Now that we have all made some money today...back to general discussions
.
Amongst our venerable institutions, the judiciary and the armed forces would lead the race, not without blemishes though, the media would be amongst the last to be trusted.
The media has been used and abused for many decades now, indeed it has allowed itself to be used for a price. Indias leading media conglomerates including Bennett & Coleman, the publishers of TOI and ET offer innovative and integrated marketing strategies that blur the traditional line between advertising and article content. TOIs Medianet division lets advertisers place articles on certain pages without clearly marking them as advertising. One of their more aggressive offerings is a product known as a Private Treaty, which offers companies a certain amount of advertising space in exchange for equity stakes in those companies. Refer to
http://www.scribd.com/doc/35436631/The-Buried-PCI-Report-on-Paid-News. There was a huge controversy a few years back during the elections in Maharashtra where Congress politicians were accused of using the media for a price.
And the media is good at cartelization. Notice that the Barkha Dutt story has received almost no coverage even in the rival channels - clear case of "you scratch my back, I scratch yours".
The stakes are too high now and everybody knows that everyone has a price - only a question of how many zeros to be added.