It is a great pity that the CPM is the only party that has raised an important set of issues concerning India’s democracy: the state of our media. The media is often targeted for various reasons, usually for its ideological biases. But the CPM has gone a step beyond the usual pantomime of media and politics. It has returned the compliment that it often receives from the press, that it is beholden to foreign powers. And it has called for greater regulation of the media on many dimensions.

There are some serious issues here, but the CPM’s advocacy of these issues is a great pity in a double sense. For one thing, many of the CPM’s regulatory proposals on issues like foreign ownership of the media are more about control than about creating a healthy media. But more importantly, the CPM has very little locus standi on the issue. After the Nandigram episode, its mouthpieces and intellectuals were in full swing, denouncing anyone who dared criticise it as acting at the behest of imperial powers to delegitimise the Left. A party that is more concerned with protecting its own rather than respecting the truth, a party that is prone to interpret all genuine ideological difference as a conspiratorial plot, is unlikely to be a credible spokesman on media issues.

The CPM is vulnerable on these issues and the media will predictably, jump all over it, obscuring some real issues, like the ways in which cross-ownership promotes unhealthy concentration in the media. But this would be a shame. For the blunt truth is that there is a quiet crisis of credibility facing the Indian media. And the media is living in a fool’s paradise if it mistakes resisting the Left with putting its own house in order.

... contd.