Parties’ report card can help make informed choice: Naidu

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 20

As the country prepares for the general elections, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu today said media should present a report card on the performance of parties in an objective manner so that people can make an informed choice and cautioned against fake news.

Delivering the first Atal Bihari Vajpayee memorial lecture on “Role of media in moulding enlightened electorate,” Naidu said if the media could present a report card, people would demand accountability from political parties vis-a-vis promises, raising resources and how they intended to spend them.

“Our country can boast of not only being the largest democracy in the world but also one of the most vibrant, cleanest democracies in the world,” he said in his address at the lecture organised by the Indian Institute of Mass Communication.The Vice President said media should act as a mirror reflecting reality, neither magnifying nor diminishing, neither distorting nor mystifying facts. Expressing his concern over the “evil of paid news”, Naidu advised the media to “shun this tendency lest ‘money power’ is used to influence voters through ‘manufactured’ views and opinions of paid news”.

Media organisations, he said, should also devote space and time to report on the antecedents of politicians, their past work, participation in debates in state legislatures and Parliament.

While the electorate, he said, should vote for their representative based on their character, caliber, capacity and conduct he observed instead some people were trying to replace these qualities with cash, community, caste and criminality. “We must foresee that these 4C’s are coming and must be careful,” he cautioned.