Razzle Dazzle English News Channels

The Razzle-dazzle English News Channels
Prof Dr P Chandra Sekharan
The advent of private news channels after the liberalization policy of the government of India gave us hope that people can watch from then on unbiased news reports, analysis and daring journalism since these channels are not liable to be bullied by those in power and need not follow the views of the ruling government.
We did watch during the ‘Operation Blue Star’ the face of fearless journalism from Professor Chellaney who was widely regarded as one of India's leading strategic thinkers and analysts and a well-known television commentator on international affairs. Such things happened for a brief period till the late 90s with NDTV showing the way.
Now private news channels have grown manifolds in popularity. Those days when people only used to watch Doordarshan and DD Metro are gone. I still enjoy the melody in the television signature of Doordarshan and the radio signature of All India radio. How soothing is the montage of Doordharshan signature with the song ‘Sangeetha swarangalukkul’ of the Tamil film ‘Azhagan’. Do we find anything like television signature at all from present day private channels. Most of the private news channels now, in contrast, bluster with deafening blah-blah cacophonic music which is nothing more than noise pollution.
Journalism is to break news, show facts, analyze, but never try to put words in the guest’s or interviewee’s mouth and try to create opinions. Neither the anchors, nor even the so called chief editors should shout too much while anchoring a programme. They have to keep their voice low, we can still hear them. I know a chief of a news channel howl over the guest and virtually thrust the mike into his mouth just like the hound attempts to geek out a pound of flesh from its victim. I heard that in one such incident Lallu has lost his tooth.
This news channel which was formed by a breakaway group from NDTV never presents news and facts as it is and let the public to form their opinion. In fact, it is a cardinal sin for the Editor in Chief of this channel to show bias and try to form errant opinions in public mind even in matters scientific.
A pseudo scientist Mrs Malini from Bangalore has taken the entire nation including the police force and judiciary for a ride by marketing the primitive narco and polygraph tests and the premature brain fingerprinting test in criminal investigations. The Karnataka Government, after finding that this lady as a fraudulent person who joined service by producing forged age and qualification certificates, dismissed her from service. She was also found selling for huge consideration the CD recordings of narco-tests conducted on the accused persons to private news channels which were telecasting them repeatedly like horror movies for the free benefit of our country folks. This channel used to praise this person sky high by telecasting her pseudo scientific work in crime cases.
This Channel was more distressed than the dismissed person and instead of presenting the dismissal news verbatim brought Malini for an interview in the channel and sensationalized the issue attributing a political motive for her dismissal. She claimed she was born in 1964. The government produced a certificate from the Secondary Education Board to show she was born in 1960. The interview focussed Malini shooting the most intelligent question before the camera keeping the audience spell-bound “when my parents got married only in 1962, how could I have been born in 1960?” The channel of course repeatedly claimed political motivation. Malini has not only produced forged age certificate but also forged qualification certificate said to have been issued by Calgary University, Canada. The certificate she produced spelt the word ‘CALGARY’ as ‘CALLAGURY’ and ‘CANADA’ as ‘CANNADA’. The entire nation knows that I was crusading against the pseudo-scientific tests. I posted my comments containing the above facts behind her dismissal more than once on line to the Editor in Chief, but every time my comments were deleted. If the channel is neutral and unbiased they could have telecasted my comments. A phenomenon known as ‘shame’ is unknown to this channel.
The main business of the private news channels is to carry on their business as one of the most lucrative one and it is patent that providing awareness to people of this country through news is not their business motive.
That is why private news channels are now more about infotainment, which is a combination of information and entertainment. They are not bothered about what is happening worldwide economically, socially and politically. Only a little part of all the above information is provided while at the same time these news channels keep the audiences updated about what’s happening in the personal lives of actors and actresses and the glamour world, entertainment, films, movies and theatres which fetch them huge income.
In my younger days I used to listen to news reading in All India Radio to improve my English speaking. Can we learn anything from what the anchors and editors speak today in these channels? Each anchor with a mike in their hand screech at the other with their native English delivered with a guffaw. It is horrible to listen to their babble spoken to tedious lengths so rapidly and incoherently without any intonation.
News channels need to feel and be aware of what is their purpose of existence. They are here to provide the audiences global news from all walks of life, but they must know their limits. When a news channel solely aims at providing celebrity gossip and such other useless news, their worthiness is to be doubted.
Many of the private news channels indulge in creating unneeded sensation and blowing any situation out of proportion to gain TRPs. This gain will not be last long. They must show the reality, untouched, unhampered and unbiased with no blow ups.
Today, the we are being dished day in and day out with unimaginable amounts of scum-rotten ‘news and analysis’ content, meaningless discussions and debates that are usually full of rhetoric and boring verbosity. As the audiences get a heavy dose of rubbish news including false sensation and glamorization, they may stop watching these channels.