A very accurate viewpoint, according to me, was pinpointed by someone recently, “We don’t want the luxury of 24X7 reporting, we can to with a 6X7 class of quality news coverage.” Since the advent of 24 hour news channels, a different kind of news reporting has taken over the Indian scene. The very definition of news has undergone a sea change. In a bid to keep their 24X7 ventures alive, the news channels have started reporting events like the birth of the seventh child of the ninth son of the oldest village sarpanch in India as ‘exclusives’ and as ‘breaking news’. The euphoria that was whipped up by the media during the ‘Prince’ episode was an apt indicator of the state of journalism in India today. And to top it all, the amount of economic help and general response that was elicited out of the public left me flabbergasted. I have personally seen entire families sitting glued to their idiot boxes watching the rescue operation as if a watching reports of 9-11. Some newspapers have been almost completely converted from intellectual information dissipaters to glamorous P3P centric tabloids and multicoloured in-your-face advertisement collections. Maybe the business aspect of journalism has something (or everything!!) to do with this, but then there’s a certain elegance and respectability associated with journalism and that shouldn’t be compromised beyond a certain limit. The Supreme Court was absolutely spot on to observe that sting operations, so much the craze among news channels these days, were acceptable by themselves but only as long as they were not utilized by the ‘stingers’ for making a quick buck.
Real journalism is taking a big hit in this era of bland consumerism and gossip mongers are increasingly replacing journalists. The pen, it is said, is mightier than the sword. But if the pen is preoccupied perennially busy jotting down the vital stats of the richest porn queen in the world, it is weaker even weaker than Dubya’s hold on his vote bank!!!
4 comments:
Media is a parallel government with its own methods. It can really get scary if you are on the receiving side of these hounds.
So do we crave for the monopoly era of Doordarshan? May be!!! ;)
The viewer should have the choice of watching the news anytime of the day because of the increasingly hectic lives people lead. Also, the opinions expressed may be biased or the programmes unworthy but if the viewer is dumb enough to take everything at face value then he deserves to be taken for a ride. Yes, I do agree with the fact that the quality of programming is deteriorating.
in my opinion, the net is a much better option, as of today, than the TV if u need to update urself quickly at any time of the day. if u switch on the TV at any time, all u find is... the beaten to death story of a police constable who was lynched by a crowd for misbehaving with women.
u r right about the point reagrding the IQ of the audience though.
post more often pari...you write well..hows life otherwise
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