Veteran Journalist P Sainath’s (Magsaysay Award Winner) at Chitkara School of Mass Communication

It was a moment of pride and privilege for Chitkara School of Mass Communication to welcome “The Ramon Magsaysay Award Winner, Mr. P. Sainath, at Chitkara University Campus.

In his much interactive session with the students, he talked about various aspects of media and modern day journalism and the challenges being faced by modern-day print journalists.

Mr. Sainath touched upon the corporatization of media houses around the world and how the current advertising revenue model is causing trouble for them and the audience too. He also talked about the online media which is a rapidly growing. Mr. P. Sainath hoped that after 10 years or more there will be more broadband penetration in the country which will lead to a true digital nation.

Taking a dig at television news channels, he lamented that the channels had become “talk TV” from what a real TV channel should be. He observed that television channels were unwilling to spend money on gathering news and were happy with picking up inputs of key events from stringers, who sometimes supplied the same shots to different channels.

Mr Sainath inspired students to pursue journalism as a career as well as a way of serving the society and the nation. He also briefed them about his project- People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) – and invited students to volunteer to work for the project which focuses on the ground level of a common man in rural area. “The culture that our country bears is vast and we have to preserve it”, he added.

He showed some of the videos which truly are shot into remote areas of India and depicts the nation. Mr Sainath inspired students to talk about the needy and the most unprivileged persons of society rather than talking about elite class in media. “There is not a single full time reporter in the country which is covering agriculture or rural India in true sense which is otherwise three fourth of the total population”, he said.