Indian media caught in a caste warp

Aasim Khan
CNN-IBN

New Delhi: Journalism is called the fourth pillar of democracy and media has
always raised a vociferous debate on the caste cauldron in society.

But has the Fourth Estate itself ignored the principles of democracy in
their institutions?

According to a survey conducted across the newsrooms of top newspapers and
television news networks by Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS),
it's the upper caste that makes the key editorial decisions for the rest of
the country.
The survey covered over 300 top editors working in 40 television and print
news networks, and profiled them in terms of age, religion, caste/community
and gender.
It reveals that Hindu upper caste men, who constitute just eight per cent of
the total population of India, hold over 70 per cent of the key posts across
newsrooms in the country.
The so-called twice born Hindu castes dominate 85 per cent key posts despite
constituting just 16 per cent of the total population, while the
intermediary castes a represent meagre three per cent.

The Hindu Other Backward Class groups, who are 34 per cent of the total
population, have a share of just four per cent in the Indian newsrooms.
Muslims, who constitute about 13 per cent of the population, control just
four per cent top posts while Christians and Sikhs have a slightly better
representation.
But the worst scenario emerges in the case of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and
Scheduled Tribes (STs).
Despite constituting around 24 per cent of the total population, their
representation in key decision making across the news spectrum amounts to
zilch.
That means there is not a single SC or ST person taking a call on editorial
policies in country's news arena.

But don't we hear journalists breaking "hard" news stories irrespective of
their profiles?
"Some of the best stories on riots against Muslims were done by Hindus, on
women's oppression by men and so on. We just want to put this information in
the public domain so that there's better awareness of the diversity profile
of the newsmakers," Senior Fellow CSDS Yogendra Yadav says.
While the caste divide might be news for outsiders, the veteran newsmen have
always known the inside story.
"Not that a newsroom should represent India's population trend, the fact
that you have no Dalit or Scheduled Tribe person is a shocking omission,"
Deputy Editor The Hindu Siddharth Vardrarajan says.

So whose news is it anyway?

A media that triggers heated debate about the reservation row is in itself
divided along caste lines.

Looks like it's time to raise the debate within.