It has been quite some time that the Indian media has gone thru a ‘makeover’ with live coverages and feeds directly from the venue by reporters and world class delivering of news by, well, ‘good looking’ news readers. But this globalization in the scenario of news channels hasn’t quite been able to provide us with a lot of things which are rather expected from them. I blame it on the profit seeking motive of these channels. They all believe in driving more and more viewers to their channels and in course have dispensed with their duties as a neutral source of news. Thus we find politically biased news, wrong information, discussions and analysis done by so called experts, etc. which actually are misleading and deceptive at times. They believe in the increasing TRP rating of their channels and so they start airing shows which are anything else but NOT news. Even, U’ll find astrological predictions, filmi gossips all on these channels. The Abhi-Ash marriage was a very good example of media hype and yet we find viewers taking interest in these shows and actively participating in those stupid polls.
Mr.Sanjay Dutt may have been acquitted by the court owing to his recent humanitarian activities but was there any need in telling us the colour of the short he wore?? I was surprised [and not shocked] to see a popular regional news channel airing programmes on haunted houses all over India! This particular channel once in THREE[!] of their top 5 ‘headlines at the moment’ had talked about how their channel has been awarded the NO.1 spot. English news channels are comparatively better than the regional and the Hindi ones.
But at the moment I remember an incident during the INDIA-BANGLADESH match in the last ICC world cup. I found Headlines Today [a subsidiary of AAJ TAK and India Today Group] bringing in a tarot card reader for predictions. When she was asked “who’ll win the toss?” she’d thought for a while to say “doesn’t matter, in anycase India will win.” Well after a few hours India had suffered a humiliating defeat in the hands of their neighbours but that didn’t stop this channel from calling in the same person during the next match. Well, I feel that the right word to describe that the INDIAN MEDIA IS NO LESS THAN A CIRCUS….what do the others say??