Impact, the marketing journal from the exchange4media group, has conducted a five-city poll on the mood of the nation after the Niira Radia tapes stung Barkha Dutt, Vir Sanghvi, Prabhu Chawla and eight other media stars. And the results are revealing.
# 86% of respondents feel let down by the thought of journalists as “fixers”. That feeling is palpably higher in Madras (95%) and Calcutta (92%) but Bangalore (73%) seems to be the most pragmatic of the five cities.
# 66% say media is protecting its own, although 43% think so in Madras, where the 2G scam is headquartered more or less (A. Raja, Kanimozhi, Dayanidhi Maran, M. Karunanidhi) and where the only coverage in The Hindu has been by way of comment.
The poll has been conducted by Synovate, but the sample size or the dates of the poll is not known.
Anurag Batra, the chairman and editor-in-chief of exchange4media, clearly has an opinion different from the 86% per cent. Batra who recently called this “the golden era of Indian media”—despite paid news, private treaties, medianet, etc—writes in his latest column:
“What disturbs me of late is the way different media have taken on each other, trying to reduce journalism into a sham and journalists into a caricature! My sense and submission is that some vested interests are trying to paint journalists and journalism as negative and tainted and I believe these vested interests are being fulfilled even if unknowingly by the media itself! Raising questions basis this episode on other senior journalists is like a self goal for the whole media community. It’s sad to see that when the whole nation should be questioning the government about squandering of so much money belonging to the tax payer, we have forgotten all that and focusing on what few people from media did.”
Read the full survey: What does the nation think?
Also read: If you trust polls, trust in media dips
IJR 
Barkha defending her position regarding Barkhagate
http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/barkha-dutt-other-editors-on-radia-tapes-controversy/178964
Unfortunately her arguments lack teeth and substance to it. She took off on an emotional pitch and lost her cool. She is peeved as she confronts stating that she is the only soul holding ethical torch light.
Barkha has not been able to clarify her position regarding passing information to Ghulam Nabi Azad.
She could not clarify her position the story of Corporate Lobbyist trying to pitch fork Raja into the Telecom Minister’s slot in year 2009 and year 2010.
Conclusion: Barkha feels the biggest story is Journalistic Ethics has been violated. That is the story of the Century !!!
Alas, she has not learnt her lessons of Journalism yet. As good as a fresher from school, but not from school of Journalist.
Now wondering on how NDTV is still able to hold onto to her story.
To top it all Sonia Varma did a very bad job of a moderator as she let the loose cannon go amuck.