When the Media Education Research Centre (MERC) at the University of Kashmir was launched, over three decades ago, it was recognised as a dream project – a flagship of modern media education in the region. There were hopes and expectations for the department to produce journalists, filmmakers, and communication specialists of high calibre.
Three decades later, the story is of promises broken and lost trust. The department that was once viewed as a source of talent now becomes a dismal signifier of institutional neglect, curriculum stagnation and dwindling academic vitality.
Students allege there is limited infrastructure, no research culture, and a lack of exposure to the rapid changes taking place in the media environment. Alumni note that the department hasn’t changed over time, still using teaching formats from decades ago, as the world around is using digital, data and global storytelling.
A recent passout from KU, requesting anonymity, remarked on disheartening experiences during her internship at a local magazine. “After completing my masters, I interned at a so-called ‘leading magazine’. Rather than mentoring me, the staff there would criticize me in any way possible,” she said. “The female staff already at the newsroom was consistently taunting me. I was shocked. I had a professional background, and I spent many years studying journalism, but I felt I did not belong here,” she said, noting that the meager stiped of 5,000 per month did not compensate for the negative work environment. This experience has now depressed her to look for jobs outside of journalism altogether.
The financial non-viability of a journalism job in Kashmir is yet another major disincentive. Another MERC (Media Education Research Centre) alumnus from the University of Kashmir who graduated at the top of his class, described painful truth, “After I graduated with my master’s degree, I joined too many newsrooms to work but was barely able to get enough money to manage my petrol costs.” Faced with a financial crisis, he responsibly left and stated, “I left and now I’m in a corporate job and I’m making handsome money. There was just no light at the end of the journalism tunnel here.”
The departure of talent is also exacerbated by what professional journalists see as a bias toward non-professionals among local newsrooms. An anonymous journalist with several years of experience shared the “funda” (principle) behind the work environment of most local media. “Newsrooms here prefer now non-professionals, mostly 10th pass-outs, who don’t carry any professional knowledge about journalism,” he said.
The main reason, he argues, is that these people do not require a regular salary and are primarily concerned with getting a press card. “They do press bytes to politicians and shopkeepers and in return, they demand money; something a professional and qualified journalist can never do. The newsrooms get the content they want, practically for free,” he explained to me. “How can a professional journalist compete in a system like this? It’s better to get a job in J&K Bank or any other govt sector. Our media institutions, sadly, are better in preparing bankers in their classrooms, than preparing journalists.”
Compounding the concern is an emerging belief that academic training is misaligned with the realities of the field. One more student highlighted that educational curricula continue to be theoretical. “The learning at institutions here is constrained to the old journalism culture of the 5W’s and the 1H. There is no practical knowledge provided to the students to help them move forward when they finish University or any college.” The absence of applied, current training has left students graduating into a multifaceted media environment with varying levels of complexity and ethics without any preparation.
Meanwhile, space for professional journalism is being filled rapidly by an unregulated wave of social media content creators in Kashmir. The region is experiencing a surge of “social media journalism” which sees self-identified “Facebook journalists” in every village and mohalla. In responding to information needs, this is oftentimes more rumour than reporting, and undermines the role of trained journalists, creating a chaotic ecosystem of information that prioritizes speed over accuracy. This perfect storm of toxic work conditions, inadequate wages, ethically questionable market practices, and irrelevant academic training is creating an exceptional vacuum for credible journalism in Kashmir, ultimately guiding its most talented students into leaps of faith onto more stable shores.
