Posts from — July 2006

Of course the SPG are to be blamed for the breach of security at 7 Race Course Road, New Delhi. And I’m pretty certain that some of the personnel manning the outer perimeter there, will be sacked… and with good reason too!

But it was ridiculous on the part of the three idiots who had no business trying to drive up to the Prime Minister’s residence thinking they could just meet him. The interviews that they gave to the news channels were so ridiculously naive and stupid that little kids in their right minds wouldn’t say what those two girls said on TV.
It scares me that I put my safety and comfort in the hands of such idiots when I’m flying!!

Reality news, it seems, is the latest buzzword. Gaurav recently spoke about the phenomenon and there’s an interesting discussion here at POV.

But I don’t understand. Isn’t news supposed to be reality anyways?

Nowadays, news channels seem to scout around for a human-interest story with a reasonably high emotional quotient and then they exploit it to the hilt, giving it an unreal amount of airtime. Even if the news does not seem to relate to us, the constant exposure to it that we’re subjected to somehow makes us empathize with the characters in the news story… more so with the in-the-face invasive reporting that is resorted to by the channels. This in turn lays the basis for a display of ‘conspicuous compassion‘ by us, the viewers. This compassion takes the form of countless sms messages and phone-ins to the news channels by viewers wanting to convey their wishes/sympathies/indignation.

This helps the channels by,

1. Keeping themselves occupied. With almost 30 odd news channels in India, and not a significant increase in the scope of news to cover, the news channels will obviously be happy to run such ‘reality‘ stories to justify their 24 x 7 presence on air.
2. Generating revenue from the lakhs of SMSes they receive.
3. Keeping the viewers glued to their channel and in turn earn high TRPs, which is no mean feat in this age of countless soaps.

All the media attention may be good in a way since it highlights problems, raises issues and generates awareness. But often, the larger picture, the deep-rooted issues, the burning problems get a raw deal and people concentrate more on these ‘reality‘ stories which are really asides, rather than main stories. People tend to watch them for the drama they provide rather than the news value. As a result these stories are no less than the ‘K’ soaps in the emotional quotient and the drama they generate.

Anyways… good or bad, one thing is for sure. ‘Reality news’ is the wrong phrase to describe this. It should probably be called news with the ‘K’ factor! ;-)

If the fax sent by Bharti Yadav had her UK address on it, why on earth did news channels like CNN-IBN and Star News triumphantly and gloatingly announce that they had managed to track down the house?! Given the postcode, a kid can find exact location of an address in the UK sitting a zillion miles away, using any of the online services like for example, Google Earth! You don’t need to be an ‘investigative’ journalist to do that.
I guess the lure of breaking a news story leads the news channels to break their ties with common sense!

Of course, it’s a completely different matter that most of these channels haven’t been able to grasp the meaning of “Breaking News” yet!

… should mean the success of stupidity, shouldn’t it?!

Seriously though, the phrase ‘intelligence failure‘ has been abused so often by self-styled experts after any terrorist strike, in recent and no-so-recent times, that it, like “Mumbai is resilient“, has become a convenient cover for government inaction.

The Broadcast Bill.

The Blog Block.

The dilution of RTI Act.

TV censorship

All that the government of India seems to be doing these days is exercise censorship in its various forms!

Terrorists are bombing our cities. Farmers are committing suicides. Cities and electrified border fences are without electricity. Prices are shooting up all the time. But hey… who cares about those things?!! Don’t we elect the government to decide what’s right for us and what’s not?!