MEDIA DEVELOPMENT IN THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: AN INSIGHT IN THE PRESENT INDIAN CONTEXT

Basic principle in journalism is to focus for development for public good and to uplift the society and transform the societal healthy practices. Media in its various capacity tries to inform, educate, and entertain the mass people for the benefit of human society and that should be the motto of media cutting across country line and geographical boundary. In Indian context how media focuses in its principle in the present set up that is interesting to be seen in the light of the critical perspective of freedom of expression as envisages in our constitution. In India journalistic freedom remained a million dollar question not only in pre-independence India but remained a valid question in post independence period and in the modern scenario too. In the present context if we speculate we observe that media organization and their key functionaries are vertically divided into pro and anti against any elected government and this phenomenon is not even permanent in them. They themselves frequently changes their colour for the reasons not best known by themselves alone but mass people are more knowledgeable these days and understand the very fact for this kind of shift. Off course for some time their survival question remains a valid point too in this competitive market scenario. In such a juncture this paper would like to discuss all those critical issues in this complex and media saturated condition more specifically in the light of journalistic freedom and their challenges in the current Indian situation.