English news channels are a new phenomenon in india over the last few years. News every half hour with reports from all over the country. Polls conducted every hour on what the viewers think on particular issues. Debates using "experts" on different issues everyday. After getting back from work in the evening, one just needs to see these news channels for an hour to get updated on whats going on in their country. The idea is just right. What more can I ask for? As a seasoned viewer of these news channels, I admire at them though not for the right reasons.
A 14 year old girl was killed in noida. These news channels rush to cover the news. Debates
on who could be the killer. The suspicion of police falls on a male servant maid of the house who was missing. Next day he was also found dead. After a few days, police arrest the girl's father.
The media gives a coverage of 10 to 15 minutes on the news every half hour for three days. Debates during peak time on why would a father kill his own child. Questions if this is turning out to be a characteristic of new urban india's problems. Next day, the same channels finds a lot of loopholes in the case and again debates if the father is the real killer. The rest of the news coverage is given to the bollywoodised IPL. A sports analysis on whether the cool headed dhoni will take chennai super kings to semifinal and more importantly if the dresses of cheerleaders are vulgar or not and so on...
In the same week thousands of miles away, a district called cuddalore in tamilnadu sees two murders by a stranger using an iron rod. Few more people have been injured by him and also reports of rape. People in cuddalore district are living in fear. By all counts, this atleast requires equal coverage as the above if not more in these english news channels. Why have they totally failed in covering it? Yesterday, there was a significant increase in farm waiver supposed to benefit the dryland farmers of vidarbha which sees one suicide every 8 hours. Relief to many more farmers but not as important as the other ones for these channels.
The reason is that the objective of these news channels seems to be news selling rather than news reporting. And what sells more easily to their viewers who in majority are english speaking urban population? What catches their attention more? These english channels have cracked it. This is what gets them advertisements and what we call as 'commercialization' has crept
deep into them. So does it mean the the urban english class not appreciate the news reporting of
rural india? I think it is more of a vicious circle. Unless you cover the real issues of rural and urban poor more and more, it would be impossible for you to catch the attention of your viewers on such issues. No doubt that these channels are getting more and more closer to the news channels of USA in quality which has made their citizens believe that the world has a total of 50 states.
However, the english print media on the other side looks more qualitative. Having grown up reading 'The Hindu', print media has been a more reliable source of news for me. Though there are gaps in reporting and have been increasingly commercialized, atleast some of them have maintained the balance between adverstisements and reporting issues of the indian poor. The news channels definitely needs to learn some lessons from the print media if they want to represent the mass rather than a class in the coming years.
4 comments:
I doubt any medium that needs to turn in a profit will be "non-commercial" for too long -- even in print media the largest circulations are from those newspapers that are much more "entertainment" focussed.
The reason why PBS, New Yoker, etc. survive in the US, I think, is because there is a demand for that kind of reporting and a willingness to support it from a sufficiently large segment of the viewership / readership.
This is true also for Civil Society Organisations -- very few in India receive the kind of support that they need from middle-class India. In order to attempt to change this (and persuade Indians to do more) we are working on developing www.CSOPartners.org -- maybe a similar effort is needed from those that care about it for news reporting -- it would be great to have a PBS type effort in India, for example.
To be honest, I think that there IS a large market for 'serious' news reporting in India. I can specifically vouch for a large part of the youth, who would preferably like a good combination of serious and entertaining news. Why not make the 'serious' issues interesting? I have to say that I think its all a question of how you put it across. As a college student, I have heard speakers who dealt with issues such as game theory (a very cool topic) in the most boring way, and yet had other speakers who fascinated me with Monetary Economic history. I think it is possible, especially if you look at writers like P. Sainath.
Prarthana, Since you mentioned about P Sainath, a link that has a speech by Sainath on media 'Wah the Indian Media...part I' in another blog of mine:
http://idealist83.blogspot.com/2006/05/wahthe-indian-media-part-1.html
You are spot on!
The following article on the same topic might be of some interest to you
http://intheorbit.blogspot.com/2008/07/deteriorating-standards-of-indian-media.html
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