What makes news or what makes a development newsy – the
question lies in the realm defined by words like cliché, stupidity, absurd,
vague, subjective and so on.
Like every other cliché but the basic elements of a
society, this question, too, has not any direct answer. At best, we can say, it
is decided more by the ‘discretion’ of individual decisionmakers than by the
concerns of the journalistic ethics; it is decided more by the commercial
interests than by the concern of giving voice to the silent victims; it is
decided more by the interests that are increasingly vested in nature.
There is no clear guideline and there cannot be any. All
these factors are at play when ‘newsy’ decisions are taken.
And newsy is everything that is sensational and something
that is within reach without applying much intellectual capital.
The direct way to tread this path is to approach the
sensory needs of the fickle viewers who don’t apply much brain and consume news
just like any other category of media products.
The direct corollary to this is the metamorphosis of news
from being a serious, objectively subjective and aimed discipline to an
infotainment segment rambling with bizarre, outrageous, sensational and
borrowed elements accepting everything in the name of eyeballs.
Negativity is news. There were strong rumours almost two
years ago that the former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was on the verge
of death. Every media outfit was painted in red creating shows on him. But Atal
survived and there have been literally no news stories on how he has been since
the big story of his imminent death broke.
Bal Thackeray is a controversial figure. He keeps on
making news by his statements. But the volume and space generated by the
‘newsy’ developments around his critical health and the ‘imminent’ death
rumours have been enormous. The carriers are in overdrive to dig more and
report even more about him.
We saw its worst manifestation recently when an almost
forgotten Rajesh Khanna regained all what he had lost after losing his
superstardom. His death put him all across killing every other agenda. Rajesh
Khanna was one of the most prominent figures India had but that never meant that
nothing was happening in this scam-ridden country as the outfits were hell-bent
on overdoing us with Rajesh Khanna stuff for more than a week.
Sensationalising is news. Every news element is weighed
for its sensation-making potential before it is taken into a story. If it
touches the scale of getting bizarre or weird, nothing better than it! So
‘death’ becomes hot a commodity while ‘life’ is neglected; so the death of a
celebrity is played over many days while cases of multiple famer suicides go
unreported; so the news story from an elite area is taken in while that from a
slum is killed; so the sensation-arousing fields like ‘Tantra’ find ample space
in crime shows; so a visually dramatic international event like the Japan’s
Tsunami or Haiti’s quake or Sandy in US becomes news while scores being killed
in countries like Syria or Zimbabwe never get a mention because they don’t
offer sensational visual.
Entertainment is news. A bit of entertainment in news
media is ok but today, even the serious news stories are being treated to make them
more entertaining. So you have all the experimental headlines, slugs, scripts
and body of the narration that most of the time, kill the very essence of a
news story – precise and to-the-point. To add to it, a significant chunk in
almost every media outfit is given to the mainstream entertainment stories and
its pie is increasing day by day. English media is still in the saner limits
but the vernacular media has demolished all the barriers.
It has become this of ‘news’ today. There are good and
sincere players but the overall larger picture in India reflects this only.