WHERE IS THE 'REAL' NEWS LOST?

By Ruma Dubey

The coup in Tukey

Truck being used as a weapon of mass destruction

An Indian navy aircraft goes missing and remains missing

1 kg of dal costs more than one litre of petrol

FIR against the Aklaq’s who was killed in Dadri mob

Yahoo! Is dying a slow death

Increasing terror attacks in Europe

Yet, In India, the only thing we talk about is 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. It’s 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? Rains have come calling so why not heartwarming stories from regions of drought like Marathwada and Bundelkhand?  Or how rain water harvesting is changing the landscape in so many villages across Rajasthan. 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. Has anyone on the TV ever warned you about an impending crash, urging you to get out? 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 a mild concussion and make one cross-eyed 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 terror attack in Nice - 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 Kutch has rebuilt itself after the earthquake? Or why not a story on our Indian wrestlers and tryst with Olympics? 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.