While giving shape to the available information, television news has shaped itself. It has entered a never seen world of instantly created phrases summing up the development in a few words. With the changing times and limited space to put out news, newsrooms have devised different phrases to convey news. The growing competitiveness in the news business has provided technological advancement to the way news is delivered which, in turn, led to the creation of these phrases. It is debatable if these phrases convey the development in its true nature or not.
Watch any news channel for 15 minutes, you will understand what i am trying to say.
The lower part of the screen shows a scroll labelled as "Breaking News". Through this scroll, you get to know the most recent and important development at that particular hour. It tells you what the respective channel thinks is the most important news of that hour.
I can cite a few examples in this context-
Development- X says something which appears anti-Y, X charges Y with something.
News- X attacks Y or X slams Y over....
Development- Y replies to the charges levelled by X.
News- Y hits back at X.
Development- X questioned by Y over something
News- X quizzed by Y over something
More precisely,
Development- PM writes a letter to Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar asking him to take appropriate measure to control onion prices.
News- PM pulls up Pawar.
("Pulls up")
Development- Launch of GSLV-P5 fails.
News- Disaster at Sriharikota.
("Disaster")
Development- Digvijay Singh blames RSS for Ajmer blast, RSS replies saying Digvijay is playing politics of appeasement.
News- War over saffron terror.
("war")
Development- Opposition parties stall parliament demanding JPC in 2G case.
News- War between opposition and government over JPC in 2G case.
("war")
Development- Girl, an employee of Dell computers, found dead in her apartment in Bangalore.
News- Dell employee murdered.
("Dell employee"- Was the murderer looking for dell employee?)
There is no end to such examples.
If one thinks that this is "Indianisation" of television news, then it is not correct. Look at a few examples used in the western media. One can call it "journalism slang". Invention of phrases like "Safe heaven", "good taliban/bad taliban" is an appropriate example of this trend. Though these phrases (safe heavens, good taliban/bad taliban) are created by US administration, western media failed to come up with better definitions to convey the same meaning.
Use of such phrases by Indian media is widespread. Nowadays, TV news channels resort to such phrases for almost every piece of information. There is no particular reason behind the emergence of these phrases in day to day news. Many senior journalists provide two reasons behind this trend. The inability of journalists of current generation to have good choice of words and trivialization of editorial understanding within journalists .
According to the old school of journalism, it was always important to report a development with every detail a journalist can gather. First rule of writing news says that news should be written/shown in a way that common reader/viewer can understand. Interpretation of a particular news story was always left to the reader/viewer.
New age media thinks otherwise. It believes that you need to decode information for your reader/viewer. Therefore, you take a position and convey the news accordingly. The theory of delivering available information only has been abolished. A new practice of delivering information, with an opinion attached, has been introduced. Right from a story of a policemen demanding bribe for registering an FIR to central government introducing new bill in the parliament, every story is told with an editorial sachet attached to it. Even before getting hands on every piece of information associated with the development, story is colored as positive or negative. Even before you know what the story is about, scapegoats are identified, right or wrong is decided.
This is the reason why we do not see any news channel providing us details from a neutral point of view, as was the case till a few years back. Every development will be bracketed as right or wrong, correct or incorrect, irrespective of the necessity of being judgmental about the development.
I asked a senior editor in my organisation about the possible reason behind attaching this editorial sachet to every story. He informed me that our viewer wants us to tell him/her the meaning of the development we report. "We are expected to tell our viewer the reason behind the development. "We are supposed to decode the information for our viewer". I wanted to ask him why does he feel that our viewer will not be able to decode the information on his own. There was no reply. I personally think the habit of packaging editorial sachet with every news item has led to the usage of these unwanted phrases.
New York times columnist David Brooks has argued, in his recent article, that round the clock availability of internet is creating information-oriented people. What we need is a knowledge-oriented generation.
New age journalists come under information-oriented generation, who are not clear whether to write X slams Y or X attacks Y. Instead of taking responsibility of correcting such errors, editors prefer to stay back and cry over current state of news media. There can be several reasons for this. It may be attributed to lack of creativity. Some would also say, it is lack of understanding of the importance of choice of words. It is this bankruptcy which will hurt journalism more than a journalist's association with a lobbyist.
I raise this terminology issue with my seniors everyday. Reply encourages me even more- "" "ठीक है यार, ज्ञान मत दे"....
