Awardees with dignitaries at the convocation of the Class of 2023-24 of the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai on Friday. | Photo Credit: R. Ravindran
Media is between the readers and reality. It needs to bring humans back to conscience by playing the challenging role of a conscience-keeper without any support from the sides of reality and consciousness, G.N. Devy, cultural activist and literary scholar, said at the convocation of the Class of 2023-24 of the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) here on Friday.
Delivering the ‘Lawrence Dana Pinkham Memorial Lecture 2024’, titled Media in Zero-Gravity: The word without the world, Mr. Devy said that newspapers played a crucial role in the Independence movement. “Many national leaders emerged from the media and the media emerged from national leaders. Media occupied the centrality and remained a careful and a powerful watchdog, and an important pillar of democracy.”
‘Creating credibility’
He further said: “More than two-thirds of the languages in existence now will disappear in 2047. Our freedom to be human may be forgotten and lost altogether. The role of the media in the future is to create a new kind of centrality, which will be dynamic. Media has to create credibility for the universe and humans.” Sashi Kumar, chairman, ACJ, spoke widely on India’s position in the World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders. He said that though India managed to climb two spots in this report compared with the last report, it was still ranked 159, out of 180 countries. N. Murali, Director, The Hindu Group Publishing Private Limited, spoke about the changing media landscape. He said that journalists should be trained to tell stories on multiple platforms.
During the event, the ACJ Investigative Journalism Award was conferred on Nitin Sethi and Tapasya of The Reporters’ Collective; the K.P. Narayana Kumar Memorial Award for Social Impact Journalism was conferred on Akhilesh Pandey of The Caravan; and the Ashish Yechury Memorial Award for Photojournalism on Sudip Maiti of the Frontline.
Nalini Rajan, dean of studies, ACJ; Rahul Jacob, senior journalist and columnist; Gautam Bhatia, legal scholar; Ammu Joseph, senior journalist and author; faculty of ACJ, students and parents, among others, were present.
