Today's News - Breaking or Breaching!

 

A few years ago, I asked my then 6-yr-old daughter if she would love to take part in a debate. No, she replied promptly. I was intrigued and asked her if she knew what a debate meant; she said she had watched debates on News channels along with grand-pa. ‘The participants behave very badly and shout at each other like enemies; I don’t want to be a fighter-cock’. This revelation was indeed an eye-opener to me as a parent.  

As a kid, I remember my dad used to insist on watching the English news every night. There was a dual objective of improving general knowledge and vocabulary. The process of staying muted throughout the half hour while Sunit Tandon or Sukanya Balakrishnan read the news impeccably was quite a challenge. Nevertheless, we admired the beautiful saree-clad women and Suit-boot Babus for their diction and poise. They were indeed worthy of emulation.     

Fast-forward three decades, and today Prime time is the most-dreadful time. Thankfully, there are dedicated news channels, so it is easy to abandon them. The incessant ranting makes one wonder if they are newsreaders or rappers. I am sure most newsreaders today will make great rappers! I am surprised the news channel with the loudest newsreader boasts of the highest TRP! No wonder, most others follow suit with hopes of increasing their TRPs. What the nation actually wants to know is why this noise? And why noise-mongers are being celebrated so much? Unfortunately and quite contrary to my dad’s objective, my objective as a parent is to keep my kid away from certain news channels, for fear that she might emulate the aggressive behaviour.   

The advent of social media had led to the slow inlet of various forms of hate speech. Social media today serves as the largest platform for people to talk their minds out without boundaries, which sometimes leads people to a state of disregard to the rules of social behaviour and common courtesy. The line between freedom of speech and hate speech is so flimsy, and this phenomenon has crept into the TV channels as well. I watch with sheer disgust as representatives of political parties, apparently guests in the debate blatantly accuse each other for everything that happens under the sun. I recall the word ‘constructive criticism’ from my Civics book. Today irrespective of which party is ruling, every party is engaging in destructive criticism. 

Thankfully, the virus has not explicitly spread into print media. I am one of the patrons of the traditional print media and miss the colourful Indian newspapers and the smell of it whenever I am away. There is obviously lesser pressure in the print media to break the news into the heads of readers and to pop their eyes out.

As I try to lure my 8-yr-old towards the newspaper, I see her eyes roll as she picks the colourful supplementary with a big picture of the BTS band. As she immerses herself into the article and into her world of K-pop, I decide not to get into a ranting spree myself. How I miss cutting those colourful pictures and pasting them in my scrapbook. It is almost prime time now, and time to escape into my nest, away from the blasting television set and the sprawling headlines spread across the screen in different sizes and colours. If you want to get your eye test done at home, there's probably a simple way to do so! Just try reading all that you find on the screen of a news channel.