Prasad-pointofview
Mainstream journalism at the lowest ebb?
Today’s Monday 14 March 2011) “national newspaper”, the Times of India (founded 1838!) makes my blood boil. Go to the page covering world news, you will know why. On one side you have the report covering the Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear radiation hazard tragedy of horrendous dimension. Immediately adjacent to this are snippets of some pop star’s wardrobe malfunction, some celeb cutting her hair and so on. This is simply nauseating. Why? Why has this old lady of Bori Bunder degenerated into peddling mostly such rubbish? To be the largest circulated newspaper in the country? This riles. On most days, it takes half a minute to skim through the supplement and not more than five minutes to go through the main pages. The profound and the profane? The sublime and the ridiculous? Pursuit of trivia is overcoming everything else.
It seems that the content is driven by what people want to read. There are more serious, less tabloid like newspapers, and yet TOI has the largest circulation!
ReplyDeleteAs an "occasional" journalist, I find that no one seems to want articles with any depth to them...or any length. They want quick flashes....it's the way things are now. But even with this, as you say, the standards are abysmal.
ReplyDeleteI stopped taking the Times of India long ago. The Deccan Herald may have its shortcomings, but it's still the newspaper in our home, along with the stodgy Hindu.
in a recent earthquake somewhere up north, when reporters went up to the disaster site they saw something that makes us Indian feel shameful. A father was busy trying to break the wall safe and retrieve his valuables instead of attending to his young son stuck in debris nearby and crying for help. That's the kind of values we have sunk to...by and large in this country of Buddha, Ram, and Gandhi. So its no surprise if the Japanese disaster gets a quick glance while time is spent ogling at the bikini babes and gossip...or hours on end is spent on Nehra's disastrous last over in the Nagpur game. Accordingly the Ol Lady of Boribunder fashions her stories...and smiles all the way to the bank, being the largest circulated broadsheet in the world. Forget values. Today the moolah. Tomorrow the deluge or tsunami.
ReplyDeleteSo I run to BBC, CNN, Tehelka and even Deccan Herald for balance & perspectives...and some sense of priorities!
I fully agree with you. I read the online edition and it has only useless stories and pop-up advertisements which end up crashing my web browser. Imagine 3/4th of the screen covered with an advertisement for 10-15 seconds and some annoying voice telling you to buy toilet paper.
ReplyDeleteI actually have a bone to pick with the entire news media in India -- sensational reporting x 1000!!