Indian Media: Are they treating news as commodity?
From past few days we are looking that news channels are crazy over marriage of Abhishek Bachhan and Aishwarya Rai. I don’t remember that even world cup was covered with this details. Right from animated graphics of marriage invitation card to list of people who were invited were furnished in great detail. I don’t see any value of such news and coverage being added to lay man’s life. This neither give any moral boost nor gives any direction.
Day by day media is turning to be very irresponsible and spicy. Small and unimportant news are covered for longer duration sometimes even whole day! A normal person doesn’t even care about such news.
Today, Janhavi Kapoor (also known as Haya Razvi), a struggling model and actress claimed that she was married once to Abhishek Bachhan in private. Abhishek promised to marry her and now he denies that and getting married to Aishwarya Rai. This crazy lady went ahead and in front of media she cut down her wrist and collapses on ground. This is all needed for media to go crazy and they covered this looser actress for next whole day! Every hour the lady kept changing her statements like it was child play, news channels kept broadcasting this to the world. This was height of stupidity and irresponsibility!
This is not the first incident when some small event is getting enormous media hype. Intimate scene of Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor, Madhur Bhandarkar and Preeti Jain case and the king of all events “Prince”! Sometimes, really disturbing and violent images are transmitted for whole day without thinking much about its impact on normal person. When I talk about impact of news, first thing comes to mind is Mumbai blast. All channels were showing the half minute long footage which shows people are carrying a really deformed human body from busted railway compartment to some other place. That evening million people were travelling across the city. This incident happened and immediately all cell phone networks were jammed, phone lines were dead and communication media was stopped. Did anybody from these news channel thought of those women, children who were watching this ridicules half minute video footage and expecting their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons coming home? We are kind of forgetting the impact of news on normal person’s life. Showing the same violent footage over and over sometimes makes you numb about the event. The sensible feeling of humanity for such events becomes weaker and weaker. Audience starts anticipating more violence. There is no censor or commissioning body which decides what to be shown and for how much time!
Something stupid happens in corner of Mumbai and thousand of reporters start gathering around and starts asking million questions to people around the spot where incident happened. I wonder if they check any credibility of person with whom they are talking. They keep asking senseless questions about the event and create a spicy version of whole scene. There will be no wonder if they are cooking up some stories to make their headlines! To increase the TRP of the show and keep people entertaining, these people are finding weirdest and most useless events which a normal person even can’t imagine.
I see today’s news channels as commodity sellers. They are viewing news as commodity. Larger they produce better they earn revenue. I remember of a Bond movie which showcases an over ambitious News maker who first write news and then makes it happen. Over a period of time, his news starts shooting the bars of violence and set new horror marks. It will be really sad if we see something like that coming true anytime soon in reality!