The Desi Journalism

Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Rajat Sharma, Pranay Roy and the likes of them all names of the people who have achieved kingship in Journalism today in India. With all the other aspects of country, India's media has taken a big leap. From the sole Doordarshan news to the huge wave of new news channels today, we have come a long way.


But sometimes it really makes me wonder about the direction where our media is headed. It has always been an open debate about the quality of journalism we have in our country, but as even this debates rides with the media as a carrier, a few issues never see the light of the day. Some arguments go unnoticed, some issues never get corrected.


If I were to speak of an incident, On 26th January, India celebrated its Republic Day. It was a very proud occasion at the Flag hoisting ceremony on the RedFort, when a glorious 2007 India looked back upon. A clear sign that India's footprint is getting better day by day.

However, late evening I sat down for a quick look at the news on this day and I was shocked.
On Aaj Tak (sabse tez), (Best news channel award winner 6 times in a row), there was a story (which they say is fictitious, and obviously could be closely harmonized with India's current political scenario).

On a day as that, it seems they took great pride to portray how a certain General X (fictitious character), would be psychologically imbalanced to wage a nuclear war (do these guys even know the implications of making such a statement) against India. Their supposed goal was to portray how prepared or unprepared India was for this.

The show was so precisely planned, with not only the development of the idea but with visuals and graphics depicting how our cities would be targeted, and that the cities would be wiped of from the face of the earth. Their war strategy seemed to be a well built war tactic which they assumed the neighboring country would have used against us.

It started of with a head count comparison of the Indian soldiers against theirs which continued to a comparison of the military equipments (tanks, submarines, ships, etc) of both the countries.

Depicting how the other country was not potent enough for a head to head attack over us would have resorted to a strategy put up earlier in this blog.

Their predictions even accounted for the number of lives and property losses that we may have seen lost during the war. Imagine all of this being put up on our republic day, when India is still striving hard to achieve peace with them and that these news channels and shows are being broadcast all over the world. What message are we putting up guys, and are you even giving it a thought.

However, this did not end, the next day say another story which acclaimed the entire world would end after an asteroid being hit somewhere in the 2020's . The story does not hurt as much as the way it has been portrayed.


Another incident was of the famous IBN 7 where in life on Mars issue suddenly erupted from an Image of the Mars surface with an impression of a woman on the surface seen from an extremely long distance.
The image was "supposed to" be released from NASA. Nows lets take a break and think about it. How would NASA let such an opportunity pass by of not declaring such a great discovery, and the news did take no responsibility of testifying their story. This clearly depicted the story's integrity and they did not want to reach the bottom of it because they knew it would not be true.


There is one more incident, a day or 2 back when Aaj tak spent a lot of time explaining how the Iceage is soon arriving. They even put up a deadline of 2055 to 2060. Lets just rethink, 2 days back they show up an asteroid story which would kill most of our race by 2020's and the next day we have an IceAge approaching. I fail to understand why would it be a news if I was to be extinct much before the "supposed" IceAge.


On the other hand, Doordarshan news stuck to showing how the states India had their Parade on the 26th January. It just making me think as an Indian about the direction of media today.
I am personally a fan of all the people I started my blog with and I consider that they are the Icons of Indian Media today. Lately, NDTV distributed Indian of the Year awards which was a very inspiring program to have been an audience to. Pranay Roy and Barkha Dutt hosted the occasion and it was an amazing piece of coverage.


All said and done, why are the bloopers to media still exist.

Firstly, because we all watch it! The spicy news gives us great entertainment and we watch it to discuss the stupidity with others. Secondly, a majority of people in India still resides in Rural areas, and even though their understanding may still be a little subdued their access to media is very much as ours and they do not give a thought to what is being shown to them. Imagine the General X story being watched by someone in Jammu and Kashmir. The implications and rules of the game change. Thirdly, because India does not have a body that can monitor such issues, solely for the purpose that news channels don the media today and have gone from being journalists to influencers.

The monitoring body simply does not work because of the fact that we all enjoy the right to express and speak. Agreed. But when you are showing a "convincing" story which you are not yourself sure of its integrity, to large masses in the rural India, they would neglect that the story is fictitious and would very much believe on what is being shown to them. This is where you abuse the integrity of using your power of speech to influence the people less rational than you.



Thus, as any other, both sides of media will co-exist, great gossips to showbiz paparazzi, to weird stories. This not being a debatable issue but certainly an issue we all need to be aware of and we already are.

But one thing is for sure. Some day, some time people will rise and people will realise :)