Modern Journalism and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Modern Journalism and Mahatma Gandhi

 

Modern journalism certainly permits attacks on the supposed weak points of those whose policy is criticized and I grant that you intended to do no more. I thank you too for putting me the questions you have. They enable me to explain my position more fully than perhaps it has been by my writings and speeches. 1 The superficiality, the one-sidedness, the inaccuracy and often even dishonesty that have crept into modern journalism, continuously mislead honest men who want to see nothing but justice done. Then there are always interested groups whose business it is to serve their ends by means fair of foul. And the honest Englishman wishing to vote for justice but swayed by conflicting opinions and dominated by distorted versions often ends by becoming an instrument of injustice. 2 

“India will never,” says the Interpreter, “attain unity by means of a common hate. That appears, as far as an onlooker can judge, tobe the means to which Mr. Gandhi, the idealist, has surrendered himself.” Mr. Stokes, who has endeavoured to study the movement as an onlooker, says that it is not based on hate. I have said so myself. But prejudices die hard. And in these days of mad rush to which modern journalism is making the largest contribution, people feed their prejudices, unconsciously it may be, by coming to hasty conclusions on insufficient data. 3 Bristol Times cutting is shocking, but such is modern journalism and such is also the notion about truth of fliers through the air! 4

 

References:

1. Letter to Edmund Candler, December 15, 1919
2. Young India, 12-5-1920
3. Young India, 29-12-1920 
4. Letter to C. F. Andrews, November 29, 1928