The state of the Fourth Estate

Did you catch the recent debate on Indian Cricket team’s dismissal performance on any of the news channels? That’s another thing that these debaters were themselves the non-performing cricketers for a long time, but that’s a different story.

OR, did you catch the big Aish-Abhishek wedding coverage, with all the incidents of look-alikes going to meet Aish or that of an actress going to media claiming to be Abhishek’s wife. The wedding itself was a bonanza for the paparazzi.

OR, god forbids if you caught the “Mat Chuko Chauhan” episode on one of these 24X7 news channels. The poor major was not allowed to speak a single word in the entire half an hour program amid numerous breaks.

If this is the state of fourth estate in India, I wonder how long informative journalism can breathe there. The scandals (be it exposed or created) and taking upper slots and high TRP rating, whereas the news or the real stuff is being thrown away somewhere. If you want to find out the turnout in UP election, you may have to stay tuned for more than 4 hours to see a small clip in the bottom; however the Bob Woolmer’s death was covered to the most specific details possible.
The media in India is on a suicidal track and I see no looking back for it now. Even the print media has been reduced to Page 3 and the cartoon paper these days. There was not a single day that I didn’t find a poor grammatical error in any of the newspapers I picked. Whoever reads this and why? Whoever watches the crap that comes over on those 24X7 news channels? How long can we really blame our middle class house wives for all the garbage on the Idiot box? How long should we buy the newspaper for our hostel wall collages? I think we need to find the answer to this sooner…