Category — Media

Some time back, I had the opportunity of hearing Kumar Ketkar (currently chief editor of Loksatta and formerly editor of Maharashtra Times and other leading newspapers) speak at a private function. It was a freewheeling talk without structure but a lot of relevance. I usually don’t agree with his political views, but his talk that day was not political. He spoke of the genesis of his leftist leanings and the part played by his school, teachers, friends, etc. in his life. An important point that he stressed quite elaborately was the manner in which Marathi was fast losing relevance in contemporary times in Maharashtra in general and Mumbai in particular. He was quite saddened by the fact that not a lot of people could articulate effectively in Marathi. Most of the people present there nodded in silent agreement… Marathi has indeed been reduced to a second-grade language, they thought.

Cut to yesterday…

I was commuting home after a long day at work when I saw a huge billboard exhorting people to take their pick. On choice were two newspapers, ‘Mumbai Mirror’ and ‘Maharashtra Times’. The offer was to choose either one of these dailies as a complimentary accompaniment to a subscription of ‘The Times of India’.

I could not help but cringe at the thought of pairing up an institution like ‘Maharashtra Times’ (true it has lost a lot of its sheen in recent times, but it remains a Maharashtrian institution in spirit) with a sensational tabloid like ‘Mumbai Mirror’.

I know this isn’t fully representative of a general apathy towards Marathi, but it does go a long way towards that! And I couldn’t help but nod silently as I thought back to Kumar Ketkar’s words while staring at the hoarding before the traffic lights turned green and the bus lurched headlong into the rush hour traffic.

Google and Yahoo’s capitulation to Chinese censorship demands is well-known. And with Chinese State tightening its grip on information, it has come as a pleasant surprise that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has announced that Wikipedia will not bow to censorship of politically sensitive material in China.

Wales said censorship was ‘ antithetical to the philosophy of Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information, and for us to compromise I think would send very much the wrong signal: that there’s no one left on the planet who’s willing to say “You know what? We’re not going to give up.”‘

Way to go Jimbo!!

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!