Abstract
Mass media have always played a crucial role for negotiating the image of the nation. This holds true also for India. My article reflects changes in the Indian media market and examines how reshaped media outlets contribute towards generating fresh images of the nation for public consumption. The focus is on English language newspapers which are consumed by the growing Indian middle classes. How do newspapers influence the relation between commerce and politics and shape its public images? The case study elaborates the role journalists play towards shaping a public culture that devalues politics and hails consumerism. I argue that in a high pressure corporate environment reporters find a new voice as political commentators while accommodating within a discursive formation that promotes positive thinking about corporations, markets and commodities. News articles are an uneasy compromise that implement companies’ directives, realise a critical political ethos and expresse a longing for a new India.
Highlights
Mass media have always played a crucial role for negotiating the image of the nation
The consequences of commercialisation are more freedom in political writing at the cost of high pressure to conform to corporate interests (Sahay 2006)
The sweeping success of parties representing former untouchables and Muslims as well as the high profile efforts to increase reservations for disadvantaged castes and classes promoted a feeling among middle class people that their interests have no lobby (Jaffrelot 2003; Fernandes 2006: 182–98)
Summary
My argument about media transformation is set against the background of market liberalisation. They are implicated in a political process on which they comment in their roles as heroes of the fourth estate Pushed by their employees, Indian journalists develop new themes and styles of reporting and alterative measures for success. Indian journalists develop new themes and styles of reporting and alterative measures for success Their role as commentators of social processes is entangled with their position as middle class professionals. The opposition of political failure and impressive achievements of the market economy that emerges from the newspapers remains an incomplete testimony of the complicated internal negotiations that shape the judgements of professional observers Journalists continue both to depend on politicians and to build and maintain networks of power of their own. The concluding paragraphs locate this finding in current debates about a changing public culture, dominated by the interests of the salaried classes, which is underwritten by the pro-market anti-politics position of newspapers
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