First and foremost, let me apologize to the Western media for taking a swipe at them recently in one my earlier posts: American Media, Trivializing News and too internally Focussed?
Our Indian channels are just as pathetic. Yesterday, when the main news stories were that of an earthquake in Sumatra killing at least 60 people and a lot of folks still trapped in debris, the other news story being that if at least 100 people being killed by suicide bombers in Iraq, guess what was a half hour special on one of the news channels!
A special on the wedding of Liz Hurley and Arun Nayyar! How has the value of human life fallen? Channels will do anything to sell to get more and more eyeballs and in a country like India which has such a huge population, so many people dying is hardly news! Some other channel will cover the tragedies of human life – We however need our profits to survive! This is really so sad!
Meanwhile on another channel – there was a special on the upcoming Cricket World Cup, where one of the fathers of Indian news analysis (at least as far as I am concerned), Prannoy Roy, was asking a panel of retired cricketers who is the best looking of them all? Imran Khan who was on the panel said that it does not matter how they look, but what is more important is how they play, but again is it really a topic of discussion – How low can channels stoop for profits is stunning! What also disturbed me was Prannoy Roy, was hosting this! I was truly amazed at how inane the whole program was!
Is this what news channels are to propagate? There is absolutely no sense in all this!
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