Reality News?!

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! ;-)