Breaking News!

 

Television gives you a hard time when you want to take it nice and easy. Turn the TV on, surf across channels and there will be nothing interesting either in entertainment or infotainment. So, you decide to stop at a news channel, as in these channels, something always keeps happening. But after about an hour of viewing its content, you go into depression. There will be screeching, shouting, calling names for the sake of debate most of the time and the rare bit of news that might filter through will lead you nowhere. You will come to know of increased perverts, declining moral values, glorification of the criminal mind, lawlessness and what not about the seamy side of life. This leaves you in a fix. What to do next?

Now, your brain is intoxicated, you can’t think positively or constructively about anything hereafter for a long time. Thanks to these channels, this is the story of how most modern men are spending their spare time.

A similar thing happened to me today and thankfully, all of a sudden, my remote button rested on NDTV profit. It brought back memories of a young Prannoy Roy, reporting on challenges ahead of the newly elected American president, George Bush (Senior) in a classic ‘The World This Week’ show, followed by a five minute talk on the new (!) technology of in vitro fertilization,  finally concluding with the sports update about Martina Navratilova winning another Grand Slam trophy.

My mind went back to those days, when we had to wait for seven days to see a white skin and visions of the Great American Dream on TV. Three minute news about Colombia’s cocaine mafia was the only information we could gather about Latin America. Though there was paucity of information, purity and authenticity were a hallmark feature of news at that time.

I recall the first time in my life I got acquainted with the word ‘breaking news’. It was in 2001…….the date, 11^th September.

After that event, there has been a revolution in the electronic media and today, even a fart can earn breaking news status by virtue of this new found entity. And I wonder what our so-called “responsible” society as a whole is doing about it! Let us take, for example, the Bomb blast in Hyderabad a couple of months ago. Within twenty minutes, everyone (from the Police chief to top politicians, even the physician) who should have been busy in his/her work was all over the small screen. How I wished I could tell them, “My friend, now is the time to act, to get hold of the elusive clue, to treat the suffering masses”, but most of the manpower was wasted in cheap worthless live dissection of something about which we didn’t have any definite information.

More worrisome are the RED HOT breaking news (few call it “developing” story). For example, about six months ago, there was a breaking news story that there had been an earth quake of 7.2 magnitude (Richter scale) in my home town Guwahati. Naturally, I was petrified.

I rang up my folks at home, there was some network problem, so I called a friend who lives in my neighborhood – he didn’t pick it up. I was worried and justifiably so. Then, I surfed through all the North east channels available on my “direct to home” package, all were showing the same news of an earth quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale!

After about an hour of anxiety and twenty frantic calls, I got to know that there was indeed an earth quake but it was very small in magnitude, so small that many people didn’t even feel it. So how could it be 7.2 on the Richter scale? It was only then that they confirmed the epicentre in Indonesia and it was 7.2 in Indonesia only. Some parallel tremors were felt in north east India. The item was not even mentioned in the evening news to follow.

My question is, “What was the hurry to break the news? Couldn’t they even verify the news before bombarding it into the monitor for the world to see?”                                                                                                                                                                               

It is becoming a nauseating hazard.

My dear news channels, may I please request you not to break any news, Let the seed of event mature enough, then decide to deliver it to the public with great watchful expectancy and masterly inactivity, like all my obstetrician friends do for each and every delivery….