The ‘Game’ News Reporting
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 3rd Feb. 2018
With the religion and caste struggle being relegated to sidelines, at least the population is getting some break after years of being subjected to ‘Doyam Darje ki Patrakarita’. For a change (which seems quite a sudden rush of adrenaline with little trigger), people are now being reported about things that they really want to listen about, with some clerical errors of course. The ‘reason’ for the ‘gyan’ is understood though remains unacknowledged as the self-eulogizing advertorials of the news media continue, rather than acknowledgement of the past mistakes. And yes, they can take solace from the Netas and Journos ‘who ain’t finished as of yet’. Like the TV reporter making comparisons & exhortations to print media. This gives in that the journos still do not fully understand the ‘power of remote’ in tele-media. The click of a button navigates one to the channel one wants to watch, on Television. The print is still manual, and being subjected to manual issues will have a little slower change. We do not have any print journos attempting to reach out to masses aggressively, and thus supply constraints on the choices available. Nevertheless would not be surprised if TAM data reports a change of fortunes for certain news channels (and their select programs) though and this could be in all likelihood around double (or even thrice) of what it may have been around a couple of months back. If otherwise, the TAM report can be dumped ‘straight to dustbin as public discussions at water-coolers and coffee/cafeteria and it’s assessment is more reliable and the journos know how they were tricked by the tricksters of the survey industry and this was ‘dutifully’ passed on to public for consumption by our ‘learned friends’.
Coming to politics, the GOP and a chunk of its Netas seem still busy in trying to counter new narratives about some mundane useless political props as the Netas in the government are attempting to ‘create’ more of these one after other. The ‘Bechargi’ of the Netas as well as most political journalist seems evident, since responding to ‘real issues of real people’ is not a forte as of yet, having lost it over the years. There seem still little discussion on ‘vikas’ for the state, stated to go to polls as the Netas and parties seem to be gasping for some campaigning appetite even if it has become a ‘real concern’ for the people. And some Neta doesn’t still come to Aap ki Adalat even as some other try to master the art of ‘managed interviews’. By all accounts, it is the Netas afraid of the ‘change’ rather than the public readiness for the same and there seem little reporting or investigation about the same as what’s on margins becomes politically more relevant to what’s being dished on center stage. The continuation of the older storylines which have lost relevance need not be mentioned. Then there are attempts to politicize the GST passed with bipartisan support without ‘informing’ public regards any of the ‘proposed changes’. There seems to be a design to ‘maintain’ the ‘non-compliant unorganized sector’ rather than to encourage them to expand on the back of ‘bank credit’ on the back of GST tracks thus signal for a role of the ‘black money’, rather than minimizing the same and this again may have bipartisan support in our polity.
There are still no attempts by any of the many opposition party or Neta to declare and canvass for any new proposals for the farming sector, although one did hear some noise on ‘vodka’ to pacify the Aaloos in our politics. With social media harping on local language, this agin seem to have been dumped by the Netas and parties enblock and even by those in Bengal or Tamil heartland, where lot of emotional capital was previously invested on the same. The Netas can voice trouble with Darvinism, but unable to argue in favour of education of Engineering/Medical in local languages which was dear just sometime back to some of the political parivars. And what are the Netas and parties going to ‘make in india’ is yet to be decided by them and even the defence forces ain’t able to figure this one out with ‘all’ their efforts and paraphernalia. It should be pointed out that we perhaps need a health check for the political roller-coaster which the parties and Netas ride upon and had been doing so for years and what was followed up with the commercial news media with equal gusto. The state or center bureaucrats after having participated in some of the stupid oath-taking ceremony would perhaps be better off, back to duty and reminding ‘all political parivars’ about the strenuous battle ahead.