Television journalism: is it on the right Track

By Amiya Pani

India is no longer a backward country with regard to development in the fields of communication and technology. Indians are now creating news across the world in the fields of software development as well as media. The person editing the world's most prestigious news magazine 'Newsweek' at present is Indian born. Indian television is equally developing with a great speed. Our channels have now started having tie-ups with world's biggest names in journalism.

But we have a big query facing us. Is our television moving on the right track? My answer to this query is simple. Yes. To a great extent, our television channels are on the right path. But there is a lot of room for change and improvement.

Since the revolutionary growth of technology took place in the wake of economic liberalisation, the fourth pillar of our democracy has been keeping with the speed in comparison with other wings of media. Be it print media, book world or cinema, Indian television has successfully lived up to the expectations of the Indian audience by covering the complexities of life touching the nation's conscience.

In the past one-and-a-half decade, television, the younger organ of modern Indian journalism, has proved that it has the capacity to turn the coin in anyone's favour. Till the introduction of colour television, Doordarshan was the only major player in the national sphere and later on Zee TV scripted history by becoming the first private broadcaster in the country. One significant fact is that during the last one decade, there has been an increase over 15 per cent in the television viewers.

Meanwhile, around 40 news channels are operating in the country in Hindi, English and other regional languages. In fact, Indian media as whole is acquiring growth at a fast pace in the recent years. Journalism, particularly in its audio-visual wing, is attracting a lot of young and trained talents.

Although the future looks bright, some media critics are of the view that television journalism in India is yet to get a strong foothold. A majority of television journalists seem to lack understanding of the major issues that they are handling from time to time.

In the context of content development, our television journalists should give emphasis to research on the issues they are handling than going ahead with analysing critical issues – be it the militancy problem in Jammu and Kashmir or the controversy surrounding the 'office of profit' question.

Even though television journalism is my passion, I also feel that issues being covered by our channels should be given proper treatment as per their importance. We must refrain from sensationalizing things in the name of getting a better recording in the TRP (television rating point) machines.

An analysis of various news-based programmes being beamed by our television channels shows that even cricket matches and celebrity wedding getting priority over the reports of hunger deaths or deaths due to malnutrition. Most of the channels seem to be too much metro-centric.

Few years ago, Doordarshan's was the only channel to telecast news bulletins covering almost all the news under the Sun. When Doordarshan used to swap its news time to show cricket matches live, cricket lovers loved it to the hilt although the general viewers did not appreciate the change in the timing of the news bulletins. Those who did not like cricket were critical of Doordarshan. But time seems to have undergone a sea change.

Now we have as many as five dedicated sports channels that are broadcasting live sports for 24 hours. Despite these sports channels being in operation, when India plays cricket against any other country most of our general news channels are still continuing to allot prime space to sports news, particularly cricket, in their major prime time bulletins.

In we go by the prevailing international norms, sports news is mostly limited to the dedicated sports bulletins. But in our channels sports news coverage looks funny to me not only as a media person but also as an ardent television viewers. I will cite a few examples. In general sports news features Indian channels give sports items only when India is playing cricket against another country or Sania Mirza is playing tennis. News about other sports are hardly taken in these bulletins.

When India is playing a test or a one day match most of the channels are having 2/3 hours discussion and analysis in prime time despite there being dedicated sports channels. If the venue of the match happens to be inside India, our general news channels go overboard in giving more time to cricket. For example few months back when Sri Lanka cricket team was in India for a one day series that was a one-sided affair for India and India own the series 6-1, the last match was covered extensively by the news channel, virtually ignoring a test match between Australia and South Africa that was played the same day in Sydney. Australia were one up in the series and South Africa captain took a brave decision in the last day declaring the innings. But Australia won that exciting match in which Ricky Ponting was able to score centuries in both the innings.

Having a target of 260 odds run to chase in 60 overs, Australia did chase the required runs in style. But not a single news channel in India gave details of that match till late evening. So if these channels are covering sports in a big way, one feels that they should cover all big happenings in cricket like the national dailies, but not just Indian cricket.

Moreover, what is found in Indian channels is a growing trend to ignore news that is of use to the common man. News seems to have been losing importance and entertainment gets priority. This was evident when most of out channels devoted excess timing to cover the second marriage of Aamir Khan with Kiran Rao. The television correspondents, though uninvited, were present in the marriage venue in full strength. This irritated the actor and resulted in his security personnel beating up the journalists.

The news on Aamir Khan's marriage was beamed through the day. But the news about 13 fishermen who had gone missing in the Bay of Bengal due to a cyclonic storm got little space in the bulletins of our main news channels. Eventually six of those fishermen died and seven were rescued by the people manning the ship of a private company. No channel virtually touched the incident although there was scope of raising the issue of disaster preparedness of the Orissa government particularly after '99 super-cyclone.

These two incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many instances when Indian news channel remain blissfully ignorant of many events that was of interest to the common people. There coverage of news needs to be wholesome, but not lifestyle-oriented or that revolves around sex or crimes.
(EOM)