PRESSING ON

Power, Press and Politics By Alok Mehta Published by Bloomsbury Price ₹799; pages 421

- PRATUL SHARMA

In these deeply fractured days, there is one thing that everyone seems to agree upon—that the media is facing a crisis of credibility. A problem further heightened by television’s vicious 24/7 news cycle and the online warriors with their colourful opinions. The journalistic fraternity has occasionally tried to introspect and find out where it has gone wrong, which has often led to some form of course correction. Veteran journalist Alok Mehta’s new book, Power, Press and Politics, is an attempt to do this.

“Extreme work pressure, time constraints, the competition to survive, and the culture of paid news and advertorials adopted by the media houses for their survival have caused huge damage to the integrity of newspapers,” the author writes. Mehta, who completed 50 years in journalism, provides an insider’s account of the working of the media, particularly print media. He spent most of his career helming Hindi publications like Outlook Hindi, Hindustan, Navbharat, NaiDunia and Dainik Bhaskar, among others.

Mehta has been a witness to some of the epochal events in the country which shaped journalism as we know it today. From this vantage point, he talks about key political personalities and journalists of his time. He speaks highly of editors like Rajendra Mathur, Manohar Shyam Joshi and Vinod Mehta, with whom he worked as they built their publications.