Saturday, August 2, 2008

Media has become a carrier of bad news for the nation.

Sometimes I ponder about whats happening around us. Economic growth, science and research, technology, life style and social changes, education, longer life span....so much of positivity.

On the other hand there is increased crime rate, terrorism, dangerous life threatening illness and viruses never heard before, degenerating moral fabric, breaking family and societal systems, fanaticism.....so much negativity.


Are things really so bad? Or are we being misled? By whom?

Media is to blame. Irresponsible, insensitive and sub standard journalism. The 24 hour news channels have become a nuisance. No censorship, No cultural sensitivity and off all no humanity.

Anything is the name of the game to get TRPs and then ad revenue. The same clipping (of barely a few seconds or a minute or two duration) is played and replayed through out the day to increase the TRPs. And not only is it shown many times over on one channel it is shown many times over and many channels. Let me illustrate this point. When the Jaipur bomb explosions happened; the video footage was repeated nothing short of 20 times during the day for about 3-4 days. Which makes it 60-70 times in a span of 3-4 days. Now if there are about 10 news channels and all of them replayed it with the same frequency, the same event was telecast about 600-700 times on the television all over the country. No doubt people absolutely panic when ever even a small explosion happens.

And this applies to types of news. Recently a Karnataka MLAs wife went missing and her body was found hanging in a room in Delhi. The video footage of her body hanging was all over the media being replayed and replayed. No censorship that there are small children sitting in front of the television watching.

A small child is found dead in Asaramjis Ashram with his head inside a bucket. There goes the media replaying the same footage all over the television.

The murder images of Arushi and her servant Hemraj still haunt me in the night.

26th July images of flooded Mumbai are being replayed, year after year news channels. As a result even if there is no flooding people in Mumbai prefer staying home. Causing huge financial losses to the city.

Media has become the bad news carrier. Media is bringing depression, stress and hopelessness in our lives.

Media is to blame for making things look so grim. By exaggerating them beyond reality.

I come back to where I started from.
Economic growth, science and research, technology, life style and social changes, education, longer life span....so much of positivity. Why isn't media talking about this. Why doesn't media carry good news into our homes and over drawing rooms?