Recently I had a lot of free time so I caught up on all that I had missed for the last few years, which is basically catching up on TV, movies, newspapers and good homecooked food. Although I enjoyed this phase thoroughly I noticed one disturbing trend - namely the huge media frenzy over anything small or big. So I thought I will write about it.
Media literally means "A means or instrumentality for storing or communicating information". So keeping the definition in view the media has a huge responsibility of keeping the citizens of India i.e. the general public INFORMED and I should not be off the mark to say that the information provided should be "unbiased". However the various news channels I managed to watch were not exactly unbiased nor were they catering to the Information responsibility. I would also like to say that not all channels are trash but sometimes even the better news channels fall for the ploy of reporting soundbites with no content.
Some incidents which I saw over the last few months and will remain etched in my memory due to their weirdness,craziness or superlative reporting are:
1. AbhiAsh Wedding: This takes the icing on the cake for its sheer drama which wasn't actually there. All news channels had a field day reporting the event with hardly any visuals or content. Some shots which were taken were repeatedly shown a zillion times. Even the run-up to the wedding took a lot of media space but what did a average man gain from it - nothing, zilch.
2. Shilpa Shetty-Gere Episode: Another incident which should be a prime example of making a mountain out of a mole hill. I agree that the visuals were not very decent to look and bordered on viewing a molestation case but as far as I know if the two people involved are fine with it the media should not have drawn it's on conclusions. I happened to view the "kissing scene" on a particularly famous hindi news channel and after viewing the same the anchor intelligently concluded that Shilpa Shetty was responsible for it !! Amazing, I too watched the scene and could not conclude how was Shilpa responsible for it, but still these are the ways of our dear hindi news channels.
3. World Cup Cricket: The coverage of the cup was worst I have seen for a long time mainly due to too much focus on the advertisements than the cricket match.For god sake it was the World cup, the only game India is enthusistic about and the viewing experience is shattered by the innumerous advertisements shown. The advertisements ate up all the intelligent commentary during the match and usually the first ball of overs. This is pathetic, I think BCCI should put some rule into place for limiting this. Another interesting thing was the deliberations that the Extraa Innings used to do befoer every match. They were so predictable and lacked imagination and also I think this was the only World Cup cricket in which there were no highlights shown to satisfy people who could not wake till 2-3 AM to watch the match.
4. UP Elections: BSP simply proved all media wrong and emerged truimphant. This also is an interesting aspect of all media hype before a elections in which a lot of opinion polls and exit polls are shown which take up a lot of media space and precendence over other important issues and finally everything comes to a naught !! So it brings us to a very crucial aspect of these polls i.e. are they administered in the right manner and do they indicate a representative sample. I think not.
5. Placements in B-Schools: I believe media is mainly responsible for creating the unhealthy competition of average salaries among all educational institutes in India. Nowdays people look at insitutes as some factories which produces products(students) which are lapped up by the industry. I believe that this is a wrong picture being depicted by the media. They should dwell more on the struggle done by students to reach there, the inspiring stories behind every small achievement instead they go for the "masala" and just print the monetary figures which is unjustified for many who don't make the cut or for those who cannot make it due to various reasons.
6. News Channels or Bollywood News Channels?: Almost all news channels everyday focus on bollywood big time. I tend to believe that it is the lifeline of all news channels. Every small nuance of the bollywood is discussed in great detail. The irritating thing is that already loads of news channels are covering bollywood in great detail then why do news channels join the bandwagon? They should restrict themselves to news/information period.
7. Hindi News Channels: I am particulary disappointed by the news carried by various hindi news channels. The reporting quality is really bad and the stories they show are weird and mostly deal with rape, murder, infidelity and molestation reports. They mostly aim to titillate the audience and have reports like 1 person murdered in a particular city while I am sure that in all cities across India someone is murdered everyday then why a particular murder is reported? The Ans is just because they had a correspondent there, too funny. Also the breaking news and their conclusions are weird at times.
So the MEDIA which was supposed to inform us about the various burning issues the society is facing instead focuses on Bollywood, Masala events, titillating news, wrong projections and shoddy media reporting.I think there is a serious need for some good talent to join the media industry or for grooming the existing ones. We being the citizens of a democratic country have to respect the freedom of expression which we enjoy yet there has to be some quality checks on the content. In the end, I would also say that channels are not entirely to blame as the audience also demands it. Yet I think the media should be more responsible and take the onus of making India more aware.
As you would have noticed the article is all negative in flavor, much in line with the news shown in the media.
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