‘Camera cannot be oxygen on which movement can sustain’

Weaving his lecture primarily around the Anna Hazare movement,Sardesai said,“The Lokpal movement was one of the most perfectly choreographed television movements. But the success of an anti-corruption movement is not the number of times it makes headlines. The success of the movement is built by the moral power of the people (behind the movement). Citizenship and nation-building is the basis of an anti-corruption movement.”

“Gandhi and Jayprakash Narayan did not need a 24X7 news media because their moral power was enough for their movement to succeed,” he said.

Sardesai also critically evaluated the coverage of the media during the Anna Hazare movement. He also analysed the failure of the movement in the months that followed.

“This is the age of corruption. Never before has it happened that so much money has been made by so few in such a short time. But the satellite revolution has increased the accountability,which was not there earlier,” he added.

In her address,Medha Patkar said,“The media needs to introspect if they are truly being the mediators between the society and the system. Why is it that out of so many movements,the media chooses to highlight only a few? In today’s times when information is being uploaded on social networking sites such as Facebook,Twitter,the ‘movements’ are in a dilemma as to whether one should make use of the media or ignore it. If support of the people is the basis of an anti-corruption movement,it is for people to evaluate the media as well,” she said.

Patkar rated the print media as more trustworthy than the electronic media and accused the media in general of focusing on certain issues in order to divert attention from other relevant issues.