Yes, we live in an information age. Find the remote control for your television set and try to count the number of news channels that you are subscribed to! Amazing isn’t it… for a diverse country like India with so many languages dividing us regionally – the news broadcasters have managed to create a network of news channels covering all the languages and regions. My one question is – do we have some much news worthy of reporting?
One advantage of this is you never miss a news – petty or otherwise; Additionally, regional news seems to have gained a lot over regional newspapers and tend to create bigger fuss over smaller issues! Though all of this is true and seems like progressive step, no matter how infinitesimal, is pushing us to move in the right direction. But then I use my remote control again and surf to ‘Aaj Tak’. Suddenly, I am awakened to a new aspect of the information age – news spicing and bombarding! And make no mistake this is not limited to Aaj Tak but also encompasses apparently reputed news networks like Times Now, IBN 24x7, Headlines Today, etc. Try switching over to your favorite news channel and count the time they spend on one story and the way the limited visual footage they show of the incident. I will bet you this will definitely blow your mind. The whole news story will have no content that cannot be explained in less than 1 min and still goes on for about 10 with at least 2 commercial breaks to show the same reel of a file footage and same readout from the newscaster over and over again. This brings me back to the same question do we have enough news happening around us to be updated with or is the news corporation trying to rewrap and resell the same stuff over and over again. I miss ‘Doordarshan--days’ when boring/interesting was not a measurement for worthy news broadcast – it was the governed by precision and sense of bias.
Another thing worth mentioning is the attention span of human beings i.e you and me! With so much happening around us we have been continuously stuck in a state of overwhelm! It is like the Tata Vista advertisement our eyebrows never seem to return to their God-given state. We have been bombarded with so much information since the beginning of time that we have hardly had any time to process it. We have developed a super power and it is called ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Our environment has stunted our attention spans from few hours to few seconds. Try this out – switch on the TV set with the intention of watching a new channel and hold the remote in your hand; set it to one of the many news channel. Now time yourself for the amount that it takes for you to shift to another channel or just to start channel surfing. You will realize the one thing we are missing from our homo sapiens ancestors is the virtue of patience! We are so easily bored and/or swayed and/or irritated by everything around us that unless it is eye catching and/or shocking- we do not even bat an eyelid. Another good example of small attention spans is this video.
Gone are the days when simple really meant simple and complex was something unexplainable. Today news corporations create their own spindle of yarns to weave their own fabric of truth and reality. Choosing sides is essential part of democracy but biased news is not. I believe in being my own censor and missing out on the ‘san sani khej khabre’ !
