New Delhi: India’s top government run journalism institute is planning to draft a “broad media curriculum” to bring about a “standardisation of media studies”.
The Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) which is an autonomous body under the ministry of Information and Broadcasting is piloting this project. A National Media Faculty Development Center has been set up earlier this month, especially for this purpose. The Centre will be headed by Sunetra Sen Narayan, an Associate Professor at IIMC.
Center will be collaborate with other agencies under Human Resource Development ministry including Universities Grant Commission and Indian Council for Social Sciences and Research.
The director general of the premier institute KG Suresh told News 18 in an exclusive chat that the seeds of this center were sown at a media educators meet in December 2016, which was held with the Minister of State Information of Broadcasting Col Rajyavardhan Rathore. There were hundred others – deans and VCs from various journalism schools across the country present in the IIMC auditorium.
“There is no regulator body available in the media,” says IIMC Director General KG Suresh.
“There is absence of regulator in media. We have no standardisation, anyone can hold a mic and be journalist, by setting the minimum standards we can control the quality of media studies,” Suresh told News18.
Does that mean media institutes will have to comply with a standard curriculum in the future?
“We will not be imposing any curriculum on national level, but we can at least get the various media schools on board to find consensus on curriculum – on some points consensus can be reached,” added Suresh.
For example, he says, the way Left extremist violence is covered by the media which Suresh avers has a certain slant. “The media does not highlight positive moves and developments – in Bastar we hear only a certain kind of narrative. There is no report on how the state reaches out to people and how people try to reach out to the state. There is only one aspect – human rights violation.”
Interestingly IIMC had invited the former IG of Bastar SRP Kalluri for a seminar on “National Journalism in Current Perspective”. IIMC alumni in a letter to Suresh had opposed the move as Kalluri citing reports of Kalluri's regular run-ins with the media and activists while he was in-charge of Naxal infested Bastar.
The Center established in IIMC will also function as a media training center for teachers.
For Suresh, a former political journalist media "has a role in nation building and it should fulfill that with responsibility.”
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