Excessively silly coverage of Memon's Hanging on our 24X7 News Channels has exposed chink in its armor and ugly underbelly. In the undue haste of one upmanship they have made a mockery of themselves, ethics be damned. It has been an ugly rat race amongst them to outmaneuver each other.
If we go back to the pre-liberalization era there was only one channel called Dooradarshan (meaning Long Vision, though there was hardly visionary in its reporting). We had no option and were content with whatever it showed us. The news use to start with Rajeev Gandhi and end with him. showing him attending different meetings and cutting several ribbons.
To me the entire news was a farce and worth only the last few minutes which covered sports, clips from international news and weather. During the monsoon the standard weather report would invariably predict rains in Gangetic West Bengal, Konkan and Goa. Still it brings the relief in the form of being the harbinger of the end of a torturous watch. A sketch by the popular cartoonist RK Laxman had someone pasted a picture of Rajiv Gandhi on the TV saying I better see this than switching on the TV. No news is good news.
So the question comes which one is worse, too much or too less of media. In my view in spite of all the flaws the current media has it is still preferred to the Doordarshan era. At least I have options. It is better to have the freedom of choice than something shoved down upon you. Current cable news networks are far from perfect but certainly better than the era of Indiradarshan and Rajivdarshan.
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