At a time when fake news is flooding the media and the people are unable to discern what is real and unreal in the coverage of news and dissemination of knowledge, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for credibility needs heed.

Speaking at the 75th anniversary celebrations of Tamil newspaper Daily Thanthi in Chennai on Monday, Modi stressed the importance of language newspapers in reaching out to different sections of people and the need for credibility as people tend to crosscheck what’s shown on the TV and written in newspapers and draw their own conclusions. In other words, what he means is in a multimedia culture, a single source of information has no place. At the same time, he also wanted healthy competition among credible media platforms.

Dwelling at length on editorial freedom, the Prime Minister said it should be used wisely in public interest. Invoking Mahatma Gandhi, Modi said: “Press is called the Fourth Estate. It is definitely a power, but to misuse that power is criminal.”

Giving a piece of his mind on the content, Modi wanted the media to shift its focus from politics-centric coverage to non-political and developmental news that affects a majority of population in the country.

One wonders how a media-shy prime minister has suddenly become media-savvy.