Watching News these days is similar to watching the static noise that our TVs used to make back when we were kids.
I am sorry to say this but neither news channels nor social media is informing people. It is just transmitting noise. How did we reach here and is there even a way out? Yes! We need Vivek but more on that later.
Let us understand News and how we got here.
In ancient times, people relied on gossip and their social circle for information or the latest news. Today, we have an array of news channels coupled with a whole new universe called social media where Instagram pages and influencers tell us about what's happening in the world. Although, gossip still remains a crucial part of the transmission of information.
News channels or digital news pages are the primary providers of information. We trust them to correctly inform us as these businesses employ hundreds, if not thousands, of people who collect all types of information, weed out the useless information, frame the relevant information in an easy-to-understand format, and present it to us.
However, there are two fundamental flaws in News today that requires a solution. Before we get to the solution, we must quickly understand how news has evolved over the years.
News began as a way to inform the people of what was happening around them. People consume news to be more aware of the events in their vicinity. Before anybody realized it, news had become a real-time record of human life across the world.
However, as competition grew with more and more people trying to inform especially with the advent of TV, the news stopped being about informing but more about attracting attention. TV shortened the attention span of the readers and social media, decades later, ensured that it went to zero.
Gone are the days when news anchors of Doordarshan would appear on our screens to read the news and put us to sleep. The much-needed attempt to make news exciting unleashed a beast that is out of control now.
Competiton in the age of TV to get more TRPs (more advertising revenue as a result) ensured that news was no longer about informing. Anything and everything that could attract attention now became news and was played 24*7.
Breaking News and Exclusive are the keywords of any news telecast.
If the people in the news industry thought that the competition sky-rocketed due to TV then, they were in for a big surprise as a new beast came to town. Social Media.
News channels now had to compete with social media to inform us but sadly, it was no match for it. People had changed fundamentally, news channels had to adapt and change before they became irrelevant.
Here is where things took a turn for the worse. TV had forced news channels to shift from news to opinions and sensationalism but social media meant a free-for-all. Anyway with an internet connection and a camera could become a reporter, journalist, or anchor.
News was no longer about what was happening but the game was now about explaining what was happening and why. Facts did not matter any longer or maybe they never really did. All that mattered was it making sense? Will people watch it? Is it exciting?
Facts did not matter any longer or maybe they never really did. All that mattered was it making sense? Will people watch it? Is it exciting?
With this context, we are now in a position to understand what The Joker meant when he said the following words.
Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?
The last 2 years of the pandemic made humankind witness one of the most exciting times if the news telecast is to be believed.
The pandemic began with the toppling of a weak Congress government in Madhya Pradesh when Jyotirdaitya Scindhia from the Royal family ditched the Congress for the BJP with 22 MLAs and BJP formed the government. This coupled with the sudden and unprecedented announcement of a nationwide lockdown by PM Modi had made the entire country restless. This was followed by the death of veteran actor Rishi Kapoor and star actor Irrfan Khan on consecutive days in April 2020. TV and social media were filled with scenes from their long and illustrious careers. It came as a relief from the continuous images of people being forced to stay indoors. However, the real Big Bang was yet to come.
I vividly remember the day a close friend of mine sent me the photo of Sushant Singh Rajput's dead body. I was shocked to learn about his death, allegedly a suicide. He was a college senior and I really enjoyed his movies. He had become the symbol of how New India was destroying Bollywood's nepotism. What's more shocking was that SSR's last movie was about how suicide is not the way to deal with life's problems. New India could not handle this setback and thus began the drama. Justice for SSR started trending on Twitter (it still does in 2022) as everyone could smell foul play including me. His murder is a whole another topic but back to the nation's outrage.
At the forefront of this crusade against the establishment of Bollywood was Indian media led by Arnab Goswami. All journalists who passive-aggressively and with a tinge of jealously target Arnab (read: IndiaToday and NDTV) also jumped on the bandwagon after lamenting about the state of Indian media with an exclusive interview of SSR's girlfriend Rhea Chakroborty.
Many Youtube channels went viral by posting daily updates of the SSR and once Kangana Ranaut jumped in and made it about nepotism and Shiv Sena then matters became even worse. She was eventually blocked from Twitter in 2021 after her office was demolished by Shiv Sena. Arnab Goswami had to go to jail for belittling Shiv Sena king Uddhav Thackeray and an Italian Queen. Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena got a news nickname when he enlightened us with one of his golden nuggets of how the Hindi abuse word Haramkhor meant Naughty in English.
Future generations will not understand the extent of the drama if we do not document the drama that unfolded in Mumbai during these 2 years.
Anyway, amid all this drama. IPL started by got canceled due to an outbreak of Covid in their bio-bubble amid a global pandemic. Then, keeping the Bollywood and Mumbai tamasha alive, ED and CBI started raiding Bollywood actors and actresses to bust drug rackets. Many famous actors were called in for questioning.
At the same time, Mukesh Ambani got a bomb scare when a small bomb was found outside Antilla, his iconic house. This event started a political slugfest and opened a can of worms. The worms that came out took down Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and Maharashtra Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh on corruption charges (a monthly bribe of 100 crores) who is still absconding.
A land far away from India was adding fuel to the media which was already on fire!
The US, which fancies itself as the best place to lie on the planet, started its rapid fall from the top. 2020 was an election year and their controversial President Donald Trump was up for reelection. In the run-up to the elections, the USA saw large-scale rioting after the death of a Black man named Geroge Floyd called the Black-Lives-Matter (BLM) riots, large-scale looting of shopping stores, sky-rocketing crime with a movement to shut down the police called Defund the Police. Donald Trump lost the elections but did not concede calling the election process fraudulent. He was taking revenge for the opposition stealing his victory 4 years ago by accusing him of a similar thing with the help of Russia. All this commotion was bound to lead to an explosion and it finally did.
On 6th January 2021, a group of people after a Trump rally stormed Capitol Hill, the biggest symbol of American Democracy after the White House. Donald Trump was accused of inciting the attack and banned from all social media platforms for life. The US President was banned for life from social media.
To give us a break from this tamasha came the deadly second wave of the Pandemic. TV screens and social media were filled with desperate cries for help as people scrambled to get oxygen tanks. All families knew someone who lost a dear one. The real impact of a global pandemic was finally felt by the people. Three of my friends and their entire family were down with Covid but fortunately, all survived. Some weren’t that lucky. Anchors of Aaj Tak spent an entire hour crying on live TV after one of their star anchors passed away from Covid. Whether it was right or wrong is up to the reader.
To make matters worse, campaigning for the West Bengal elections was at its peak in April 2021 when the second wave began. Eventually, political parties had to stop campaigning in the last 10 days of the elections. This was the second election to be held since the pandemic began, Bihar went to polls in November 2020 which had added to the tsunami of noise as SSR was from Bihar.
After the devastating second wave, when everyone thought that the media would struggle for news. The new President desperate after 20 years of war in Afghanistan finally decided to pull out. As soon as the news of US withdrawal reached Afghanistan, shit hit the fan. The US foolishly pulled out all its troops first and left all the Afghan civilians to the Taliban along with billions of dollars of military equipment. Entire India, as well as the world, saw live a repeat of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran when the US military ran to save its life by hurriedly moving out of Afghanistan while thousands of Afghans tried to latch on to the planes taking off. Some even fell to their death.
This led to some radicals in India celebrating the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which gave more fodder to the media in India, which will have to now face more terrorists and Jihadis from its western border.
Afghanistan was barely out of the people’s minds when a crackdown on drug connections in Bollywood started. Aryan Khan, son of superstar Shah Rukh Khan was arrested from a cruise ship for possession of drugs. He spent a month in jail while the nation was captivated by his arrest and how Bollywood was being ‘reformed’.
2022 began with a mild third wave of the pandemic. It was a mild one and the media was busy with the elections, especially UP and 4 other states. However, the world was ready with a new assault. War broke out at the end of February when Russia attacked Ukraine. India had 20,00 students stuck in the war-torn part of Ukraine and a month-long heroic attempt to save the students began. At the same time, our western neighbor Pakistan went into political turmoil when its PM Imran Khan alleged a regime-change operation by the US and refused to resign despite losing the majority in the Parliament. He finally had to resign and a new government was installed in Pakistan.
After 2 years of the pandemic, media is back to normal after soaking itself in glory. People are back in the theatres with 3 back-to-back blockbuster films - The Kashmir Files, RRR, and KGF Chapter 2. No elections are in sight for the next 6 months. People are back in the office with the pandemic reducing into an epidemic. War in Ukraine continues despite record-high oil prices and unprecedented inflation.
Death, suicides, and arrest of Bollywood stars, drug raids on Bollywood, corruption in Maharashtra politics, elections in India and America, the end of the war in Afghanistan, and the start of a war in Ukraine, all of this in a world where uncontrolled inflation is threatening a market recession.
Amid all of this, media is thriving and ready to serve us the videos and images from any looming crisis in the future.
Social Media and its algorithms by the BigTech platforms that decide the rules in the online world have reduced media and journalism into a circus. The objective of the media is now to grab eyeballs and attention with no time or incentive for nuance, analysis, or verification.
Until the media gets more revenue from the BigTech platforms for using its content to run ads, the situation is unlikely to get better. However, things do look bright as governments have learned the power of social media and working to regulate it and force the BigTech companies to share revenue with the media.
The fundamental nature of news has been changed irreversibly. News has become indistinguishable from entertainment. Only print media or newspapers give out the news, information, and analysis now. I hope people continue to read and most importantly use their Vivek (their sense of judgment).
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