New Delhi, March 12: Voicing his displeasure over the "single-minded" obsession of a section of media with market forces, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee today said editorial policy should not be directed by profit motive or by prejudices of "media moguls and barons".

Chatterjee lamented that the media was not giving same importance to issues of governance it gave earlier and said "mere sensationalism" should end.

"We want our press to be fearless and uunbaised...It should abjure mere sensationalism and projections based on its own predilections," he said at a function where Hindustan Times Senior Editor Neelesh Mishra and Dawn (Pakistan) Assistant Editor Afsan Subhai were awarded the K C Kulish International Award for Journalism 2007.

"Editorial policy of a newspaper should not be directed by the prejudices of media moguls and media barons. While profit is indeed a motive in the media world, that in itself should not be the sole criterion when it comes to news and views on the issues before the nation," he said.

Chatterjee noted that newspapers and private channels report stock markets with an "obsessive" detail and not the debates in Parliament on major policy issues like agriculture or commodity inflation.

He had some tough words for the media as he said there exists the spectacle of newspapers and channels spending considerable space on telling people about the latest developments in the life of those in entertainment industry or sportsperson.

It indulges in giving "unsolicited astrological advice or covering extramarital affairs of even ordinary people sometimes and bizarre stories from remote corners like snake gods drinking milk in a particular home," he said, adding "debates (in Parliament) have ceased to be reported".

Chatterjee said substantial space has been provided to cover parties and weddings of rich and the famous with great deal than the problems of farmers or suicides among them.

"Owing to the single minded obsession with perceived market requirements, those elements of governance that were at one time considered of vital importance...No longer receive the attention they got in earlier years," he said.

"They are noticed, by and large, only when there is something of sensationalist value of some event relating to them or not otherwise," he said.

He said media should exercise its power for the "ultimate good of society and not out of any personal vendetta".

He said it was extremely important that the editor should not project the views of his own or of the management as news.

Asking media not to project democratic institutions in badlight, he said, "the image that remains with people in general is not just negative but incorrect."

"We should not allow anything which would make our citizens become cynical and lose interest in the democratic process, at the heart of which the Parliament stands," he said.