If you wish to access the archives, please go to the Das Ka Dum tab on the website’s top navigation bar or click here: https://www.mxmindia.com/category/columns/das-ka-dum/
Q. Do you fear that Indian media companies, like their western counterparts are, in their pursuit of profitability, also abandoning their responsibility to foster critical thinking and instead opting for viewership?
A. Any business including media, in the ultimate analysis, has to generate surplus to plough back to business or ensure that finite resources of society are not squandered. Now that’s a supra-business objective. Is it followed in toto? I don’t want to delve into intellectual polemic.
There is nothing grossly wrong in keeping profit/ profitability in the business radar, but over-obsession with continuous high trajectory at the cost of core business interest, could create myopia and business astigmatism. History is replete with examples of myopic chasing of mere profit, ignoring overall health of the business, would one day degenerate of the failure of success.
In today’s context, the responsibility of fostering critical thinking, except a few news organisations and individuals, sounds so vacuous that anyone talking about it must belong to neolithic age. Now, algos overides humans (and humanity?).