News on the Loose

I remember the good old days when I used to wait till 10:00 PM on Fridays to see "The World this Week" hosted by the legendary Prannoy Roy. He was a man who revolutionized the way in which news is conveyed at least from the Indian perspective. Maybe he followed the path of the BBCs and the CNNs, but he was the man who transformed the face of news in India.

When he came up with a dedicated news channel in the form of STAR News a few years later, there was a major upheaval amongst the news broadcasters whether a 24 hour news channel will succeed in India; again the man proved them wrong. Then came NDTV and that marked the rising of several new exciting story tellers like Rajdeep Sardesai, Srinivasan Jain, Burkha Dutt, Arnab Goswami etc. Soon there was a flurry of news channels that rocked the Indian media, and I as an ardent follower of news only through TV was really excited about the move expecting diverse perspectives from different people; but what it led to is the topic of discussion here.

The news media is dubbed as the watchdog of the Democracy; but is it really doing its job effectively. This doubt keeps passing my mind every time there is breaking news and soon after that it fades off in thin air. I am talking about the “Jessica Lal Case”, “Amar Singh ka amar kahani”, “Nithari Killings”, “7-11”, “Blue line buses” and the list goes on and on and on…

Every news channel is only interested in bringing the so-called “breaking news” to the viewers to increase their TRP ratings, but they are not really interested in following the story and let the viewers see the final outcome of it; except for a few news items like the “Sanjay Dutt Drama”, “India Fashion Week”, specific sports features etc.

Is this the responsibility of a news broadcaster? I have my own doubts about it and if someone can clarify please do so. The other day when the triumphant Indian team was returning back from Johannesburg, our fragile capital market was at its rocking best touching an all-time high of 17,000. I was really surprised to see all the news channels covering every move of the victory parade of the Indian team from the Mumbai airport to the Wankhede stadium and not the stock market scenario. It was in fact a great feat that India achieved in Jo’burg, but isn’t the economic scenario of India more important that the “Heroes’ welcome”. For me it was…

To add insult to injury, I had to sift through all the news channels back and forth to finally see the figure of 17,000 on my TV screens. That’s the watchdog in full action for you. One more instance: when had lost the cricket series to Australia and we desperately needed to win the 20-20 fixture in Mumbai and you know what is the “hot-news” about the 20-20 match… “Deepika Padukone is going to be at the Wankhede to witness her heroes Dhoni and Yuvraj play against Australia”, what the heck is the buzz about her coming for the match. I am more bothered about the team selection and the fitness of the players.

There is so much of real important news to cover, and there are enough channels and slots to telecast these happenings. The question here is:

• whether they really want to bring the news that is necessary for the public

• whether they are interested not just in improving their TRPs

• whether they want to just engross the audience with “breaking news” and not enlighten them with the hidden facts behind the scene

• whether they want to become the authentic watch dogs of the Indian Democracy.