What is common to Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Pinarayi Vijayan? The answers may vary depending on one's perspective. Yet, there could be unanimity on the threesome’s one common trait: their sheer contempt for the mainstream media. Though Modi has not overtly expressed this feeling, probably because most of India’s mainstream media has been his loyal lapdogs, the other two never let go of any opportunity to lambast them. Notwithstanding their mutually warring ideologies, both Trump and Pinarayi see the mainstream media as an “enemy of the people”. Though Modi has been cautious with his words, “presstitutes” is the most BJP leaders’ favourite appellation for the media.
Though Pinarayi has been exceptionally hostile to the media, it is also fundamentally rooted in the Communists’ ideological scepticism towards the “bourgeois media”. Interestingly, while Pinarayi and the other Communists see the mainstream media as a right wing lackey, Trump calls it the “left wing censorship regime”! However, when showering abuse on the media, Pinarayi can't hold a candle to the Potus-elect. If the Malayali Marxist has only once shouted at the media to get out of his meeting, the Republican leader has verbally “insulted, attacked or threatened” the media 108 times between September and October alone, according to a study. The world sees even more “democratic despots” joining this media -haters’ league.
What makes these leaders afford to ignore the mainstream media (MSM) which was once known capable of making or marring political careers? Why have Trump and Modi chosen to hate the media unlike their fellow “democrats” who are always beholden to it ? Simple. More than anything about these leaders, it has got to do with the changed media landscape. The contemporary MSM has been reduced to insignificance compared to the past. The last two decades, which saw social media’s phenomenal rise fuelled by the game-changing information technology, marked the eclipse of the “legacy media,” which consists of print and television. The steep fall in........