Amidst the criticism which the Indian media faces for reducing news to infotainment, it still hasn’t lost touch with the real issues, the issues which affect the common man.
When Priyadarshi Mattoo case was forgotten, media played a commendable role to bring it to the forefront.
Though it cannot take all credit for the judgment, it has again brought to the front the two P’s of media – power and pressure.
Finally after watching prince-rescued-drama, snake-after-man-drama, driverless-car-drama, matuknath-love story-drama, girls-getting-into- Prime Minister’s-residence drama and almost losing hope that I would never be subjected to some kind of intellectual stimulation or issue based news, this comes like a breath of fresh air.
Though broadcast journalism has come into the limelight for all the wrong reasons – sensationalizing of unimportant ‘news’, magnifying issues which didn’t need to be in the spotlight. This form of media is quite new in India, not taking into account doordarshan, the sarkari channel which has been there since 1959, where news anchors drone about lifelessly, looking almost bored.
The private players still have teething troubles as their foray into the industry is about a decade old.
When compared to the biggies in the west, they don’t quite match up. But given the experience and the fact that western broadcast media had started to establish in first half of 1900s, we still have some catching up to do.
Another dynamics which are peculiar to India are the ‘target audience’. There is a distinction between urban and rural audience and the news channels cater to especially to them.
With time, I hope the broadcast media evolves and instead of dumbing down the audience, it sensitizes them. And inspite of being commercialized, continues to raise important issues and as they call it ‘fight for the underdog’.
Originally posted on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 12:28 PM
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