Some time ago, I had been watching a news channel. There was a special news feature on Kargil war. It was about the role of Parvez Musharaf in the whole episode. After watching it I had a question in my mind, whether I hated Musharaf or I hated Pakistan, or I hated some particular group of people? There are people in Pakistan who like Amitabh Bachhan, Shahrukh Khan, and who admire the beauty of the Taj Mahal, same as we do here in India. Then what is the reason behind our hatred for Pakistan? Do we hate an ordinary citizen of Pakistan who is living there because he is born there and who has never been to India. He has never troubled us. How can we hate him? Virappan killed hundreds of people, we have our own people killing each other for silly reasons; do they all belong to Pakistan? No they do not. But we have more information about what harm people from Pakistan are doing to us than what our own people are doing. This is rather the handiwork of media. They make us form opinions, which are entirely influenced by the content or information provided to us by them. They twist, mould or modify it according to their agenda which is used by them to catch more eyeballs and raise their TRP’s.
Ayushi murder case was a just another murder case, neither was it the first of its kind nor the only of its kind but still there are news channels that considered it a crisis situation and gave 24X7 coverage to it. Not only the coverage, but they gave it as many angles as possible. They added spice to it and in this case the media also mocked at judiciary, police and agencies as well. It’s not wrong if I say, it was a crisis created by media.
Should I not term a situation a crisis situation where several media persons are positioned with their cameras, microphones and other apparatus for many days without any break? Yes, I should and I did that but I was wrong as they were waiting for Mr. Amitabh Bachhan, who was admitted to a hospital!
The recent crisis was the Mumbai Attacks. Everyone agreed that it’s a crisis situation, but our media got one step further and made it one of the worst by showing live footages which incidentally proved the greatest aid to the terrorists. They are so shrewd and courageous that they give justification that they showed what the people demanded. I don’t think there was even a single person who called up a news channel and dictated to inform him as soon as NSG team arrive at the Taj or tell exact number and position of commandos there.
The main lead story of Hindustan Times on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 disturbed me. It read-“Go score, India told”. I couldn’t figure out why it got published. Let’s assume this was the only important story according to them, but why on the front page, why the main story? What message do you want to convey to the budding cricketers? Instead of sweating out at nets do they need to spend time between the sheets?
In India there are many crises, for instance poverty, unemployment, corruption and many more. Media is supposed to raise issues and play a pivotal role to find solutions. On the contrary, media is adding one more kind of crisis which can be termed as ‘media crisis’. We are showing snakes getting married, full-fledged interview of a criminal’s girlfriend by a senior journalist (Interview of Charles Shobhraj’s girlfriend by Deepak Chaurasia), we also show “Gajraj” (an elephant) killing man brutally, and we also show which stone will get you a new job. There are innumerable examples of such irrelevant programs being shown by our national news channels. This is the time for our media to contemplate; no doubt it has immense potential. But we need to understand how to use our potentials.
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