Addy bhai as usual makes a very eloquent point about 'Hindi Heartland Journalism'. To confess, I was impressed by AajTak in the begining. Heck I even bought TV Today shares convinced that these guys have their fundas right. Notice the to the Bihar accent as opposed to the more neutral UP accent. This is a channel that screamed its Hindi Heartland roots. Their political commentary was involved. The other topics that they covered time to time were still done well.
This was the time when we just had NDTV and AajTak as the two noteworthy channels and NDTV with its more Stephanian mannerisms (was AajTak more Hindu college leaning? someone from DU please comment) almost demanded a more 'desi' response. Journalism was probably still not in the rat race of TV ratings. Along came the channel explosion.
Now I turn on AajTak, its either cricket or some crime story. Its almost pathetic. One outcome was that I sold my TV Today shares. Other was that I am almost bored of all news channels. Its the same story everywhere. No real news, just cricket and crime stories delivered in extremely melodramatic ways. Small incidents blown out of proportions, sometimes a non-incident created into an incident just to get that exclusive. A typical line might be - "Aap ja jawan ladka mar gaya. An aapko kaisa lag raha hai?". What do you expect to hear- "I am dancing with joy"?. Its insensitive, its inhuman at times.
There is a silver lining though. With so many channels trying to create news, there are sometime issues/incidents that gets highlighted in TV forcing officials to take some action. That can only be good. Besides it brings the power of democracy to fore. Once people realize that media can force issues, we may see some citizen action. You can already see that in say the Jessica case. It was only the widespread outrage fuelled by media that forced the process of correcting a travesty.
There is still hope.
Hindi Literature in Mumbai
9 years ago
3 comments:
Can't agree more. I have a few theories for the downhill journey of the media.
1. Most of the current players that are in the scene have questionable credentials, if any at all, in the truest journalistic sense. They are there because they think of it at an easy way to make money. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it explains the kind of content we see in news channels these days, as well as the number of channels which do not seem to have any differentiation with respect to each other
2. But with so many channels now, profits of news channels have declined, hence provoking the need to be more 'broad based'. News channels need to cater not just to the educated, tax paying 1% of the population, but the remaining 99% of India as well
3. There just aren't that many great journalists. Hire anyone who can talk seems to be the recruitment policy for corresponents, result: '... aapko kaisa lag raha hai ?'
4. Compentition for TRPs and revenues has, as u rightly said, 'inhuman television'. STill remember CNN IBM claiming within 12 hours of the explosions in mumbai, in a slick promo, that they were the first to break the news of the bomb blasts. They kept repeating that over and over again.
5. Not all media is the same. I somehow still have some regard for NDTV (they haven't paid me to say this mind u :-) ). They do take up issues like jessica lal, or nitish katara, or the right to information act.
What we really need is a big shakeout that kills all the fringe players who don't know what they're doing. Its happened in other parts of the world, no reason why it wouldn't in India !
Yes indeed true!! So many channels mushroomed in past 2-3 years and irony is we still have to surf for a meaningful news channel!! When I get few min to watch whats happening around, i end up just surfing through all channels screaming the same very local stories and the same sentences used by so called reporters. Miss those days of Shammi Narang, Salma Sultana of meaningful news even if was just of 30 min.
1. Ghansu, you spelled all the reasons why I am in software. dang!
2. Yes news is now entertainment. Here too we are just following in firang steps. I found FOX news channel to be the most entertaining show in town.
3. Thats almost my firms recruitment policy at times :). Actually all others too except those I walk in to get recruited.
Well I'll stop being a bullet point now. Hey its kinda nice seeing a comment longer than a post.
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