News Today

In the last few years, especially the last five years, Media, especially in India, seems to have turned a new leaf. With the availability of 24 X 7 news channels to feed, and 24 pages to print, there is a growing strain on content. 

Terms like newsworthy and breaking news have been totally redefined, items and issues are openly plugged, without any scruples. When Gail Wynand openly accepted that he plugged an event or an issue, he was clear it was about circulation and making money. Now, all media personnel seem to have turned into the same Gail, atleast on paper.

The other issue, which has become a bigger problem nowadays is the lack of unbiased narrative reporting, as the events panned out. What was earlier restricted to the center-spread of the newspapers (and to add, well modulated by the editors) has now become what is common content. Everyone has an opinion (which they did earlier as well), and are happy to express it on first page and prime-time, where one would have wanted to understand what exactly happened, and not what the author "feels" happened. It has become impossible to get a first eye account of anything without various views in the mix.

It is time the Fourth Estate pulls up their socks and understands what is actually their job, and leave it to the reader/viewer to interpret it.

Last but not the least, the viewers/readers are equally to blame, since they have conveniently replaced the sitcoms they were used to with this format of masala news to entertain them.

Lets please draw a line between entertainment and news !!