News or Noise:

In the age of digital and free world (supposed to be), where print and electronic media is revolutionized beyond one’s imagination, it’s ironic that I am scare to open 90% of the news-channel, news paper, news-website because of their contents. Getting news is no more easy in this era of print and digital revolution, where India is supposed to be saturated with hundreds of news channel and paper. All we manage to get is some non-sense if we dare to flip through these channels or newspaper.

It was my personnel view till now, but no more as the same is resonated by non other but Chairman of Press council Of India (PCI) Justice Markandey Katju. He has endured criticism from different part of media, but his comment nonetheless describes the reality.

In this age of fierce competition where media organization is actually managed by people with degree in business administration , instead of people with experience in journalism, media is losing edge of what actually is called news. There is hardly any difference between news-channel or entertainment channel.

When I flip through different channels, I usually avoid coming across any new-channel (Barring few), which is quite capable of horrifying me. I remember when CERN was to first conduct experiment through Large Hadrons Collider (LHC) on 10th Sep, 2008, there were several rumor about safety of project, worse of all was destruction of world as result of that. I was curious and wanted to know more about the ongoing event. So I decided to watch news. What I came across was: “Breaking news: world is going to be destroyed because of planned LHC experiment by CERN. Only Kashi (a sacred city for Hindus) is going to be survived because it is standing on Shiva’s Trishul”. There were also showing interview of several babas of Kashi who were verifying the fact like an expert. I was flabbergasted; News channel could go no lower. It was not some exceptional case, general trend of news channels and newspaper reflect this, again barring few. The simple minded rural Indian take the words of news channel as the words of god. What affect this news will have on them. Instead of pushing India forward they are pushing it backward. How can anyone expect to root out centuries of feudal and unscientific blind faith from Indian society and establish a progressive and modern society, if the propagator of information (Media) only doing the exact reverse?

On very few news-paper front pages you would ever expect to find some important news. All we get is either news of some so called celebrity (Aishwarya’s Baby shower, Omar Abdullah’s divorce blah blah blah) or some scandal or controversy. 90% of the substance of any newspaper or channel contains something which could be clearly termed as entertainment section. Rest of the 10% struggles to put news. It could be easily understood that how much we Indians are missing. People die because of disease, hunger and poverty in one part of India, but other part of India is unaware of that as hardly any channel or paper finds a space for this news among their schedule crammed with so called popular news.  

I accept in this age of fierce competition one need to go with public mood to stay afloat. But who decides what the public mood is? I am also part of public and so do lots of others who are repulsed by today’s trend. As the Steve Jobs said, “Public never know what to buy”. It’s us who show them the way. Why not show them right way, instead of wrong? It’s easy to capture one’s attention with a picture with lots of color but only a picture that fulfills the criteria of art and quality capture one’s imagination and stay for the long time.

I am happy that in this competition and profit driven news industry there exists some few channels and newspaper whose constant endeavor is to keep us informed. The Hindu group is among them. Though they are little left oriented, but I don’t mind as even newspaper have right to have their own ideology. I have to adjust and balance my view accordingly, but in any case I get some proper and investigative news. I really appreciate them of standing for their ideology even in this age where it does not have any monetary values.

There are lots of happening around us and as a citizen of India we are entitled to know that. Its media’s responsibility to connect us with the rest of India and world. This is the demand of age and media have to listen to this.