Eighty percent of journalists believe that the media covers the Narendra Modi-led government too favourably, a study published by Lokniti and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies said.
The report, “Indian Media: Trends and Patterns”, was published on Thursday. For the study, Lokniti and CSDS carried out an online survey of 206 journalists across television, print and digital media. Forty-one percent of those interviewed were Hindi journalists, 32% in English and 27% in other regional languages.
Among the respondents, 64% were on a media organisation’s payroll, 27% were independent journalists and 9% were doing both.
The study showed that 8% of the journalists interviewed believed that the media covers Opposition parties too favourably. On the other hand, 61% said that the media covers the Opposition too unfavourably.
Further, the report said that 73% journalists believe that media houses favour one political party. Out of these, the vast majority (82%) believed that media houses favour the Bharatiya Janata Party, and only 3% opined that the media displays favouritism towards the Congress.
As many as 86% of independent journalists said that the media covers the Modi government “too favourably”, while 81% of journalists working for news organisations gave the same response.
Nearly three out of four respondents (72%) said they believe news channels are “less free to do their job properly these days”. The corresponding figure for newspapers was 55%, and for digital media, it was 36%.
Impact on mental, physical health
According to the study, nearly seven in 10 journalists said that their current job had an effect on their mental health. More female journalists (85%) reported having faced mental health problems as compared to male journalists (66%).
“Journalists who were young and journalists who belonged to the English language industry reported more cases of poor physical health,” the report said. “The cost of their professional overload also affected the relationship of the journalist with their families.”
Nearly three-fourths of journalists reported having faced some degree of impact on their physical health on account of their jobs. Among these, 15% respondents said their physical health was highly affected, 30% said it was moderately affected and 28% said it was slightly affected.
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