News Breaking?!

See what I did there? Clever, huh?! Anyway, the reason for this post is to express my utter disappointment with the hordes of Indian news channels that seem to have mushroomed over the last few years. Years ago, when I migrated over the seven seas, I used to take pride in the Indian news channels, at least when compared to the louse Komo4 and Kiro7 for whom, as we used to joke around, the typical headline of the day would involve something about how a cat somehow ended up on a tree and how the friends, neighbours, fire deparment and half of the city got together to reunite it with the anxious owners.

Years later, NDTV and AajTak are probably still better, but only marginally so. And as for the likes of IBN7, I don’t think I can say even that. The mantra of the day seems to be total sensationalism, taking the smallest of stories, or non-stories, and blowing them up as if our very existence depended on whether or not Kareena Kapoor was still size 0.

Things were quieter when I was here earlier this year. As a result one of the news channels, I forget which one, seemed to have dedicated itself almost entirely to an Indian police officer who had managed to make it to WWF (or is it called WWE now?). Khali, I think his name was. Day after day, all you saw were headlines and stories about how Khali had threatened one or the other of his opponents, how much he ate, how he was on a fake sick leave, how much he ate, how is his family, blah blah blah. Or as my esteemed chairman would say, blah di blah di blah. And yes, as much as I despised it, I did watch all of it. I was on a vacation! What else was there to do!!

This time around, because of all those unfortunate events in the beautiful Mumbai, these news channels have had a real issue to report. But even then, even in the face of one of the worst tragedies, they just can’t help it. Yes, I understand you are doing a great service to the police by not relaying the live pictures or revealing operation details, but do you really have to shove it down our throats every other minute? And at the top of your voice? And the reports were almost like they had been produced by Ekta Kapoor. So bad was it that I had to turn to BBC World to get some decent, sane news. Even if they weren’t too heavy on details, they are world news after all.

Maybe something happened to Indian journalism, or at least the news channels, over the last few years that I completely missed.. Maybe they happened to catch a broadcast of Fox News and mistook it for a training video. That’s about the only thing that can explain it!