Address at the P.c. Sukumaran Nair Foundation Award Ceremony, Thiruvananthapuram

I am happy to participate and present the First PC Sukumaran Nair Award for journalism. My greetings to the Patron and members of PC Sukumaran Nair Foundation, Senior Journalists of Kerala. I also greet Shri Rajesh, Sub Editor of Kerala Kaumudi for this achievement. I thought of sharing to this distinguished gather some of my thoughts.

Media Research

I have a suggestion particularly to the members of press consisting of editors, journalists, correspondents and reporters. In our country it is essential to have research wings in the academic institutions developing media personnel in reporting news, event analysis and highlights. The owners of news papers should encourage research being carried out by experienced and young reporters for acquiring post-graduate qualifications which will improve the quality content of the print media. For example, before any issue is discussed in foreign newspapers, they send it to an internal research group where data is studied, verified and factual news is generated and sent for publication. When there was a critical comment about outsourcing to India, a US journalist stayed in India and studied the issue and found out that the companies engaged in Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs) were carrying out business using imported equipments from UK and USA. Thus, they found that the BPO industries provided an indirect market for the hardware industries of US. Immediately this was reported in the Indian media in a big way. Similarly a Discovery Channel media person wanted to study India?s growth in Information Technology, Thomas Friedman came to India and stayed for a month and visited Bangalore and other places. Based on his news analysis he wrote a book titled ?World is Flat?. This book has become famous not only in India but throughout the world. Such is the power of research. I would suggest our newspaper agencies should encourage research being carried out by our correspondents and journalists within India in an academic research institutions, which will definitely improve the quality of our reporting and nice projection of the media.

May God bless you.