SOUL MISSING FROM ALL NEWS
By Ruma Dubey
ISIS destroys Palmyra
Europe is dealing with a huge migrant crisis, especially Germany
Onion, petrol and beer all costs Rs.75 – need, comfort and luxury costing same?
6.5 lakh displaced due to floods in Assam
Death toll mounts in Tianjin blast in China
Yet, In India, It’s only about politics, politics and more politics! And for a change, it could be about Pakistan, after all for the Indian media, foreign policy is only Pakistan!
Be it the electronic media or newspapers, the only news, as though nothing else happens in the country, is only and only about the dirty politics. The entire Indian media seems to live, breathe and talk only about politics.
At times, it feels like there is nothing beyond our country and the politicians in ‘this’ world and ‘our’ world. Something like a frog in its well, never knowing there is an ocean to explore.
Imagine this in a very plausible scenario. A group of thirtyish people sitting together, conversing over coffee. The typical news watching man is not even aware of life beyond Modi, Kejriwal, Gandhi interspersed with bouts of Sachin Tendulkar and Cricket. It is only a person who is well read, watches global news and reads International newspapers, is aware of what is happening out of India. Yes, today we know that the Chinese currency is called a Yuan only because of the Indian stock market crash.
Over the years, we have actually become desensitized. Our news genre and nation has only become about Politics, Cricket and Crime. There is something wrong with this world or at least, the way India sees this world. Its time we change our outlook towards life.
We, as Indians have become eternal pessimists. We can only see the glass as half empty, the news as only bad, worse and worst. When the entire electronic media feeds you only negative news – if it is not politics, it is rape; isn’t there anything, nothing good at all happening in our country? The Marathwada district is sitting on a possible drought, once again. Do we see any debates on this? Or the unreal realty prices despite flats being empty? Why no meaningful debates beyond politics?
Surely, the Indian media is going through what is called the ‘Breaking News Syndrome.’ A few years earlier, when a news channel flashed the Breaking News in bold red, bright colors- it actually stood for something relevant. Today, breaking news can be something as inane as“…political rally delayed by an hour!”
Even the business news channels are nothing different. A company might post very good quarterly numbers but just because it was “below our expectations” the stock price is battered down despite a good performance. Or for that matter, did even a single analyst on TV predict the 1700-point crash of yesterday? Now when the mood is bearish, we see only doomsayers and when the tide turns, they give buy calls. So what is this that we call “expert” advice?
And the TV screens- it could cause mild concussion if one tried to read all the scrollers – on the top, at the bottom and even on the sides, all this reading while trying to listen to the news.
There is one more thing which needs to be changed- stop Indianizing everything! The recent bomb blast in Bangkok and what do we read – no Indian casualty. And the rush to tag every achieving person with an “Indian-born” tag. Why? It should be a shame as the same person could not achieve this in India; he had to go abroad and is today earning accolades and moolah for the others.
The Indian media is a regular Casanova – flirting with one story and then the other; committing to nothing till the end. We seem to be rushing through all, giving no due credit and importance to anything relevant happening in the world. And does the media ever do a follow-up on its previous ‘breaking news’? Have they bothered to look at life after the massive floods in Uttarakhand? Or how farmers are coping in the drought hit Marathwada district? Or what happened to the ‘Prince’ who was rescued from the man-hole he fell into some days ago and the entire country cheered when the child was pulled back to safety?
We are “know-it-all” fools who have no knowledge about the world happenings. It doesn’t end by simply calling ourselves ‘global citizens’; we need to act like one too. We need to grow up- people and the media alike, move beyond Politics and Cricket and cover reality, cover life.