Thursday, November 27, 2008

News media, a terrorist mouthpiece?

Winter, and gross stupidity of people who should be responsible compels a blog entry.


The goal of terrorists is well known - terrorize people

How to achieve it?

Simple - ensure a hundred or so people are killed and leave it to the news media.

The news media ever in search of drama, will hype it and give it a whole new dimension , enough to ensure people don't go about their normal business for long long time.

The number of people killed in road accidents in India is around 90,000 while the number of people killed in terrorist attacks even in a year like 2007-2008 is around 6000. The media will help save more lives if it focused on road safety. Oh! but of course doing the right thing will not bring in viewership or ad money. I guess CNN-IBN learned this quickly, I was pretty impressed with some of the investigative reporting they initially did, but they soon learned that sleaze sells better, their website is no different from a tabloid's now.

News reporting is a responsibility, it has a significant role in nation building. In a country of a billion people, there is always the possibility for negative incidents, these should not be highlighted, positive incidents should be highlighted to instill hope in people.

Yes, the rest of the world is not very different, when consumer confidence is important to kick start the economy the American media bombards people with negative news.

The news channels in India have had some positive impacts, for one - their coverage led to the several high profile criminals being convicted, but the media definitely needs to do some introspection and come up with a code of conduct.