Five Things Indian TV News Channels Should be More Careful About

chillibreeze writer — Arpita Nandi

They are our primary source of news, and have become so important that they have almost replaced newspapers. And yet, these very news channels indulge in some objectionable practices that would certainly get them into trouble if they’d conducted the same stunts in a country with a more stringent legal system than India! Here are just some of the examples of how the Indian TV news channels go horribly wrong!

1. Reporting crime stories: blatantly branding someone as a criminal

Very often, as soon as the police have a suspect in a crime, he or she is instantly branded a criminal! Now, if we are to go by our esteemed (and often disregarded) constitution, this person cannot be a criminal unless his or her wrongdoing is proved in a court of law. But somehow, most news channels, especially the vernacular ones, do not even seem to know this!

Therefore, as soon as the police so much as detain someone for questioning in a case, some news channels say that a ‘criminal’ has been ‘arrested’! Also, many news channels are guilty of repeating the same footage over and over again, which affects the psyche of the impressionable viewer, who ends up thinking of the accused as a criminal!

2. Incomprehensive news coverage: not covering the most important aspects of a news or a feature

This is something that happens more with feature stories than news items. And it was at its worst when the film 2012 was being released. End-of-the-world or apocalyptically themed films are nothing new. And yet, this particular film ended up receiving more attention than it had ever expected. Strangely enough, not even a single vernacular news channel mentioned the consequences of the radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’, which had caused mass panic and hysteria in the earlier part of the 20th century! Other films with similar themes, like ‘Armageddon’, ‘Mars Attacks’, ‘The Core’ or even Manoj Night Shyamalan’s ‘Signs’ also received no attention!

3. The ‘Breaking News’ syndrome

It’s time that several of these news channels, including the English ones, in the country took a page out of the reporting books of the Western media, and started classified current news as ‘making headlines’, ‘fresh update’, ‘developing news’ and other such terms, rather than sticking onto the already overused ‘breaking news’. There was a point when even trivial news was spiced up with this tag!

4. Uninformed opinion

Every so often, some news channels tend to stitch together what they like to call a ‘panel of experts’. Even on a perfunctory glance, the credibility of several members of this panel falls apart! Many of them may not even be aware of all the aspects of a certain situation and scenario, but have no qualms in feeding the ‘gullible’ viewer their half-baked opinions and theories.

5. No proper distinction between hard news and a feature

We often see a story about some special achievement of an individual who has ‘made news’ based solely on that achievement. This is a ‘news feature’, what is known better as a human-interest story. It is not ‘hard’ news. The state or central government may declare some policies, and that is hard news. A robbery is hard news. However, when that individual’s achievement, or a similar phenomenon, is clubbed together with such hard news, it not only dilutes the importance of that hard news, but the achievement or the phenomenon also loses significance! Ideally, there should be a separate program to show such stories!

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in October, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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