THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 21 JUNE 2019 (Protectors of real news (The Hindu))

Protectors of real news (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2 : Polity
Prelims level : Citizenship
Mains level : Citizenship types

Context

  • Citizenship today is divided into four categories, four styles of role-playing and involvement. The first two are more advertised and discussed in sociological detail.
  • These are the voter and the consumer.
  • They combine different times and involve different dramas. The other two are the fan and the reader.
  • The cinematic fan has found his place in the south; and the fan club, in fact, is the only real cadre in politics today.
  • The fan’s commitment to his iconic star goes beyond the dramas and demands of ideology.
  • The reader, however, is portrayed as a more laidback, reflective character. He is loyal, but openly critical, and sustains a running commentary on the newspaper he reads. For him, the newspaper commands a certain loyalty, a certain ritual where, for many, the newspaper and morning coffee go together, articulating the pleasures and demands of citizenship.

An informal trustee

  • The role of the reader deserves to be analysed in greater detail. His invisibility hides the fact that he is an informal trustee of a newspaper, tuned to its nuances and style.
  • He sustains his favourite columns and greets them with a kind of enthusiasm which is moving.
  • One faces the paradox that while a particular news might be ephemeral, the newspaper is a commons of memory, and the reader a trustee of news and its integrity.
  • News, in that sense, is a public landscape maintained by the reader. He is its symbolic guardian.
  • Memory is crucial and critical in a newspaper, and some columns sustain it brilliantly.
  • There is no policing here just a celebration of a way of life, an appeal to its norms.

A reflective space

  • One realises with a sense of dread that TV as a medium belongs to the lynch mob, the patriotic goon squad. It is no longer a public space except as a symbolic longing.
  • Print, at least the communities around newspapers, has acquired a more reflective style. It demands immediacy, but the urgency is not instantaneous.
  • It has space for memory, judgment and morality. We must think of ways to deepen this precious space, where responsibility combines with rationality.
  • Given the disorders of development which every newspaper reports, one suggestion is that a newspaper, through its readers, become a trustee responsible for the fate of at least one craft, one language, one species such that readership becomes both life-giving and life-affirming.
  • It must be emphasised that such a concern is not organisational, but stems from a community’s sense of its own membership.

Conclusion

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR), consider the following statements:
1. It is a database of International Mobile Equipment Identities (IMEIs), the 15-digit numbers that uniquely identify each mobile device.
2. It is being launched to curtail the rampant cloning and theft of mobile phones across the country.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
A. 1 only
B. 2 only
C. Both 1 and 2
D. None

Answer: C
Mains Questions:
Q.1) When democracy is threatened by majoritarianism, readers can play a more pluralistic role. Comment.

UPSC 2019
Civil Services EXAM
Civil Services Preliminary
Civil Services Mains
IAS PRE GS
संघ लोक सेवा आयोग - UPSC