subject: Commercialization of Media [print this page] 'CURIOSER AND CURIOSER' CRIED ALICE IN WONDERLAND! I wonder how would she react to the current path the Indian media is treading. India is witnessing a rapid commercialization and diversification of media (news). One only needs to glance at the leading national dailies and 24/7 channels to understand the extent of its impact. Reality is nothing more than a series of moments. And in these very moments one can find elements of all that is strange, frightening, colorful, funny, ludicrous and fantastic. Who needs fiction when fact offers it all! But when it comes to the Indian media, there is sometimes simply too much being offered. Johann Wolfgang Van Goethe had felt that very few people have the imagination for reality. One wonders what the great thinker would have felt compelled to say after an evening spent surfing contemporary Indian news channels. Would he perhaps have concluded that too much imagination can mist reality, shrouding it in unnecessary layers of melodrama and exaggeration?
Our so-called news channels fall into this erroneous routine with alarming regularity. The concept of breaking news' in the age of 24/7 broadcasting has led to a tectonic shift in the paradigm- the spotlight has shifted from what matters to what sells. So the media is constantly on the prowl for fresh fodder-anything that exhibits potential to arrest eyeballs will do. Minor matters such as the relevance of the story, sensitivity towards the subject or the viewers, news prioritization, etc. get relegated to corridors of obscurity.
Here are some moments from the recent past which were pounced upon with glee by the story-starved infotainment' networks; moments which made the day for India TV and its ever-growing brethren; in short, moments which were made for the media:
* 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks
Terrorism, terrible as it may sound, is made for television. The dawning sense of horror, the magnitude of destruction, the agony of human loss is captured with maximum precision and lasting imagery through the electronic media. The terrorist needs the oxygen of publicity to survive and TV provides with him that. 26/11 haunts our collective imagination both because of the scale of terror and TV's explosive coverage of the attacks.
