Media Faisco

Stereotypical Expectation 

This might actually sound like a cliché when general expectation form media is to be neutral about something. By neutral I mean absolutely unsided about the happenings. The first and the foremost thing that applies to journalism is to report and telecast the news as and when it is happened. But with set of expectation you should have born 30 years earlier or in different country altogether. Today I am going to speak about both electronic and publishing media. What I will also do is try and offer solutions. People on social networking sites know me as the one who  puts the question articulately but has no answers. They had a point back then. But then happened " What Young India Wants?" , a book by Chetan Bhagat. While Chetan has inspired the masses to read , he also has inspired me to shape my writings  The book is a collection of essays where in the author takes a situation , deals with it in most fluent manner and tries to offer a solution , how-so-ever "Juvenile". I will try to do the same. Lets dig!

Publishing Media

Let me start this with Publishing Media. I find one problem very serious about it. Newspaper is not about the news anymore. It is about full page ads , Classified crap, Supplements and more supplements of Horse Shit. The shit consists of houses with lake view or mountain view, birth or death anniversary of tycoon  ,some cold cream ads, some engineering classes , some commercial schemes, and a long list of products we hardly know even exist. Are these things important to us in hunter gatherer sense of way? NO! a big NO. What are we then? Consumers! Consumers of Life-Style Obsession. What the publishing media thinks these days is Murder , Crime , Poverty  these things don’t concern me what concerns me is Celebrity Magazines , Television with 500 Channels , Some guy's name on my underwear (Rogaine , Viagra, Olestra, Allen Solley ). The moral of all of this remains the same."All this life we buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have ,For the people we don’t like"

I stay in Pune and  I can say this thing blindfolded. No youth of this generation can afford a flat more than 70 lacks(Godsons excluded) ,even now it is a very very generous sum, and yet what I see on front page in Crystal Houses located on the suburbs of the city (5 out of 7 days). Gone are the days when front page meant something to us. Now a days any Dickhead can be there occupying that space. What's overhyped now is Page 3. The pary thrown by tycoons, politicos and other VIP events. Ask me then where is the news. Oh, it is there on pages 2,10, 16 respectively. I am not even undercounting. All the other pages are filled with Classified , Commercials and Expert (actual life Idiots, but I will get back to it) opinions. These are the problems an average indian is having against publishing media. (Lets Dig deeper)

E-Media (Electronic Media) 

E media activity on present day can be analyzed as 30% bolly masala( serials included),30% Cricket, 20% tele brands, 10% ads , 10% news. The work  definition is as follows,

Purana Jamana:- Report the News

Uske Baad wala Jamana:- Make the News

Aaj Kal ka Jamana:- Fake It and then Break It

Actually I never had a problem starting with something , but now am in dilemma as to where do I begin. Lets start. E media overhypes trivial things and no importance is given to real sensitive stuff. I have a quintessential example. A few weeks earlier a political tycoon was deceased. There was apublic funeral for him, but the way media handled was just disgusting. The whole day and I mean entire 24 hours the news channels went on showing the rally , the mammoth crowd  and the legendry politician. Sure, all of the state grieved on that day but media people should have known where to draw a line. The sensitive matter on other hand was dealt only with a sentence " Kasab, the terrorist, is hung and lives no more  ." there was some sort of info of him being infected with Dengue but no medical reports were released , neither did anybody get to see his dead body nor the hanging procedure, no ,nothing!!! Just like that.

Next thing they are doing is to offer astronomical solutions to existential problems. There is this guy called Rajat Shamra, one of the biggest aceholes (you know what I mean) of Indian Journalism. He claims himself to be a scion to have invented Breaking News and also Janta ki Adalat , and everybody knows Breaking news had done to media what pen drives have done to computer. whatever be the situation they are always linked to Chudailys , Pralaya, Kutta, Billi and Rajat Sharma is the one who breaks it to you every single day. For me he is the man who created news channel simply out of Punar Janam and Paapi Log, all the way from the programs about reincarnation to creating a nation of idiots.

What an Ass hole!!! ( I mean it )

And when time is good some actual news comes into picture. Oh yes we get the news form the strip that is running at the bottom of Tv set. If you are lucky enough you can also catch a sorry looking news  reader and if you are terribly lucky you get two readers who have nothing to do apart form complementing each other. What the hell goes on in those news rooms I wonder!

Cricket !! (Oh you will love this Para) . Every Indian is entitled to have a opinion about cricket but media are not entitled to telecast every single crap that comes there way. What they do is

Step 1:- Take a Issue( Currently dysfunctional Indian Team)

Step 2:- They find bunch of ugliest looking idiots who off-course has got the opinion

Step 3:- They will ask him some irrelevant question and never let him complete his sentence.

Step 4:- They will make them fight verbally with each other. Damn the topic, there egos are at stake now

Step 5:- One who is conducting the debate will announce the show is ending whilst the idiots , yes the ugliest idiots are still fighting in the backyard.

The good reason for calling them idiots is having limited cricket they opine about the God of cricket. These very people cant even hold a bat cant go for a walk single day in there lives say something slanderous about Sachin Ramesh Tendlkar. The stupid fuck that they are don’t even know sachin is holding his bat for as long as 7300 days in field.(Mind It!) Been running like a school boy for last two decades. He is the one who has child like enthusiasm about everything. We all know that retirement is part & parcel of the game but who the fuck are these people who impose the retirement on SRT. One such bastard is Monindar Amarnath!He comes up passing cluster fuck statements like "Sachin should have retired after 2003 world cup" , also  he said in 2007 Dhoni should not be a captain of Indian team. One month later India won the T-20 world cup under his captaincy after a couple of years we won Champions league 2010 that too under his captaincy and a year later won a 50 over Worldcup. I have nothing against this guy but he should stop considering himself a War hero. If so then it is high time he is reminded that this is a peace time.  Seriousy no respect form me … not like this!!

When I was a child TV serials were telecasted once a week. Be it Alif Laila, Shaktimaan, Suraag etc etc. However popular be the serial it was telecasted once a week. All we discussed was what would air for the upcoming week. Now a days serials are replaced by fancy word Soaps (specifically Soap Opera), which shows the show 6 out of seven days. The media don’t think that is enough so they run psychotic shows like Saans and the city to tell the audience whatz next to happen. There was the time when suspense had a vital role play in pursuing a serial but the Media has killed it now a days.

As I said I will offer solutions to these problems.

Publishing media

• Reduce the number of pages. Nobody reads the whole newspaper on week days.
• Glamorizing everything is no compromise for a less hi-fi story. People require truth not the manufactured version of it.
• Use the supplements  only when required. This is not a exam hall just to be remembered.
• Private ads should not feature more than a square of 8"X8"on page 4 or 6 whichever is convenient.
•   Always remember Freedom Fighters like Bal Gangadhar Tilak started Kesri Newspaper with sole intention of awakening the masses for freedom struggle against the Britshers.  They  might be less glamorous than you are but were equally effective. Some of his editorials are even at Library of Oxford and Cambridge. They were effective , you could be too. Give it a thought at least.

E-Media

• Telecast the news like the happenings in Parliament houses. The channels like Lok Sabha and Rajya  Sabha are telecasted only 3 hours per day. You could do it too. Telecast only the news part.
• No Astrology or Serial Crap is required. People are anyways bored of watching the marathon telecast of Balika Vadhu / Godh Bharai /CID / Crime Patrol that they can take it no more.
• Experts chosen should be publically respectably. If you don’t find one , its okay too. Conclusion is anyways ours to make with or without his opinion.
• Funeral/Auctions/Celebrity Events should not be telecasted for days and days . It is a high time that you are reminded of it.
• One mans tool is another man's weapon. Same holds true for Journalism . But Stop toying with it and feed us with some serious stuff.
• Always remember the legend Bhagat Singh. He got himself arrested so that People of India would listen to his voice through media. The media guys then were so articulate that they published What he had to say as he said it no more, no less.Notice the level of faith Bhagat had in media back then. The move was totally successful and thanks to Media people then. If same thing has to happen today ask yourself just this question "Will Bhagat Singh trust us? Could we live up to his expectation?".(since you so masala typically handle news that was meant to be serious)  Only then can we have this media problem handled.