Gone are the days when the family members sitting in front of the idiot box (it was not as idiot then as it is today) would watch Doordarshan’s news bulletin and only then get back to their household chores. The duration of the news bulletin then used to be twenty minutes and everything had to be done fast. Nowadays, however, people should have all the time in the world to finish their chores since the news run 24 hours a day on about a dozen exclusive news channels. But that’s not to be, as people are watching news without complaints. Reason? News channels’ unethical alliance with the entertainment industry!
The satellite news channels today have undoubtedly become the biggest source of entertainment (by Bollywood standards). TV news is no more drab; it is sandwiched between two universally proven main ingredients of entertainment — sex and violence. The policy is simple — sensationalise every small or big incident of crime across the country on a daily basis. No surprise, if viewers go to bed with a sense of insecurity and are deprived of sound sleep.The programmes are indeed addictive and why not, where else could one see an Inspector General-level officer in Jharkhand, who had been appointed to inquire into the alleged sexual harassment of a young tribal woman, desperately trying to win over the victim to sleep with him or a youth beheading his sister in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh. But sex is still taboo in our society…channels blur the clipping… generating more curiosity and the viewer waits for a repeat.
The competition seems to have driven the electronic media to look for news to attract viewers and for that they seem to have taken a cue from Bollywood. After letting themselves to be bitten by the crime bug just for the heck of it, the newsmen today have become addicts of the same. And they are forced to increase the dose to relish the same old feeling of euphoria with their viewer ship swelling. As per the trend today, channels would easily drop the story of a patient in need of financial help or blood for a crazy act of some blood-thirsty insane mind in a remote corner of Andhra Pradesh.
Worst, crime is being presented in the goriest of forms, coupled with melodramatic recitation to the juicy details in a bid to outdo competition. The result is an array of crime-related episodes. While public interest in celebrity lifestyles and their follies is understandable, it is difficult to fathom the same attention to petty crimes. TV news channels have suddenly discovered a penchant for daily crime reporting in its most mundane form. And a new viewer is not sure about the identity of the very first face appearing on their idiot box, until the villain-like fellow introduces himself as the presenter of the show.The viewers are then bombarded with the hopeless information concerning insane minds, replete with music and words calculated to create a sense of foreboding. It’s over to the victims, the stunned survivors, the gossipy neighbours, the unrepentant criminals and, finally, the police who revel in a detailed description of the crimes.
Among the crime shows topping the list, Sansani (Star News), Dial 100 (NDTV India), Crime and the City (NDTV), Jurm (Aaj Tak) and Crime Patrol (Sony), Kaal Kapal Mahakaal (Zee TV) are so melodramatic in reporting crime that one thinks it’s being committed there and then.
These stars of the show don’t know if they should appear saddened by the acts they report or happy for the opportunity to display their skills, if any. As for privacy, respect for the dead or grief-stricken, you will find none of it. In addition to these dramatis personae, we have the anchors with an end-of-the-world demeanour. He and his colleagues on other channels are either doomsday prophets or avenging Gods. And yes, they’re very loud and melodramatic.
Crime reporting is challenging and there are few specialists in the field. Even in the print media, few journalists want to be identified as crime reporters because such a label gets stuck and along with it comes the stigma of belonging to the seamier side of life. But those who do report crime need to take lessons on how the coverage of violence influences the way teenagers behave and how others think about them.Surveys suggest the public believes crime is rampant primarily because of the way the media presents this ‘news’. Criminologists believe there is also a problem of perception, which arises from a sense that crime has been moving up incessantly. That’s because a crime-increase story makes it to the front pages of newspapers, while a crime-decrease story gets relegated to the background. TV stations have a huge responsibility to viewers to produce segments that accurately reflect what’s really happening. There is a need to analyse their coverage in light of crime statistics and then redefine and make the channels stick to what constitutes responsible reporting.
