abhishreshthaa
Abhijeet S
Deception and Misrepresentation
Deception and Misrepresentation are different from Fakery and Fabrication in the sense that there is some element of truth to them. Fakery and Fabrication on the other hand are completely untrue. The truth or the facts in Deception and Misrepresentation are twisted or distorted to make the news more saleable. While they are definitely better than resorting to f2, there is no way they can be termed ethical.
The readers/audiences today are fairly educated and they often have good deal of knowledge about the happenings of the world. At this point of time, newspaper readership and news TRPs are at their highest. One cannot expect high readership or TRPs by purely trying to fool a well informed target audience. Therefore, the media has turned to deception and misrepresentation to grab the eyeballs i.e. adding twists to what the audience only knows is true. In fact, d and m has become the new mantra of Indian news media; there isn’t a single news channel or newspaper that hasn’t deceived the audience or misrepresented news.
The prevalence of d & m can also be attributed to the fact there is no effective self-regulating body amongst the news media. Chances are that institutions like the PCI will hold up a news media corporation for incorrect news rather sensationalising a partially true story since almost everyone indulges in it.
For e.g. The media reaction to the NDA government’s ‘India shining’ campaign was nothing but d & m. Even though India had a high GDP growth accompanied by increased industrial growth and the software boom a lot was still left to be done for a majority of the country. Even though it is widely accepted today that ‘India Shining’ was nothing but a publicity campaign for the incumbent NDA government just before the General Assembly Elections, the media had become extremely excited over the campaign. While the NDA was convincing the urban citizens that it had changed the country, the media supported the public deception.
Another e.g. is T20 victory
-India did win
-but it won only T20 and not in other forms of the game
-the media proclaimed the team as the best in the world
-The ICC surprised at such reporting
Deception and Misrepresentation are different from Fakery and Fabrication in the sense that there is some element of truth to them. Fakery and Fabrication on the other hand are completely untrue. The truth or the facts in Deception and Misrepresentation are twisted or distorted to make the news more saleable. While they are definitely better than resorting to f2, there is no way they can be termed ethical.
The readers/audiences today are fairly educated and they often have good deal of knowledge about the happenings of the world. At this point of time, newspaper readership and news TRPs are at their highest. One cannot expect high readership or TRPs by purely trying to fool a well informed target audience. Therefore, the media has turned to deception and misrepresentation to grab the eyeballs i.e. adding twists to what the audience only knows is true. In fact, d and m has become the new mantra of Indian news media; there isn’t a single news channel or newspaper that hasn’t deceived the audience or misrepresented news.
The prevalence of d & m can also be attributed to the fact there is no effective self-regulating body amongst the news media. Chances are that institutions like the PCI will hold up a news media corporation for incorrect news rather sensationalising a partially true story since almost everyone indulges in it.
For e.g. The media reaction to the NDA government’s ‘India shining’ campaign was nothing but d & m. Even though India had a high GDP growth accompanied by increased industrial growth and the software boom a lot was still left to be done for a majority of the country. Even though it is widely accepted today that ‘India Shining’ was nothing but a publicity campaign for the incumbent NDA government just before the General Assembly Elections, the media had become extremely excited over the campaign. While the NDA was convincing the urban citizens that it had changed the country, the media supported the public deception.
Another e.g. is T20 victory
-India did win
-but it won only T20 and not in other forms of the game
-the media proclaimed the team as the best in the world
-The ICC surprised at such reporting