Quaking News




What has become of the media. I was lamenting this very fact when i happened to come across an article by Barkha Dutt on this very topic. Barkha Dutt and Sagarika Ghose are two among a handful of women who actually command my respect (no mean feat that!!!). I may frequently disagree with their views but they have my respect. Shobha De on the other hand is just pretentious(shes one of those who give different answers just to be a class apart. She comes across as one who deliberately tries to be different just for the heck of it. Her choices are
absurd and the cover of her pretetiousness is pretty flimsy. Pathetic.) Barkha Dutt was venting her fury about coming across the Aby-Ash wedding on every channel. Ironically the paper in which the editorial appeared was carrying out a two page coverage of the wedding including the front page.

But she is right about one thing..the media has turned into a circus. With a straight face, without a hint of parody or the sense of barely controlled laughter, they run the gamut at every designers place. And its exclusive footage when one channel obtains the permission to interview the aunt of the wife of the person who washed the utensils at the wedding bash. To quote the immortal Bertie Wooster (and thereby the incomparable P.G. Wodehouse) I mean to say What eh? Not a hint of amusement on their faces. The earnestness of their expressions would put seasoned
veterans like Arshad Warsi or those guys from the Comedy Show...hell even ppl like Jim Carrey and Drew Carey to shame. They solemnly go about acting as if they have been entrusted with the most important task of them all.

The Virginia Tech massacre was an opportunity to expose the flaws in the American system. Show the world that they are not as flawless and efficient as wed like to think. It was an opportunity to expose the big American Idiot. But that news was relegated to a side show item. 160 killed in suicide bombings in Baghdad in a single day. So what else is new? That only merits a two line afterthought mention in the side column. Cuz what we really wanna know is who designed Amitabhs sherwani. People are busy with other important news. Did SRK make it to the
big bash? Why was he not invited.

And then there are our glorious cricketers. Winning or losing. Praising them or panning them. They have to make the front page. Being an ardent supporter of New Zealand and South Africa myself (Traitor!! Blashphemy!! I can hear the shouts) I for one do not see what the fuss is all about. Like every other system in our country the proccess of selection and playing is flawed. Its as simple as that. I dont think it merits a daily discussion and analysis with a panel of "Experts" on every damn channel. Every player, every technique, every single ball and every
single shot analysed and split finer than greased straws.

Every single detail is now breaking news. Sachin Tendulkar having leg cramps is breaking news. An A list wedding guest list made public is breaking news. Over 150 deaths in a foreign country (specially middle east and gulf countries) is relegated to other news. And the sad fact is, that acutally works. That acutally gets them TRP's. Because while we, a handful of educated people debate this absurdity on behalf of the media, while we lampoon someone like Himesh Reshammaiya, there are a majority of Indians who actually live for this stuff. They are the ones
who never put much stock by education. They are the ones who will agree with whatever is convinient. They are the ones who will never come across blogs like this. MAny educated ones are also among these masses. For these people, newpaper consists of page 3 society spice and the sports section. (For me it is the funnies....Calvin & Hobbes, Dennis are to die for). It all comes down to what i keep saying. Lmost bad situations are part of a weird circle. People like this kind of thing and so the media supplies it in dollops. And everyone educated enough to
offer an opinion or voice his thoughts is against such things. Which is why there should be two kinds of newspapers. every network should have two channels. One for serious people like us, who write stuff like this and read stuff like this (by this i mean things like this blog, though much classier than my pathetic effort.) and one for those who have no spice in their lives and live only for masala and love nothing more than gossip and have an unnatural interest in the lives of others.
But english newspapers should be above this crap....Ironically articles lampooning the exact state that i am talking about come in the third or fourth page...the front page covers the masala... We grow smaller in our selves as the world grows smaller becoming a global village.