Breaking NEWS

A farmer decides to commit suicide and all the NEWS channel camp to capture his every action and broadcast it to the whole world. A robot rescues a nude girl who was bathing from a building caught on fire was captured on camera for circulation around the world. Familiar with these scenes?  You should be if you had chances to watch films like “PEEPLI LIVE” and “ENDHIRAN”. Do director’s include these kinds of scenes to move their story forward or are they sarcastic of today’s media, I strongly believe it is the later.

Why shouldn’t they be of the fourth pillar of democracy? It is there for everybody to see. Let’s face the reality, they are here to just make money and money comes only if they get good TRP (Television Rating Point) which is the criterion that indicates the popularity of a channel. Today which ever NEWS channel you tune to we would see breaking news presented in their own version even if they don’t have enough details about them, then for some days we are updated with information that the budding journalist   gather from various sources without even authenticating it. Then we get to see reputed journalist interviewing and conducting show with the people involved in the making of this news giving us big picture. This week long activity of particular news awakens the people who march with candles in their hand as protest. With the advent of social networking sites people discuss it on net even going to the length of creating hate pages.  All this flow of event makes the authorities to announce some action. Then there is yet another News breaks in some other part of the country to which people get hooked to thanks to these NEWS channels. This is what happening today. People are not interested in beating news to death, in seeing if the affected people are compensated properly.

Why are the NEWS channel functioning the way they are, are there people getting benefit out of this show? let’s see, Politicians would top the list I guess, journos never forget to get their views there by giving them instant recall values among the people which otherwise would require lot of visit to their constituency , spending the fund they get, now they can turn a blind eye until the next campaign time and pocket the money they get. Film stars, industrialist, so called social workers get their due publicity just by hoping from one channel to another. Corporate too are benefitted by getting air time and also sponsoring award nights like “INDIAN of the year” at rates which is lower when compared to entertained channels. Talking about the entertained channel they too have turned smart and now market their shows in the NEWS channel to a wider audience.

Yes agreed that these channels need money to run the show but then how much and should they comprise on the quality of news they provide. I strongly believe if the quality of content is good you will still get money to run the show.