The 2009 general elections have been marred by widespread accusations and whispers of media hanky-panky.
The Wall Street Journal‘s India bureau chief Paul Beckett accused reporters, editors and newspaper owners of holding the Indian democratic process to ransom. Women journalists in Andhra Pradesh wrote to the Election Commission drawing attention to Telugu dailies selling news space to political advertisers. And on top of all this, there are well-established institutional deals and so on.
How much of all this buying and selling affect reader trust in media vehicles? Not much.
The National Election Survey 2009 compiled by the Lokniti team of the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for The Hindu asked precisely the question:
Question: “Do people trust the news they read in newspapers?”
Answer: “Forty-five per cent of respondents said that they greatly trusted what they read in newspapers. A similar number said that they somewhat trusted newspaper reports. Around 10 per cent had little faith in what was reported in the papers.” (emphasis added)
Also read: Forget the news, you can’t trust the ads either
Sucheta Dalal on selling news and buying silence
The scoreline: different strokes for different folks
Salil Tripathi: The first casualty of a cosy deal is credibility
IJR 
TV9 channel, is it meant for illegal telecasts?….here is the storyline
(News taken from but this link has been removed within a few days, may be due to some unknown pressures)
“TV9 CEO Ravi Prakash attends court : Paritala case
Chief Executive Officer of a television channel (TV9) Ravi Prakash (125th witness) told the Sessions Court here on Tuesday that, Julakanti Srinivasa Reddy alias Moddu Seenu had personally called the television channel and expressed his willingness to be interviewed on camera days after the murder of Paritala Ravindra.
A cassette of the interview was replayed in the court hall and the witness approved it as the one telecast by their channel. Lawyers for several accused in the case sought to know from Mr. Prakash as to how his channel that claims existence “for better society” could telecast such interviews which smack of criminality, to which the television channel CEO replied that ‘it was part of news’.
Asked whether the channel would not edit programs prior to airing it, Mr. Prakash said it would depend on the quality of input.
The counsel for the accused also sought to know from Mr. Ravi Prakash whether the channel had taken permission either from the police or court before telecasting such news, to which he replied “NO”. (Moddu Seenu, who claimed to have killed Paritala, was found killed in the jail barrack in November 2008.)
Further hearing was adjourned to June 19”.