies to generate profits. Mass media here play a missionary role for this process of globalization. Here, the mass media does not or may not generate profit but would help the process of generating profit.

One the other side of this spectrum, there are people with their aspiration to make their lives better, and in most cases to merely survive. They too want to get globalized and enjoy the fruits of the achievements of the whole of human race. But, at the same time, they feel the need to keep their identities i.e. ethnic, cultural and linguistic. It is here that we find the demand for equal distribution and equal use of the ICTs(Information and Communication Technologies). The ICTs would be used by the different people for further democratization of information, knowledge and thus, the power. People and communities do not have that kind of capital which could sustain a long drawn missionary work. Hence, they would have to think of economically viable communication efforts.

It is in this reference that one could talk about the mainstream journalism and marginal journalism. In India, like elsewhere, the newspaper and television industry is organized mostly as a big business by the big business where big industrialist have their stakes. There are small newspapers and magazines such as those of writers, political parties and associations, advocacy groups, etc. Though the cost of production have come down quite substantially, it is still a dream for people to not only produce their own content in print and/or television but to be able to distribute it to the probable readers and viewers.

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