Media in Goa - Critiques of The Media

Critiques of The Media

Writing in the early 1980s, anthropologist Dr Robert S Newman spoke about the relationship with the media in Goa with the "big families" – mainly comprising "a handful of small-businessmen, traditional landowners, and war profiteers (who) received iron ore mining licenses, and were encouraged to dig and ship the ore to Japan (which needed it for reconstruction after World War II)."

Newman wrote, in an essay titled Goa - The Transformation of an Indian Region, published in Pacific Affairs (August 1984) wrote: " Bandodkar and his fellow industrialists attempted to shape public opinion through their newspapers – there are almost no independent papers in Goa – and through tertiary educational institutions which they themselves had established. The Chowgules, for example, launched the newspapers Gomantak and Uzvadd, and were founders of an arts and science college at Margao; the Salgaocars founded a law college; and the Dempos own The Navhind Times and Navprabha, and are involved in Dhempe College at Miramar."

Another essay titled Popular Protest and the Free Goa Press (pp 91–113) in Norman Dantas' The Transformation of Goa (The Other India Press, Mapusa, 1999) argues: "In Goa, the daily newspapers' editorial stances on various protest movements would tend to reveal a largely unfriendly attitude towards such actions. It is not perhaps coincidental that individuals and groups involved in protest issues in Goa have often felt that they have received an unfair deal from the media." It looks at protest and the media response to it in Goa over a three decade period, from the early 'sixties to the 'nineties.