"National News"

A friend told me today that there is something called the "fourth estate" - it refers the media apparently - which led me to enquire what the preceding ones were. From there he ventured into the history of the French revolution where there where "classes" of people involved in conflict... at which point I added that he might be referring to the "bourgeiose" , the working class and the nobility of which I was vaguely sure of. We finally concluded by stopping by an ATM to withdraw money and calling it a truce ... which usually happens when you try to confuse the person you are arguing with with jargon and end up so muddled that you take a break and change the subject. The inconspicuous subject of the conversation was the media.

The first thing that comes to mind (mine atleast ) when you say media are the umpteen news channels on air. NDTV , Headlines today , CNN ibn , TIMES now and several others ... left out for brevity. Why did these channels come into existence ? My take is that Doordarshan was complacent after years of monopoly that anything with better presentation and not necessarily more relevant news would have succeeded. Thats exactly what happened when cable TV ( and now the new breed DTH ) took over and aggressive private news channels started capitalising on the intelligent viewer with a lot of deficit of televised news.

Of the english channels , clearly , NDTV 24x7 took the lead and I would say really gave the impression that the viewer was missing something by not watching it for even a minute. For a time I followed it with the new found vigour of stumbling across a treasure of knowledge which was all encompassing. With time however I realised that sometimes the comperes were framing the questions to get an answer to just apparently confirm some suspicion which the viewer is privy to. Group discussions became so full of theatrics and filibustering , it reminded me of an earlier GD experience at a well known MBA college in Delhi.

One of the fundamental flaws in this regularised way of presentation of "news" and "current affairs" is that they are making it some kind of a packaged item, like potato chips and also delivering it at regular intervals like the milk packet in the morning . Whats wrong with that you ask? Well, when there is news, relevant to the nation , business, state etc. theres no problem , but what do you do when nothing ground breaking is happening ? You "manufacture" news .... Shahrukh Khan's six pack is shoved into your nose , Aishwarya Rai's mis(s)adventures and Amitabh's family story captures prime time and a guy like me who happens to be waiting to hear the latest on the crisis in Sri Lanka or in Iraq just wonders where good old DD has gone.

The reason I think channels like NDTV , CNN ibn and the others mentioned go to so much trouble, is to gain viewers. The average viewer whos back home after a long day's work just wants some eye candly , so give them the cutest girls who can also flirt with the camera ( and also without too much of an accent ) who will read out the news as if they are blowing kisses on him. And so the news channels' bigwigs decide to go all out and capitalize on this phenomenon, get the best looking and best speaking news readers , give the best possible mix of world news, business , Bachan family drama , Shahrukh trivia and what not to cater to the different "tastes" and capture maximum screen time.

So whats the problem here ? Shahrukh happy , Bachan happy ... the typical Indian viewer happy.... right? Wrong, there is someone sitting here whos not happy with this "national" news. I am not a Bollywood fan , I dont adore SRK, I dont think AB is god and I happen to think there are many other things which deserve to be given more attention to at the national level. Apparently what I think and many others like me thinks does nt matter much because the majority of the viewers are in Mumbai and Delhi , therefore the content designed to hook in the average middle class Mumbaiite is now aired to the Bangalorean who thinks Bangalore still retains some of its aboriginal crowd ( read original inhabitants) ... which is a whole new topic of discussion altogether. I guess word of this kind of mistaken content delivery did reach the news channels and they now make it a point to show you the extremely cool hang out places in Bangalore... you know , where the people who think Shahrukh is cool hang out or the extremely flooded places in Banglaore are shown to make it seem like Bangalore is actually sinking in rain water and otherwise in traffic ( which it probably is anyway ) . They also show along with this , short clips of Chennai ( even here you ll find the news leading to a Bollywood movie which is being remade from a tamil one ... like Ghajini or that Rajnikanth said AB is emperor) . Hyderabad is also given some screen time , I guess over there its not as difficult to find bollywood connections. At the end of it , I never cease to wonder , do these news channels really believe they can get people to watch the "local news" of Mumbai and Delhi and the daily activities of Bollywood stars as something worth keeping track of.

In conclusion , I have found a way around this problem , just watch the entertainment channels on tv and then read the news on the internet ! If things happen to change on these channels , please inform me , I would like to really watch some "national news" for a change.