Sitting on a comfortable couch and legs spread out all over the place, some food to munch on and complete power of remote control in your hands, is heaven anything other than this? Watching TV mindlessly, is the most passive activity one can ever indulge himself into and hence it is so addictive. Even to watch a movie in a cinema hall, one needs to do some work, but watching TV in the given most favorable conditions, nothing can beat the passiveness of this activity.
I do a lot of this when I go home. It struck me the most this time that the news channels have increased so drastically on the TV. There are channels like, NDTV, Aaj Tak, Channel 7 and I don't know how many more! They work 24 cross 7 (as they proudly claim). The site is pretty funny. The bottom 1 inch of your screen would be covered with the share market values, continuously wrapping around. The right or the left corner would flash the name of the channel (its the most important one, because without that it would be really hard to tell one from the other!) In the rest of the window, there would be a news reader. It would be a breakfast, or brunch or lunch or snack or a dinner session. It would be pretty much the same whatever session it is though. Also all the news channels would give sames news again and again and thanks to the way things get covered, even most irrelevant news would appear as "Breaking News". The times when the news came only once every day, and news readers talked in monotonous voices, covering all the news in almost about half an hour and sometimes not even having enough contents for that, seem so far away.
But with so much glamour coming into the journalism, are we still getting enough information? I feel, even today, we are only getting the view of the iceberg above the water. The rat race is merely leading to repeatition of information. Media seems to be there to make money. And to provide news which is crispy as opposed to useful and "new". May be reducing the number of news hours could be a solution to improve quality, even unification of the news channels believing in the same kind of philosophy could be another one.
However, I give full credit to the news channels for one thing. They make people less passive. (I mean, not really by giving some great news which makes people do something for country blah blah blah, but by actually forcing them to switch the TV off-there by forcing them out of the most passive activity.)
I do a lot of this when I go home. It struck me the most this time that the news channels have increased so drastically on the TV. There are channels like, NDTV, Aaj Tak, Channel 7 and I don't know how many more! They work 24 cross 7 (as they proudly claim). The site is pretty funny. The bottom 1 inch of your screen would be covered with the share market values, continuously wrapping around. The right or the left corner would flash the name of the channel (its the most important one, because without that it would be really hard to tell one from the other!) In the rest of the window, there would be a news reader. It would be a breakfast, or brunch or lunch or snack or a dinner session. It would be pretty much the same whatever session it is though. Also all the news channels would give sames news again and again and thanks to the way things get covered, even most irrelevant news would appear as "Breaking News". The times when the news came only once every day, and news readers talked in monotonous voices, covering all the news in almost about half an hour and sometimes not even having enough contents for that, seem so far away.
But with so much glamour coming into the journalism, are we still getting enough information? I feel, even today, we are only getting the view of the iceberg above the water. The rat race is merely leading to repeatition of information. Media seems to be there to make money. And to provide news which is crispy as opposed to useful and "new". May be reducing the number of news hours could be a solution to improve quality, even unification of the news channels believing in the same kind of philosophy could be another one.
However, I give full credit to the news channels for one thing. They make people less passive. (I mean, not really by giving some great news which makes people do something for country blah blah blah, but by actually forcing them to switch the TV off-there by forcing them out of the most passive activity.)
Comments
I mean does it matter some dog is lost or for that matter gets run over or gets slaughtered or gets cut into pieces or gets her eyes and ears pulled out and her tongue chopped out or for that matter gets her skin peeled off or gets burned alive or eaten up by some other animal or something....i mean a dog's life is worthless for christ's sake!!!!
In reality there is no free press.
Have you heard of P.Sainath. He is a journalst who actually does some real good work. He goes to the remote villages, and he was the first one who reported the farmer suicide cases.
But such people are far and few in between. Infact most people wouldnot ve heard of him either. Today it's all abt fashion shows and wardrobe malfunctions!!!!!!
Today main news is which celebrity is sleeping with whom. I mean can u beilive it that some cop in UP was wearing woman's clothes or something, and that is main news!!!!
Actually this extends to other tv programees, today the only soapps and serials one has is abt some two warring industrialists, and the only problems they ve in life is that thier daughters and daughter in laws ve exra marital affairs, no hunger problems no programmes on povery etc. This in a country where majority of the people go withought 2 square meals a day!!!!
the whole thing would ve been very funny if it was not so dangerous.
amit
ps. nice post