Good Evening
“Good Evening , and welcome to the World This Week.”. This was Prannoy Roy in The World This Week in a not so connected world around more than a decade and a half back. These were the times when we clamoured in front of the telly sets to get a glance of what was happening around us. No news channels , no entertainment channels, just news in hindi at 9:00 PM and the news in English at 10:00 PM.
And all of us used to wait in earnest for Prannoy Roy at 10:30 PM on Friday nights for “The World This Week” where he would give us the happenings around the world. That’s when we used to see Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeni fighting it out in the middle east. Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev moving towards ending the world war, the wars in the Honduras et. al. This was the time when “News” and TV Journalism had real meaning.
Then came the satellite revolution, with channels streaming in from all quarters. There came Zee and thus started the era of the Soap Operas. This was followed by 24*7 movie and more recently news channels. And so out very own endearing Prannoy Roy of yore ends up launching a 24*7 news channel himself and with it the old adage of responsible media flew out of the window and by now I guess its even out of orbit.
Today we have numerous news channels, and honestly switching between any channel at any point of time doesn’t make you feel that you’ve switched to a different channel altogether. Yeah its true that the faces change, but the kind of silly journalism that exists today spans across all news channels.
Firstly due to the advent of so many news channels, the concept of “News” being a valuable commodity has disappeared. News is more or less like air, waiting to be inhaled, its there whether you like it or not. The only difference between air and news is that, you can choke a person and cut off his air supply and he’ll die ,that’ll become news, but try to choke news, again that becomes a news, its that persistent, too bad it doesn’t become air. That would’ve been more useful.
The channels have to keep running 24*7, so to fill in the slots they need something to air. That’s called Breaking News, some crap that keeps scrolling at the bottom of your telly screens whenever you switch on a news channel. And when a hapless reporter goes to the place where maybe deve gowda kept his eyes open for a full minute , he goes on interviewing people and asking relentless questions like ‘what’s the shape of his eyes? What’s the color of his eyes? And how does he look like with his eyes open? Whilst making claims that his channel is the first to bring you that piece of crap that you may call news.
You get bored of this and switch on to another channel where you find another dude going with a secret camera to a place and telling you that the guy lives in the house has been guilty of trying to force his way into his own house (now that he’s lost the key to his own house and is trying to break open the lock is immaterial). Now the media runs to the local police and try to round them up for not stopping the guy for entering his own house.
Then a channel decided to come up with a crime round up and others followed suit. So now across the whole plethora of satellite junk you have a host of funny guys making funnier gestures whilst trying to warn you all the while that you’re not safe. Of course we’re not safe and we don’t need to be told that. Watching all those gestures makes you wonder whether he’s choking and you may certainly die of boredom if not laughter. Yeah, I agree we’re not safe.
Now like that’s not enough they decide to spook you, and take you to places which they claim are haunted with B grade music from Ramsey moves running in the background, they visit places at night and claim that nobody visits those haunts as they’re haunted. Poor ghosts (if they do exist) would already have run for their lives when they knew what kinda idiots were coming upon them. Believe me its these guys that are scary and not the ghosts.
As if this was not enough each of the channels have their own reality show. Now watching any of them any time makes me wonder whether a person crying or going hyper just because he’s on camera can be termed as “Reality”. Also someday I’d like these satellite buggers telling me how much of “Real Cash” was paid to those people to get that “Reality” done.
The funniest part of it all, the sports capsules whenever any match is going on (be it cricket , football or any other sport). The funniest part being cricket as it’s the national pastime of the country. We have the likes of Maninder Singh and a Syed Saba Karim telling millions of viewers how Yuvraj Singh should improve his footwork or Rahul Dravid should play the hookshot. If I remember correctly, the same Maninder Singh was a person (national waste /discard one should say). Who never got up to a cumulative score of 51 in his entire career. Saba Karim was a super expressway right behind the stumps. The less said the better and the less he says about wicket keeping, still better.
Sometime back , a news channel tried to play peace maker between a wannabe singer and a wannabe wannabe. The wannabe singer on his birthday kissed the wannabe wannabe and she went ballistic on international television shouting “Hindustani nari “ and stuff like that while Mr Lucky Lips was licking his lips in gusto all the time. Well jokes apart there’s one thing I’d like to say , people have better things to do, so they just don’t care who screws around with whom.
The most pathetic displays of crappy attitude of the reporters comes during the natural and man made calamities when they run about asking questions like “Aapko kaisa lag raha hai”. Now hell, is a person with his hand blown away in a blast supposed to feel ecstatic” for god’s sake, when will these guys learn? Honestly speaking these media junkies should be cordoned off from those areas during the calamities.
Yeah, the media does a fairly good job sometimes bringing us news on time and other informative stuff. There are channels like CNBC TV18 who still know how to do that. But its time the others understood that they have a responsibility towards society, and running a news channel is not all about entertainment and glamour. It’s more about discharging your debt to the society that you are responsible to and get the people to realize the same.
:: Antya ::
And all of us used to wait in earnest for Prannoy Roy at 10:30 PM on Friday nights for “The World This Week” where he would give us the happenings around the world. That’s when we used to see Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeni fighting it out in the middle east. Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev moving towards ending the world war, the wars in the Honduras et. al. This was the time when “News” and TV Journalism had real meaning.
Then came the satellite revolution, with channels streaming in from all quarters. There came Zee and thus started the era of the Soap Operas. This was followed by 24*7 movie and more recently news channels. And so out very own endearing Prannoy Roy of yore ends up launching a 24*7 news channel himself and with it the old adage of responsible media flew out of the window and by now I guess its even out of orbit.
Today we have numerous news channels, and honestly switching between any channel at any point of time doesn’t make you feel that you’ve switched to a different channel altogether. Yeah its true that the faces change, but the kind of silly journalism that exists today spans across all news channels.
Firstly due to the advent of so many news channels, the concept of “News” being a valuable commodity has disappeared. News is more or less like air, waiting to be inhaled, its there whether you like it or not. The only difference between air and news is that, you can choke a person and cut off his air supply and he’ll die ,that’ll become news, but try to choke news, again that becomes a news, its that persistent, too bad it doesn’t become air. That would’ve been more useful.
The channels have to keep running 24*7, so to fill in the slots they need something to air. That’s called Breaking News, some crap that keeps scrolling at the bottom of your telly screens whenever you switch on a news channel. And when a hapless reporter goes to the place where maybe deve gowda kept his eyes open for a full minute , he goes on interviewing people and asking relentless questions like ‘what’s the shape of his eyes? What’s the color of his eyes? And how does he look like with his eyes open? Whilst making claims that his channel is the first to bring you that piece of crap that you may call news.
You get bored of this and switch on to another channel where you find another dude going with a secret camera to a place and telling you that the guy lives in the house has been guilty of trying to force his way into his own house (now that he’s lost the key to his own house and is trying to break open the lock is immaterial). Now the media runs to the local police and try to round them up for not stopping the guy for entering his own house.
Then a channel decided to come up with a crime round up and others followed suit. So now across the whole plethora of satellite junk you have a host of funny guys making funnier gestures whilst trying to warn you all the while that you’re not safe. Of course we’re not safe and we don’t need to be told that. Watching all those gestures makes you wonder whether he’s choking and you may certainly die of boredom if not laughter. Yeah, I agree we’re not safe.
Now like that’s not enough they decide to spook you, and take you to places which they claim are haunted with B grade music from Ramsey moves running in the background, they visit places at night and claim that nobody visits those haunts as they’re haunted. Poor ghosts (if they do exist) would already have run for their lives when they knew what kinda idiots were coming upon them. Believe me its these guys that are scary and not the ghosts.
As if this was not enough each of the channels have their own reality show. Now watching any of them any time makes me wonder whether a person crying or going hyper just because he’s on camera can be termed as “Reality”. Also someday I’d like these satellite buggers telling me how much of “Real Cash” was paid to those people to get that “Reality” done.
The funniest part of it all, the sports capsules whenever any match is going on (be it cricket , football or any other sport). The funniest part being cricket as it’s the national pastime of the country. We have the likes of Maninder Singh and a Syed Saba Karim telling millions of viewers how Yuvraj Singh should improve his footwork or Rahul Dravid should play the hookshot. If I remember correctly, the same Maninder Singh was a person (national waste /discard one should say). Who never got up to a cumulative score of 51 in his entire career. Saba Karim was a super expressway right behind the stumps. The less said the better and the less he says about wicket keeping, still better.
Sometime back , a news channel tried to play peace maker between a wannabe singer and a wannabe wannabe. The wannabe singer on his birthday kissed the wannabe wannabe and she went ballistic on international television shouting “Hindustani nari “ and stuff like that while Mr Lucky Lips was licking his lips in gusto all the time. Well jokes apart there’s one thing I’d like to say , people have better things to do, so they just don’t care who screws around with whom.
The most pathetic displays of crappy attitude of the reporters comes during the natural and man made calamities when they run about asking questions like “Aapko kaisa lag raha hai”. Now hell, is a person with his hand blown away in a blast supposed to feel ecstatic” for god’s sake, when will these guys learn? Honestly speaking these media junkies should be cordoned off from those areas during the calamities.
Yeah, the media does a fairly good job sometimes bringing us news on time and other informative stuff. There are channels like CNBC TV18 who still know how to do that. But its time the others understood that they have a responsibility towards society, and running a news channel is not all about entertainment and glamour. It’s more about discharging your debt to the society that you are responsible to and get the people to realize the same.
:: Antya ::
posted by KD @ 10:53 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
U know wht antya i have seen this face of media too closely when they hav raked the emotions and thoughts of those in distres. Imagine a situation where a 19 year old girl is killed after molestation and the family is waiting to claim the dead body 3 days of the incident and the media walks in at the funeral and asks "Kya aap jaante hai woh ladke kaun the kya woh unhe jaantee thee" How the F$%^ is that a issue of national reporting and broadcast
yep... i can understand that... this even happened during the 2001 gujarat quake.. and 2002 gujarat riots when these people came and asked people what they would do with the compensation money.. sheesh.. honestly it sucks..
ouch... this is real hard... the comments i mean... how cheap can people get...
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