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Responsible Journalism and India

"India Wants to Know". "This is my show". "Krantikari, Bahut Krantikari". "Sawal to hum puchenge hi" .

These lines are so deeply rooted in our minds that we don't need to think twice before we could say the name of the TV anchor who uses these. I am no journalist. I am no scientist either but I know if I jump off a building, I will go down because of the gravity. Sometimes common sense is what you need to understand and decide what is right and what is wrong.

I remember when Indira Gandhi died, the  anchor who read this news couldn't stop from breaking herself up in the live TV. May be that was the first time an anchor went against the set rules of Journalism that states "Do not include your personal views/emotions. Present the news as it is". In Today's rat race of TRP, anchors sensationalize a small thing to the next level and force the public to think about it over and over again. The TV screens are dazzled and puzzled with scrolling headlines and advertisement which makes the screen size 30% of what it should be. In order to break the news first, these channels do not even care checking the facts. The race is to become the first channel to flash the "Big Breaking News". Hardly do they care about the content as long as it is interesting. Boring News like water problem, sanitation, malnutrition are kept in the side as "Salman Hugging Shahrukh in Baba Siddiqui's Iftar party" is bigger news hence can attract more money.

Channels do a complete day of program just to explain about their new logo and the different parts of the screen which people should pay attention to. ABP News did that few months ago and I was stunned to see it. They ran a complete program about which section will show live updates from Twitter, where can you see the Facebook Posts blah blah blah. The News Anchors are no less than actors who would give expressions while reading out a piece of news.

You call yourselves National Media but hardly have a minute from your all packed schedule to report on what is happening in Manipur or Trivandrum. As a viewer based in Delhi NCR I don't want to see what is happening in Delhi NCR. I have eyes, I can see it myself. I need you so you can tell me how the other parts of the country doing in terms of social/business/trade. You hardly have any news about the southern states. Aren't they part of India? If they are then why aren't they covered in the so called "National TV"?

Commercialization has hit this industry big time. Ten minutes of advertisement, followed by one line of news and then a break of another ten minutes. If you don't have a news to share, why do you call yourself a 24x7 channel?

If you want to learn how the news debates are done, go back to the mid 90s and watch Doordarshan. If you think they were stupids, watch any foreign news debates. They don't bark at each other. They don't shout and claim it to be their show - because it is theirs. They don't interrupt and keep saying "No No one sec one sec, hear me out, one one one one second". They behave like educated human beings, unlike News Anchors of our country. There is still a difference between "Raising a Voice" and "Shouting". Hope you learn that. You have become so sold out that you can no longer report the facts. You include your own emotions while looking at the things. If a person died starving and was from a particular community, just because you have an emotion attached to it, you will report naming his community as if that actually caused the death. You would never ask the question "Why at first place, one should die off starvation". You have become the mouthpieces of Political Parties. Honest Reporting is a past thing and we should no longer be expecting this from you.

But we can't really blame only you for this. The generation of people we are, we love noise. We enjoy when the news anchors shout at the person we don't like. We kinda love the environment where everyone is after someone. We watch News Channels based of which political party we are aligned to. If we love BJP, we would never watch NDTV. If we love AAP, we would hate Zee News. It's we who increase your viewer-ship hence we should be ready to take the blame.

I will end by sharing a quote from Joseph Campbell on Journalism.

"Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is."

~ Joseph Campbell

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