Breaking News

It doesn't matter which day of the week it is - it could be a mundane Monday morning or a lazy Saturday morning, the front page of the morning newspaper is bound to have a scandal of some sort displayed on its front page in bold letters and to go along with it a sleazy picture no matter how irrelevant.

Is it just me or do you feel it too that our media, both print and electronic considers negative publicity as the way to grab eyeballs and keep them glued to the tele or paper, whichever the case may be? Sure there are scandals and need to be brought out to the public, but in between there are some 'not-so-scandalous' news which deserve attention too. For example India's foray into space with the indigenously developed Chandrayaan hardly created any ripples in the media; or for that matter how many of you recollect the names of our Olympic medalists at Beijing 2008.

Why? Simply because it does not fall into the 'Breaking News' category. But if Dhoni happens to take a haircut in Ranchi that seems to grab the headlines for a day at least. Talking of examples we could even talk at length of the 26/11 carnage, where the media became the eyes of the terrorists by airing live the positions taken by the NSG commandos!!

We keep blaming the politicians for inflaming communal tensions, which is absolutely spot on by the way. But what about the role of the media? The moment there is an incident, no matter how trivial, there would be a reporter there on the spot interviewing the victim, almost egging him/her on to malign a certain person or a community. One thing leads to another and lo behold we have a '9 PM ka tamasha' which is aired across all the news channels each trying to take credit for the 'Breaking News'.

I would rather go back to the old Doordharshan /AIR days . The lady anchors draped in silk sarees for me, thankyou :P

PS: After a long time, posted two posts within a week :)

Cheers,
toejam