Indian News channels- doing a good job?

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TallyHo

@TallyHo

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Posted: 19 years ago

#11

How TV news is distorting India's media

By Paul Danahar
BBC South Asia bureau editor

A grab from an Indian TV channel on Mumbai blasts

Coverage of Mumbai blasts was more considered than in 2003

Mr Verma has one ambition in life - "to touch the sky keeping my (sic) firmly on earth, as well as to bear out and excel". I am still not sure what he means but he is quite serious about it, because that is what it says in the first line of his CV. A decade ago young Indians aspired to be doctors, engineers or business executives. Now they want to be in TV news. Once there was just one TV news channel, now there are dozens. Luckily for today's youngsters the sign on the door of many often says "Experience not required", something any politician will testify to. The former Home Minister Indrajit Gupta was one day doggedly pursued by a young journalist on his way out of parliament. When he finally agreed to stop for the news crew, he was asked the probing question. "Sir, would you please say something". The second question was "and Sir, who are you?" There are hundreds more people like this being churned out everyday by a new growth industry, the news anchoring course. This is where some poor schmuck pays a large sum of money to do a two-week course which they believe will qualify them for a highly paid job on a TV channel. Blogging nightmares Everyday I get their CVs, often along with photographs of them pouting provocatively over a computer with brow slightly furrowed to show that they have beauty and brains. And that is just the men. It has even created an illegal spin off. As the BBC bureau chief in South Asia I have had to deal with several cases of people pretending to be offering authentic BBC training courses.

Indian TV cameramen surround Indian government ministers

There has been a proliferation of TV channels in recent years

Young and not so young hopefuls cough up their cash to the "man from the BBC" and then he is never seen again. When dodgy qualifications are not enough, some people offer other incentives for potential employers. One young woman described herself in the opening line of her CV to my office as being "young and vivacious". There's no hard evidence yet of the casting couch being wheeled into the nation's newsrooms. But the scourge of the modern Indian TV channel, the warfornews.blogspot.com website, is full of accusations of sexual harassment of young women by more senior staff. The site is driving the editors of the news channels to distraction because some very embarrassing, although unsubstantiated revelations, regularly turn up on the blogs. Managers seem to be discovering that when you take graduates just out of college you often get the antics of graduates just out of college. Alongside the more serious claims of sexual harassment are daily reports of sex, drugs, drunkenness, blazing rows and general incompetence among the staff of various newsrooms. And when the channel editors send out e-mails demanding that people stop leaking to the blogs, those e-mails end up on the site too. So to be fair, while some Indian TV newsrooms might look like college campuses, they do at least share some of the attributes of Fleet Street. Page Three This probably would not matter if it was not for that fact that the TV news channels are now setting the standards for the whole industry.

There is more demand for coverage of the rich, famous and beautiful

The editors of good old fashioned Indian newspapers and magazines, where the standards of journalism are among the best in the world, are looking-on in horror. Not only are their young and inexperienced reporters now asking for huge pay rises but their advertising departments are demanding they cover more and more of what is known here as the Page Three Culture pioneered by the TV channels. Unlike the UK, page three in India does not involve a teenager exposing her breasts for middle-aged men to peruse during their morning tea break. Page Three here means sleazy scandals and stories about the rich and famous. Too much time to fill, too many channels, not enough news and reporters just out of their teens are all factors dumbing-down the news agenda across the industry. That is not to say there are not some very good TV journalists in India. People like the small team of reporters and producers who set up the first private TV news channel, NDTV, were, and still are, serious and thoughtful journalists. They are now household names and most have split from the mother ship to set up competing operations. And things generally across the networks are improving. The coverage of the bomb blasts in Mumbai (Bombay) last week was much more considered than the last time the city was attacked. In August 2003, more than 55 people died in twin bomb blasts in the city's financial district, but the TV news channels then reported wildly inaccurate figures. That provoked fear and then anger as it became clear just how cavalier many TV reporters had been about checking their facts before they went on air. 'Old and ugly' India's economic boom has brought with it a new consumer culture which in turn is being fed by the output of the cable TV channels. It is a turbulent time for everyone in the media industry. Competition is cut-throat, and things are being made worse by some bizarre government legislation which critics say amounts to censorship. For all of India's claim at being a great modern state, it is perhaps the only democratic country in the world which presently prohibits foreign TV journalists from doing live news broadcasts on breaking news. 😲 Permission has to be sought, in writing, 10 days in advance which makes the live coverage of events like the Mumbai blasts impossible. Now the government is threatening to introduce legislation to hamstring the domestic TV media as well. NDTV's Managing Editor, Barkha Dutt, described the proposed Broadcasting Bill 2006, which would allow officials to "inspect, search and seize equipment" if they think a report breaks their guidelines as "the most absurd and autocratic legislation... That is not just preposterous; it is dangerous". If the new legislation scares the media into not tackling difficult stories, the accusations of the dumbing-down of TV news will get louder and young talent will never learn their trade. The BBC, I'm happy to say, has been spared that last problem. A friend of mine, who is in marketing, remarked when I told her about Ms "Young and Vivacious" that the woman "clearly doesn't know the reputation of the BBC in India because it's obvious that you recruit people for their journalist skills".

I basked briefly in the reflected glory of the BBC's international reputation for integrity and professionalism until she added "because most of the BBC correspondents we see are either old or ugly."

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Prerna

@Prenz~13

Inactive

Posted: 19 years ago

#12

I like most of the news channels, basically becuase the journalists are young and dynamic. Sometimes,they get over-dynamic, but in this context, I prefer English News Channels, simply becuase they present news in its face value. They don't over-hype it, especially NDTV and CNN IBN. But channels like Star News or Aaj Tak give news as if they're presenting a Hindi Movie. I guess that's what their target audience wants to see, but it does irritate you at times. And then, ther are those "Xtra Shows" like some Bhoot Bangla or some kind of ghosty show on Star News, (I think 😕 ) and another one to do with spirits on Zee News(I can't remember the name 😕 ) and I swear, it irks you no end. I mean, I know you can't telecast news 24/7, but get shows which are to some extent BELIEVABLE!! I don't know what's up with the entire obsession with ghosts and evil spirits.
Even the entire incident of Prince, the boy who fell into the pit, well, it could have been dealt with in a better way. What could have been a moving rescue story was over-hyped. I mean, the news people swarmed the area like flies. I know people enjoyed the coverage, (which is what matters, I guess 😛 ) but I still didn't like it.

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