By D N Singh
Television news channels in the state of Odisha are never in competitions . With the exceptions apart, majority are locked in a sort of struggle to claim a place among the mediocrity.
Although politics in Odisha has not been able to wriggle out of a monotonous tag of non-happening state where the chief minister still remains the unique selling point . It has little else to offer beyond that repetitiousness
That settles the limit for the news channels to measure their news outlines, whether in favour or against the dispensation. Undisputedly, in this cluster , one or two remain the enviable ones regardless of the paled political positioning of their owners.
When media houses are owned by the politicians, then the editorial policies are governed by certain compulsions. That is the trend pan-India.
In a way, a few of them have succeeded in striking an equilibrium as individuals more, rather than as the owner of news networks . Who sets the trend or imposes the editorial policy of a channel. It is a different matter as no channel in Odisha or even at the national level can claim itself free of political compulsions .
That way, even the leading channel in the state makes it clear that to remain focused at one goal is not permanent regardless of the inherent strength to stride through the course, . From regional to right is what is very pronounced.
Barring a small stint of brick batting at the BJD, Baijayant Panda, who owns Odisha Television, has been back into his hovel and got to do something more than politics. Be it as a time pass or otherwise, but he, perhaps, has been wise enough to read that, in the existing climate those days, that prevailed in the BJP, it would be thankless a job to indulge in anti-Naveen insinuations. But the leanings are discernible.
And he must have had the realization that, being in the BJP, he can no longer correct the political wrongs he had committed and it is not a party(BJP) where he can aspire for a relevance which he had enjoyed as a BJD leader.
Then it was Naveen and now it is Modi, a kind of cross-current and no one can afford to remain afloat to build a cult of his or her own.
While, quite in contrast, the owner of an equally huge media network , Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, presently a BJD MLA, a man who has traversed through several alien lanes of politics, has not been able to find his place in politics that can behoove to his seniority and stature. What is perceptible is that, Patnaik somehow suffers from a loneliness in the party he is now.
Neither he has the comfort of running together with the lot in the party nor he finds any room coming up trump in Odisha politics, as a man close to Naveen Patnaik, as it once appeared to be.
As the chief (Editor) of his Odia daily newspaper, The Sambad and the TV news channel, Kanak TV, he has more to deliver as an institution builder, than playing political footsie that has hardly earned him any good dividend in the past.
Not to be economical with truth, Patnaik, as a media house owner, had played a pioneering role in the past for making journalism as a profession which paid. When scribes started getting salaries working in his newspaper way back.
Both the leaders, Baijayant Panda and Soumya Ranjan Patnaik had remained consequential in their own way. It is a different matter that Panda’s overtures offered an opportunity to the BJD to go for course correction but in the case of Patnaik, his unflinching ambitions to become a stand-apart leader has always eluded him.
Another media house owner is the founder of Kalinga Institute Of Industrial Technology, Achyut Samant who entered politics late in the day but before that he had launched the Kalinga TV adding the tag of a media man to the list of accomplishments.
However, politics being an integral part of their identity, the editorial leanings of the three houses are always guided by compulsions of one or the other sort. One cannot rue their assertions when it comes to play the objective roles but much remains wanting.
There was a time when another big house, under the banner Prameya, News7 news channel, was trying to breath down the neck of the leading channel OTV, jacking up its ratings and going up in the perceptional measures of people for quite some time.
But, since some times the channel, although, has been trying hard to match up to its old reputation but has not been able to do so. Talking about siding with the dispensations, neither News7 is unduly judgmental nor very unsparing in its stand.
However, the Chairman and founder of the group, Manoj Nayak, has, maintained a calculated distance from politics and it would not be an exaggeration to say that, he, possibly, did not seem to be consumed by ambitions as a media house owner either. What he makes one believe that, trickles are safer than a gush.
All said and done, peoples’ hopes on media makes the tasks harder for the owners, particularly the ones in politics, to go for a deft rope walk.
