"I have stopped eating. I have stopped drinking. I rarely breathe any longer because I'm going to hear something on television telling me that I've done something that's about to kill myself,”
- Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, USA
Reporting facts is fair enough but making sweeping statements on the whole society or nation based on one-in-a-million incident is negative. It is also negative to highlight only the worst and shameful of incidents and not the ones where people do good to others.
Taking it positively, one might say that bad news is comparatively occasional and good news too many to qualify for a special mention. But then how many take it that way? Not many because the bad news is often sensationalized and repeated over and over again to imprint a lasting negative reflection of the society in the collective minds of the society.
It is no wonder that the average Indian (especially in blogosphere) is a cynic. People do not believe good news when it does come or are always looking for excuses that diminish the good news. That’s the effect of watching the 24x7 bad news splashed in our living rooms.
So why is the media so negative? Why does the focus have to be on the doom and gloom? As an answer, here are some more quotes from Brent Bozell.
"We seek to entertain an audience rather than enlighten an audience,"
"There is the old song that says that good news is no news. Bad news is great news. In the final analysis, it is all about ratings."
So ratings are important but how much of all of this is fact or fiction? Is the world such a dangerous and depressing place?
Well, the answer is: not really. On closer inspection, we see that what passes for a crisis in the media is really not a crisis at all.
A few years ago, I remember one Hindi TV news correspondent going about the city of Delhi after a bomb blast claiming that Dahshak (terror or fear) has taken over the city. To prove it, she interviewed a constable on duty at India Gate. From the casual attitude and body language of the constable, he might as well been munching peanuts. In answer to a question, he said, “So what? It’s a usual day.”
The reporter continued undeterred, “As you can see, dahshak is everywhere.” One wonders if there was so much dahshak, why is she roaming around freely in the city, why not give up the job and sit at home trembling in anticipation of the inevitable end.
But she doesn’t do it; in fact, everybody goes about his or her daily routine firstly because there are more than 100 crores of us in this country. Even if 100 people die in a bomb blast, your chance of dying in a bomb blast is roughly one in a crore.
News reporters have started using superlatives like dahshak and fear at the drop of a hat. What used to be merely ‘concern’ at one point of time has now become ‘fear’. All this is leading us to worry needlessly about things that are most rare. And this is because these rare incidents are sensationalised, personalised, and repeated in various versions of “breaking news”.
The dahshak actually sets in when we have seen stories often enough, especially crime and victim stories, and then we start to change our lifestyle, our opinions. We don't go out as much. We don’t interact with certain types of people. We'll choose more society flats with gates, security booths, high walls, no windows. Sales of pistols and security systems increase. In short, we start to believe we live in a world where things are "out of control." Have you noticed that many have started asking “What is the world coming to?”
You really see fear most in crime stories. Just watch your local news channel for a few minutes and you may think that crime is everywhere.
Next time you start thinking in these lines, just keep this in mind - Covering crime is cheap, fast and efficient so you see more of it. Ask any news reporter, he will agree.
The mainstream media is in fact trying to generate audiences and profits more than providing solid information. Solid information is made up of statistics, facts, experience, professional language rather than speculation, criticism, hysterics and flowery language.
Speaking of solid information, no one seems to figure out global warming. All I have noticed is that summers have become wetter in Bangalore, and winters have become chillier. Remember the Time magazine coverage: "Be worried. Be very worried." But what about 30 years ago, when some in the western media said there was an impending ice age?
If it is any consolation, Americans are as much unnecessarily worried as we are. In the 1990s, the American murder rate fell by 20 percent. But the number of murder stories on their network newscasts rose roughly 600 percent. Well, I am sure the situation in India is more or less the same.
Some people argue about the right to know. But are people ready for this kind of knowledge especially when presented in this imbalanced perspective? Many of us still live sheltered and protected lives. News that shock us also make us feel above the society and the first ones that we start suspecting and mistrusting are those who don’t belong to ‘us’ – implying those who don’t belong to our family, region, religion, social status and so on.
Thus the problem aggravates. Which brings to mind the idea of responsibility: to whom much is given, much is expected.
Any ideas on how the media can be made more responsible? Here’s what I thought of for a start.
1. With the exponential growth of media, lack of good analysts has resulted in several inexperienced people making it a free-for-all. Media houses should give proper training to the highly visible correspondents and news script writers on how not to sensationalize and dramatize but report matter-of-factly.
2. Write to press about each sweeping statement they make. Ask them to give proper statistics backing these claims.
3. Spread awareness about the sensationalist and shock value of news.
4. Learn to see through news without the drama and frills. Learn to separate facts from fiction.
5. Make judgements based on own analysis.
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