A couple of months ago a news of kidnapping of a Mumbai based businessman’s son projected as breaking news on a TV news channel. Latter this was followed by the news of murder of the kidnapped boy by kidnappers.
Last year a Hindi TV news channel (names itself `the best of all’) broke news of an extra marital affair of a 53 year old Patna based Hindi Professor with a girl student, who is of too younger than the Professor. The news channel did not stop itself there but held several talk shows and also brought the professor, his wife and his girlfriend to the show in order discuss their very personal matters. This was imitated by a few Hindi TV news channels latter, as it was their main news-story subject.
A year ago in a birthday party, a pop singer kissed a dancer girl who is famous as item number in Hindi movies. This incident was followed with the item number girl lodged a police complaint against the pop singer. This incident was shown and discussed by a TV channel (includes `India’ in its name) as if the issue was of national importance. Recently, the same news channel followed the pop singer and the dancer girl to receive their reactions on the occasion of completion of a year to past kissing incident. This was certainly height of their non-sense.
All three incidents are distinct but they share a similarity that all three were projected as so called `breaking news’ on TV news channels. The consequence of the first incident was so severe that the kidnappers after watching the news of their kidnapping on TV, feared of arrest and immediately killed the kidnapped boy. The second and third incident put serious questions on journalistic abilities of the concerned news correspondence and the channel authorities. All three incidents showed that these journalists forgot basic values of journalism on which the journalism stands.
On the incident of kidnapping of boy, the concerned TV channel did not bother to think possible consequences of such a hasty act of flashing the news repeatedly on TV. They calculated their business motive more profitable than the precious life of somebody. The news breaker and then the news correspondence and his channel behaved in irresponsible manner to indirectly cause a victim. They showed their obsessiveness toward such shocking news however, a very heavy price had been paid by parents of the boy. The parents and relatives of the boy lashed out at media personnel who went on quickly to cover reactions over killing of the kidnapped boy. They asked media personnel if they could at least be allowed to moan death of their loved one in peace.
The news telecasts related to the Professor’s affair and kissing act of a pop singer reached disgusting low levels. The news channel behaved hysteric while following these incidents and their news anchors seemed mediators of a dispute between two parties disputing in a `mohalla’. The concerned news channel showed their poor class and made mockery themselves. The TRP was very important from their perspective than fair professionalism.
There are serious concerns raised over `media’s hysteric behavior’ in the pursuit of `breaking news’ and TRP. The former president of India while speaking recently at the Ramnath Goenka Memorial Debate highlighted media’s crucial role in nation building process and he appealed media should refrain itself from being hysteric over making `breaking news’ and `TRPs’.
For many years we all know that in this way or that way a few print media and some TV news channels are politically biased and they keep endorse political agenda of their closely related political leaders and parties. However, their being `hysteric’ and ‘irresponsible’ over likes of three representative incidences brings disrepute to the profession of journalism. Certainly, such media personnel should relearn and act by the basic principles and values of journalism, otherwise journalism will very soon be called a `corrupt’ and ‘opportunistic’ profession.
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