Published Paper Details:

ABSTRACT Today, the media has witness an important and challenging job for media organization is to create a balance between business considerations and social responsibilities. The primary duty of media is to serve its audiences by providing information on events and issues in fair, objective and impartial way. Viewed as the fourth pillar of the democracy people constantly look forward to the press for guiding the other three pillars: executive, legislative and judiciary of the democracy. Therefore, the media practitioners have an obligation to be truthful, comprehensive and unbiased in performing their informational, educational, and investigative and agenda building function. The research paper focuses about the challenge faced by the newspaper in informing, educating and championing the rights of people especially for social and political issues through advocacy journalism. In this regard, a study was conducted among the local newspapers of Barak Valley of Assam in India. The data was collected by using content analysis and survey method to find out the level of coverage and reportage of advocacy journalism. The objectives of the paper was to examine the status of advocacy journalism in terms of changing the socio-political scenario in the society. Interestingly, the study reveals that the involvement of local newspaper in Barak Valley in terms of development issues are less. The respondent urged that the newspapers should take it as a part of their obligation to sensitize the society as well as to implement policies that could engender the expected change in society.