Speak out against wrongs in media, says Ashutosh Gowariker

The audience should strongly express their reservations on what they think is wrong on the part of the media and what they think should not be shown by the media, said actor turned producer-director Ashutosh Gowariker.

He was interacting with the students at the first Parliament of Indian Student Council Leaders on Thursday evening at MIT School of Government while addressing a session on ‘Is media and entertainment far away from reality?’

He admitted that a lot of ‘bad’ things were being shown by the media along with many good things but overall it was balancing information and entertainment.

“People need to take the good and resist the bad. A channel reporter covering the attack on Taj in Mumbai was asking questions like ‘What do you think is going on in the mind of the terrorists?’ to the rescued people. I called up the channel and requested them to stop it and they did. You need to say loudly ‘it’s wrong’,” he added.

He said we are afraid to raise our voice against the wrong things because we feel ‘It’s not my problem’. But when people come together to demand something it is achieved. Numbers matter.

Stressing on people’s right to know how their money is being spent, he said that the government should not only just present next year’s budget but also tell what has been done with the money in the past year.

Gowariker felt that in terms of quality, Marathi films were ahead of Hindi films. With new experiments, Marathi films have come of age. He felt that films need to focus more on social issues and should have a message at the end.

Gowariker said that films could play a major role in rural development by focusing on the need to take education and technology to remote areas.