Ladies and gentlemen,I feel this is a very good initiative on the part of glasnost team of IIT, especially the initiative taken for organizing seminar on media ethics and all. You have invited media person for their viewpoint and perspective on this very topic. No doubt, media day by day is becoming inseparable part of this system. We can not complete any task related to nation building or making public opinion for any kind of social change without taking the help of media. But despite all this what I think about media, that this media is not lying under any solid category, whether mass media as fourth estate of democracy, mass media as a mission for social change, mass media as an emerging industry of the economy. To some extent you can say mass media is a mix of above all thing, to sum up an agent of publicity or opinion building to some bit, which can not be rated as a representative of any single big category of a democracy.First of all I will talk about mass media as a fourth estate of democracy. It is very commonly said that media is fourth pillar of the democracy. No democracy can survive without the existence of free press. It means media will work as fourth pillar along with legislature, executive and judiciary on the basis of separation of power comprised with checks and balances. But this saying is just a prevalent and conventional kind of conception; it does not have any legal or constitutional validity. Tell me, in which constitution, it is mentioned that mass media will work as an institution which will keep it parallel to the other 3 prescribed pillars of democracy. Let us talk about the biggest democratic constitution of world, the Indian constitution; it does not mention at all that free press will be here which will work as fourth pillar in India. Only our index of fundamental rights under article 18, it is said we will have the freedom of expression for all citizens of country. Only this one line of fundamental right allows us to express any thing against any individuals or institutions. In the same way if anyone has money or capital, he can establish a media organization or a newspaper to say anything against anyone. Under this perception the institutional establishment of mass media organization is totally out of constitutional control or beyond the constitutional requirement also. Before going into details of the mass- media set up of a country, it is essential to mention what should be the role of mass media in a democracy or in a modern system of governance. To provide information, knowledge and entertainment to the people, these are the prime acts of mass media, thus creating checks and balance over the executives, legislature and judiciary through writing or showing news, research, analysis or investigation.The word mass media literally means the media for the masses. In India first of all media is not attached to the whole masses of the country, means every citizen of the country is not networked with any mass media say newspaper, radio, TV or internet. Secondly the concern of all masses of the country is not getting covered in mass media. Still only 20 percent of population read newspaper, less than 50 percent population are enable to view TV or listen radio, less than 5 percent population have access to internet. So far the media coverage is concerned media is still in the ambit of mouthpiece rather than medium for the masses. There is no space for other than politicians, film stars and cricketers in the mass media. It means India requires equality of expression rather than freedom of expression which can guarantee the democratic need of masses of the country. Unfortunately it did not happen in the country. So in last 60 year in India the journey of mass media is full of many hotchpotches.Now we come on the second perception. the existence of mass media as a mission. The basic objectives and democratic duties of mass media always expect mass media to work in a missionary manner so that media can go all out against all kinds of exploitations occurring in the society, to oppose all kind of injustice, mal governances, irregularities, backwardness, oppressions etc prevailing in the society. In order to that media has to always work for the betterment of the masses, for the sake of welfare of the masses. There are no problems for the media to play such role. But the most important question is, who will sustain the media, who will be the caretakers of media. Who will hold the viability of mass media? Mass media organization needed the cost and return balances like any other business organizations. Any mass media organization whether it is newspaper or radio station or tv channels or a news website or outdoor media, it needs investment on the count of both fixed capital and variable cost so that it can be operated and sustained.We all know that the selling of newspaper, viewing of TV channels, or subscribing of website, what we pay for it, hardly constitute a fraction of its total cost. Newspaper is the only industry in the world, which products are sold at below cost of production. Any manufacturing industry in spite of a tough competition from other players, always have a cost plus pricing of product, but the newspaper industry is exception. Even in some European countries, newspapers are sold free of cost. There is same case with the news channels, what they get out of pay channel fee, it constitute hardly a fraction of their cost. So under this scenario how can we say mass media can work as an industry? We must know this fact; the majority of costs of a media organization come through advertisement. The advertisement, which is a kind of information which comes directly from the informers and it is paid coverage items which may be contradictory to the editorial contents like news, analysis or investigation reports or footages, which are unpaid one. Coming on the advertisement front, we all know there is farce competition among different media set ups to garner more and more advertisement. It is decided by what, it is circulation numbers for the print medium, it is TRP for the TV channels, it is log in numbers for the news website etc. The TRP and circulation ratings are the factors which are always on the top of minds of all media organizations. The idealistic perception of news coverage, which is based on giving priority to welfare of the masses have gone to the backburner now and all those coverage have come in the forefront , which has a more revenue potential for a media organizationsIn order to this, all those coverage which has the capacity to capture the psyche of readers or audiences, are always taken into account by the media organizations. So we have always a high readership or viewer ship of sensational nude photograph, crime and sex coverage and all the sensational kind of thing which has nothing to do with the lot of masses. This is as much true as the voters' graph for a political party. They opt those kind of issue in order to attract and collect the people which are very easy to use ,on emotive issues, on the line of caste, community, language and region, these factors have been always proved to be a driving force for a politicians because it is very easy to galvanize the people on this very issue. In the same way it is very easy for a mass media whether it is newspaper or tv channel or a cinema to sensationalize the public on sex, violence and nudity kind of things because people have psyche to get touched with this issue. In order to this all ethics of mass media gets buried and media finds it in hobnobbing situation.We have many example when a media set up became popular overnight by covering sensational kind of things, a politician got popular after the deliverance of riotous speech. Under these circumstances it is very difficult to decide a ideal benchmark for a mass media organization. It can not fully adopt missionary approach, because it has to survive financially. It can not work as an industry, because there is a great imbalance between its cost and return. It can not work as fourth estate of democracy because it does not have constitutional validity. It can not adopt ethics, because it has to blindly go for high TRP in order to generate revenue. So ultimately a proper reconciliation between market and public interest is needed for the mass media. It is true, these both are contradictory to each other, but the reality is that a proper equilibrium is always needed between them. In the meantime only black money, the hawala money is coming in an immense way in mass media, not the debt capital from the commercial banks. Because this black money holder knows it very well that he is not going to get a proper return over the investment of his black money, he only needs a armory out of investment in media which could guide their business and other activities through a safe passes.l