Thursday, December 15, 2005

Breaking news....

Its not exactly breaking news that the media industry is looking at a phenomenal boom in the next few months.. and thats across the verticals - print, radio, television and so on..which raises the question of how much 'news' acually happens in the world on a daily basis.. is it so much that the existing entities are not enough to make sure that all of it reaches the world, and if not, then what justifies the mushrooming of more of their kind? which is, i guess, when we get into creation of news, sting operations and overall sensationalising of trivia.. when a malayala manorama in kerala would carry the 'news' that your neighbour's cow broke its tether and damaged your fence, and NDTV would get its video footage and classify it as 'Breaking news'.. you would be happy, so would your neighbour, since any publicity is good publicity.. but will i, sitting hundreds of kilometers away and not having any specific interest in bovine revolutionary tactics, be interested in the news? i guess not..
the argument would be that 'you dont like it, dont watch it', but what if all the channels/publications think its worthy news, what option does that leave? nothing, and sadly we have only ourselves to blame, because we are less interested in reading/seeing Chidambaram's fiscal policy than Nigar Khan's physical policies...
but what prompted me to think about this entire trip was manorama's week long front page coverage of the death of a malayali in afghanistan.. isnt that exactly what the terrorist group would want? extensive media coverage and a sublimal building of fear in the citizens? on a parallel note, a murderer would get much more prominence in coverage than a guy who might have saved a life..
by creating sensations out of every possible trivia that happens in every remote corner, isn't the media encouraging a whole lot of wrong things? there is a thin line between right to information and right information, and it takes a lot of maturity to walk the line...and so it aint so strange after all that lives full of trivia would slowly but surely get converted into trivial lives, for who wouldnt want their 15 secondsof fame?

until next time, what news??

9 comments:

the Monk said...

They should have a responsibility to truth, shouldn't they?but the one good thing abt this is that hushing up something is not going to be soe asy...at least it will come out...and i think that;s important...

Anonymous said...

a country wide dumbing down but as you said the option is not to watch.
austere

Prerona said...

dont agree with austere, in the end and to some extent it will come to you its more like a puch tech thing than a pull, isnt it?

Anonymous said...

Very well said, Manu.
The news is full of negativity, and they really have lost all sense of perspective. The smallest of crimes makes headline news ! And they rarely ever talk about goo, positive incidents.

For e.g for the Ganguly issue, they're forever showing idiotic fans, and numerous politicians and filmstars and what not talking about how the decision is unfair etc. Do you ever get to hear people in support of kicking Ganguly off the team ? Hmpf !

Anjali said...

Well said. I don't buy the argument that 'if that's what people want that's what we must give them'. There are no boundaries at all to what people may want.
But the media itself is composed of the same people ... they are not a separate tribe with separate values, and why should we expect that they would want anything different from the people they are catering to? If media shapes public opinion, the public shapes media opinion too.

Anonymous said...

i agree with you there Manus.. SIGH nowadyas.. sensationalism is the key word...

Stone said...

Something similar here..http://badmantalking.blogspot.com/2005/01/yellow-journalism.html

and here..http://badmantalking.blogspot.com/2005/06/lets-talk-about-news.html

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