Breaking News ke liye kuch bhi karega!!

This is the media age and thus “breaking news” is a very dominant factor of our lives. Be it the fifteen seconds of fame on a reality show or the trials by media… it is a time where the camera rolls, back ground music plays, the editor cuts and hammers in the mind of the audience a story that then becomes a fact!!

Each time I switch on the news channels, I am amazed to see the news readers or makers as they have now become- chirping away with extreme conviction and joy. I can’t help but try and read in their eyes some hint of embarrassment at over hyping a certain news item or twisting it to suit sensationalism but No! They do it well. They don’t seem to be bothered at what their over exaggeration might do to those concerned or that journalism was meant to present news as it happened and not news as it “should” have happened or news as “shockingly” as you think it happened!

For instance, this morning at breakfast Headlines Today was screaming about Salman Khan breaking up with Katrina Kaif. They showed the interview (exclusive of course!) in which Salman apparently confessed the same and guess what?...He did not do anything of that sort!!! They played the complete interview and what he said was in fact this- “If ever we break up I will come out and say that I and Katrina have broken up”… the channel of course only played the later part of the statement again and again and ran a half hour program on the same! Super!

Another instance was when last evening all the channels were excited because Vishwanathan Anand was called a Swiss national and thus denied (almost!) a doctorate. Later the minister apologized for shooting his mouth and called Anand to accept the doctorate, however Anand could not attend the event due to certain other reasons. On every channel thereafter Anand was explicitly stating that he has no grudge against the Government or the minister and that he could not attend the event due to some other commitments however the holier than thou Rajdeep Sardesai and the care taker of the ‘nation’ Arnab Goswami

tried their level best to push Anand to commit that he was very angry with the minister and the government and a national tragedy had occured. Alas when Anand did not yield, they ended the interview and went ahead with the quotes and headlines that they had any ways planned to relay. They were nothing close to what Anand had stated in his interview!! Voila!

I remember a French man once stating loudly in a bar referring to the TV… “Hey put on something funny and if there’s nothing coming on then just put on BBC!” He of course had his own jibes to take at the British but the Indian journalism has definitely come to that, Breaking News ke liye kuch bhi karega!!