What happened to the News?

I remember the days when I was a little boy. The only channel that we could watch was Doordarshan. I was not watching much TV anyway. I still remember getting annoyed when my mom and dad used to tell us to keep quiet during 8:30 News. Later the news were telecast in English again. But we used to watch the Hindi version.

Some years down the line, other channels entered in the scene of Indian television. The first one that I came to know of was Zee TV. Since we did not have cable connection, I sometimes used to go to my neighbours house watch programs like Antakshari etc.

We finally opted for cable-connection and in turn other TV channels when I finished my 12th. It was Doordarshan who kept us company till then. Since after 12th I left my home for further education I did not have any particular favourite TV channel. But I must admit that it has been years since I have stumbled upon Doordarshan and watched.

But now whenever I stumble across a News Channel I remember the good old days. I still remember the typical tune for the news followed by a Saree clad announcer with heavy make-up. There might have been cases of censorship on the news as Doordarshan was controled by Ministry of information and broadcast but at least whatever was reported, was reported with a complete neutral expression on the face of the news presenter.

"The president addressed the nation today..."

"India lost in the cricket tri-series...."

....and the list goes on. That's it. "This happened" and nothing more. That's what I like my news channel to serve me news. Today what is being fed as news is not news but political advertisements, political opinions mixed with presenter's own bias with extra gossip on top. In addition, we are also served special additions of jumping to conclusions without any facts, blame-game, selective reporting. If that is not enough, they also serve us "Romance brewing in BigBoss house" as a breaking News. I wonder how everything from cat getting stuck on a tree to pre-planned dharna of some group of people is a "breaking news".

In my personal opinion, since there are 24 hrs in a day and there are so many 24hr news channels. Not much newsworthy is happening to keep every channel occupied with reporting something sensible. So they are reporting any random events as news and do their post-mortem in the most ridiculous manner possible. And then there is another problem. With 24hr channel, how do you make audience to stick to your channel for 24 hours? Because without enough audience it is difficult to generate revenue. So what do you do? You present what the audience wants to see and not what the people need to see. You feed your audience with what can be described as voyeurism, titillating stories and pretty much anything that tingles their sensation. (That's how the term "sensational news" comes into picture I believe.) From Lalu Yadav's outburst to  Rakhi Sawant's blabber, you want to feed everything to the people because that's what tickles our perverted senses and tries to make us feel that we are "up-to-date" on what is happening in the country and that "we care" for our nation by watching these news so that we can take "informed decision" as an electorate.

In among all these WTFs, we do not realize that we are just a source of revenue generation and what we are see is not news but political opinions, alliance and allegiance being thrust down our throats. Please see the following video

And here are the links to the Press Council of India's report on paid media :

http://presscouncil.nic.in/WriteReadData/userfiles/file/CouncilReport.pdf
http://presscouncil.nic.in/WriteReadData/userfiles/file/Sub-CommitteeReport.pdf

Dependence on technology

Well, This post is coming as a consequence of me being cut off from having mobile connectivity as described in my previous post. Problem is not yet solved, but it got me thinking. It was extremely frustrating initially, and the frustration increased. But now after 4 days of absence of connectivity, I am starting to make peace with the situation. I started wondering how dependent I have become on my mobile. I remembered good old time when I did not have one. In fact, I got a mobile from my own stipend during my Masters. I have never been addicted to SMSing or other kind of mobile addictions people have. I only use it to call people and receive calls. When I am away from my home, I use it for at most an 40 min to an hour and when I am at home, well, I hardly use my cell phone. So I believe that is is just psychological. But this is just scary. A little disturbance in life and I lost peace of my mind. And there are two faces to this situation. Either you make peace with whatever situation ( injustice, unprofessionalism etc ) you are faced with, or you fight back. In the former, probably your conscience will bug you, reminding you that you did not take a stand. You just sat back and just made peace with the situation. In fact, that's what we all are good at. We just turn blind eye and just try to make peace with it. I think, now I understand the situation of India. At every stage, for every service, one has to put up so much fight, that at the end of it, people just make peace with it. They trade their rights ( right to get justice, professional service etc ) and money ( bribe ) for their peace of mind. May be that's why we fair much better at happiness index even we top the charts of corruption. Probably, in a long term and in a bigger picture, peace of mind trumps everything.

Airtel Sucks!

Well,
I think title tells everything that this post is about. I got an airtel SIM on 9th May and submitted all required documents. I got a call from airtel to verify the details I had filled in and I gave appropriate answers. The trouble started when I got an SMS on 29th July saying that my documents were not in order.

I went to Airtel Customer Care at Malleshwaram, Bangalore. Resubmitted all of the documents and filled the form again. They assured me that my mobile connection will not be affected now. 10 days later, suddenly, without warning, they barred outgoing as well as incoming connections. When I went there to enquire, they said that it has been barred due to 'Zero Usage'!!!!

Needless, to mention that I was using this number the whole time. Neither I ran out of balance nor validity. They made me talk to their "(mis)manager" and he asked me to submit the document, yet again!!! I do not see any connection between "Zero Usage" and my documents. After enough shouting, they told it will get activated within 4 hours. When their 4 hours did not get over after my 20 hours ( may be Airtel operates in some sort of parallel universe! ), I went again to Customer Care at Malleshwaram.

Not to my surprise, there were couple of customers already shouting for one reason or the other. I took my turn to shout at them, and now they reduced the time to 30 minutes. I am yet to gain a knowledge of the way time operates in their parallel universe. I am still waiting for my connection to get established.

It is a loot in broad day light, as they even refuse to return my balance in the event of them not able to provide me connectivity!

I have been using vodafone for last 4 years, and used MTNL 3 years before that. Never faced a problem like this. The only thing I would recommend is to keep away from Airtel.

May they rot in Hell!!! Oh, wait, I forgot that they are themselves the creators!