Television Media

Television media, especially in India, has come a long way from what it was, say, a few decades back. Gone are the days of Doordarshan’s hegemony. The plethora of options in English language news today include NDTV, CNN News18, Times Now and the most recent addition, Republic. But these channels collectively present a very stark contrast to the international news channels like BBC World News and CNN International.

The first and most obvious difference is the information overload presented in Indian channels and the one or two news tickers at the bottom in the case of international channels. Following the same trend, Indian news channels are increasingly becoming sensationalism-oriented, and prefer to present only that news which makes for good TRPs, instead of focusing on presenting unbiased news. Putting the question of credibility aside for some time, if we only focus on the format, the international channels are more information and opinion oriented. What I mean by that is they focus more on the information and various opinions relating to an incident or a developing story, rather than sensationalising it. In addition to this, breaking news is a very rare concept for international news stations, while our national television news outlets spread it around like peanuts, sometimes multiple times in a single day.

This puts us in a bad light, but is it all that bad? The current format does put immense amount of pressure on the people in power, whether it be on the government or otherwise. It does make the working of not only governments, but also other powerful institutions and organisations more transparent and accountable.

However, sensationalism does present the risk of making media prone to propaganda. The recent uproar and awareness about fake news, and the questioning of the credibility of international news channels as well, highlights that they too can be open to spreading propaganda and biased versions of events. This is the main reason why information and its sources needs to be carefully analysed before considering it the truth. Quoting one of my favourite dialogues from the movie ‘Madras Café’, ‘everybody has their own version of the truth.’ The onus to decide rests on the citizen’s shoulder.

Why do we have these massive differences in the formats though? Is it because in our country we are fed up with the people in power? It could be a fair assumption, considering the recent growth of the middle classes. Or is that because of overpopulation, we simply have lesser regard for the views and opinions of other people? You be the judge.