In The Name of News...???

In The Name of News…???

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me
To bring Good news to the ignorant
For they believe what they see
He sent me to proclaim the Truth to the insignificant mass
And recovery of intelligence, for they are amused by irrelevance
Bring fire on those who manufacture truth
Set freedom free from ‘free market’...”

This will be the Messianic manifesto in this world of gizmos for “people will come to love their oppression and adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” It was the technology of television that made possible a mode of communication with image and sound and conquered limitations imposed by space and time. It shrunk the world to the level of Marshall McLuhan’s notion of Global Village. The ‘window’ to reality was replaced by ‘idiot box’ which made a shift from witnessing reality to ‘watching reality’. Watching reality was a trend started in American and European countries and now very much a phenomenon in India. At present, with about 250 channels made available to about 112 million homes, there is no area of human experience that is alien to television.

Of all television programmes ‘news’ has the greater potential to dictate and to control the cognitive ability of people, by presenting the manufactured reality of the world in a condensed form. Due to its compulsions of immediacy and novelty, quality and utility of the news is replaced by quantity of news. With its extraordinary potential its only aim is to subject humanity to the agendas of the dominant and to aggressive advertising, thereby creating a captive culture. While conceding the fact of television’s contribution to modernity, it is one’s critical task to analyse dynamics of the dictatorship of media.

Television broadcasting began in India in 1959, with the grant of UNESCO to achieve political integration, economic development and social modernisation. So, broadcasting was harnessed to the task of political nation building, national integration and the development of a national consciousness. There were only 21 TV sets, which were installed at different places in Delhi. Programmes were broadcasted twice a week, each with 20mts duration. This may be contrasted with present-day proliferation of channels and diluted objectives - a degradation created by the New Economic Policy of 1991. It allowed the entry of foreign private satellite channels into India like CNN and Star TV. By 1996 the number of channels increased to 50. Of course, now the count is around 250. On the news front, though there was a rise of news programmes on private channels, year 2000 witnessed the first news channel ‘Aaj Tak’. It gave rise to a new generation – a newsy (messy) generation that lives always with an attitude of ‘Yeh! Dil maange more’, looks for the insatiable fodder of distractions. Now, this messy generation boasts of 50 news channels in India, and a few more in pipeline, committed to the cause of ‘white man’s burden’. Now all these channels are at war to serve the humanity by littering them with a load of information. It will be interesting to know the factors that accelerated the unlimited appetite for news.

Television is a medium of epistemology. Watching news is considered an exercise of cognition and knowing (knowledge). Notions of truth and intelligence are organised around news (Mass-Media). So, often children at home and students at school are asked to watch only news, we see people hurrying to watch news, for the fear of missing something, we also hear some say “I watch only news,” “I watch only BBC,” I watch only CNN,” for they think watching news is a greater intellectual activity out of greater free will, and they take pride in watching news.

Watching news is not out of greater free will, but out of compulsion. Since the beginning, humanity is compelled by curiosity to know. Knowing is a dire need of humanity. The greatest punishment one can be given is solitary confinement. One is deprived of his/her curiosity to know. Curiosity is driven from ‘libido’ and it is also a sensual satisfaction of the senses. Anything that satisfies the senses is entertaining. So, watching news is entertaining. It is often said by many “Today there is nothing special in the news” because news didn’t appeal to their senses. The insatiable attraction for ‘curiosity’ is further exploited by presenting all subject matter in an entertaining way.

Now the news is lighter and more digestible with short cycles interspersed with lot of soft news. Reports on crime, night life, lifestyle, business news, movies, find their way into news. The worse part of Indian news is the undue coverage of the idiotic colonial vestige called cricket, scandals, and immoral sting operations. All of them are surefire entertainment. A new breed of news readers with spiffy looks, robed in designer jackets, hair glistening with gel, look more like news jockeys than news readers. Watching news is so entertaining that virtual world seem more real than the real world that we are again and again invited to be part of it- “Join us in the next bulletin”.

Committed to their mission of amusing and entertaining, news broadcasters are on a continuous run to gather new information over vast spaces at incredible speed. In their attempt to feed more they end up reporting discontinuous and fragmented events. Before we could even know what those events are about we are fed with another dose of discontinuous and fragmented events and it goes on. We are continuously distracted with discontinuous and fragmented events. We are happy about it, for we never know what our problems are.

On an average there are eight slots of news in a day, each running to 30 minutes. Many minutes of news manage to give us de-contextualised information from nowhere, addressed to no one in particular. The abundant flow of information has very little or nothing to do with those to whom it is addressed. Aldous Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and the truth would be drowned in the sea of irrelevance. How often information provided on news affected our plans of the day? It may be for those involved in stock market. But what is their percentage?

News channels cannot hang on to any issue for a long time, so they always look for new issues and precipitate crisis like political unrest, disasters, and wars. The crisis-driven media report these crises in spectator-friendly format like a spectacle, like a sport. It is appropriate to recall the footage of gulf war, war in Afghanistan and in Iraq, for they were more like footage from Hollywood flicks. It shouldn’t be a point of surprise if somebody watched them with a pack of chips and coke. We are thrilled about wide coverage, for crisis has become an item to consume. (Occasionally the crisis becomes an opportunity for those desperate photographers to fight each other to get the pictures of desperate people in crisis. Those photos appear on glossy magazines and get paid heavily).

It is argued that proliferation of news channels stand witness to the democratic India. But rather it should be observed that the label of democracy has become an excuse for breeding far too many news channels. It is ironic that in democracy free speech has become a commodity in a free market that is auctioned to the highest bidders. Free speech is bought and sold. Free speech is for those who can afford it and they are free to manufacture truth.

Manufactured truth is never free, for it is manufactured. So, the news channels sell the ‘insignificant mass’ to the advertisers without their consent. The only mistake we commit is to consume ‘manufactured truth’ and become captives. The news channels are paid brokerage by advertisers for the services rendered to them. The ad revenue that news channels earned in 2005 was Rs 550 crores, and it is expected to be Rs 1000 crores by 2008. Major news channels charge about Rs. 22,000 for a 10 sec spot, in a prime time news segment. In a thirty minutes segment, an average commercial break is about six minutes (360 secs). So, the revenue from commercials during a primetime news segment is about Rs. 7,92,000 leaving aside the revenue from scroll text ads. It is simple mathematics to calculate the revenue for a single day. It’s all business and business rules the truth.

In this chaotic newsy generation we have many versions of truth, but we are never faced with the truth. Seeking and presenting the truth is the highest vocation of social communication. It’s high time for humanity to be responsible to stand witnesses to the truth, for Jesus said “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). Jesus never allowed himself to be manipulated; rather he stood for truth, fought for truth and laid down his Life for truth. The Calvary stands testimony to His truth. Spirit of Jesus may inspire us to stand against manipulation in this messy generation and fight the forces of manipulation to free the humanity from captive culture.

B. J. Shailendra S. J