Spectacle of democracy: the quasi-executive functions of television news in India.

This article calls for enhancing the horizon of Political Communication Studies, drawing attention to certain relation between the media, the state and the public in a globalised world. Focusing on private mainstream news television in post-liberalisation India, it tries to show how Media, in its singularised popular sense of sensationalising news, generating live-stream of public opinion, conducting parallel investigation of crimes, judging the sub judice and posing as sovereign by perennially endorsing the logic of self-regulation, tries to appropriate the functions, image and rhetoric of the state institutions (the executive, the judiciary and the legislature). The article primarily explores the quasi-executive functions to understand the role of a seemingly autonomous public in Indian democracy. The increasing tussle that we are witnessing between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, the article argues, is to a large extent due to Media's claim to represent the public more effectively than any state institution, pushing "pillars of democracy" to fight with each other for their share of credit in serving the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]