An explainer for the blemishes of Indian News Industry.
A brief Hello to the issue.
India stands on 142nd position in press freedom index with an whooping numbers of 31.35 in abuse score. Well I’m pretty sure you might have heard about Arnab Goswami, MD and editor-in-chief of Republic media network. He has also served to big names like Times now, ET now, NDTV and The Telegraph. But beyond all this, he is a great target for social media roasters. Well he’s not the only one to be blamed, India’s whole news market is getting deteriorated and shapeshifting itself from awareness spreading bodies to mere entertainment channels. Repetition of some common issues undermining, misleading and diversion from important issues for some personal benefits or gains is what news industry is following today.
How a Dominator dominates transparency.
We are much aware of the fact about what crucial role a country’s news media house plays in spreading awareness in its homeland . But what our Indian media is doing is to over-focusing and extra coverage of SSR suicide case, almost neglecting pandemic effects or vaccine development and countries economy‘s prospects in current scenarios. This promotes nothing but opacity in nation, the fact is, established thousands of RTI like laws but if and until ordinary person isn’t enough known they won’t even question a thing. Hence solves problem of powerful people and politicians. Allegations on BJP government will not be any new thing I might tell you. Not only BJP but every government has tried or controlled the news media. They make themselves as major fundraisers hence manipulates the fabric of coverage .
TRP and Revenues, major role-players in transforming scenarios.
Talking about how everything works, the story includes 3 key players .
⁃ Advertisers
⁃ Advertisement Agency
⁃ Television Channel.
Advertisers are those who pay advertisement agencies to get their product promoted all over the audience and finally channels or in this case I must refer, news channel, who gets paid to telecast it on their platform. Television Rating Points (TRP ). Is the criteria which decides the pricing of advertisement on any particular channel. BARC is the body which gives the proper data by selecting a few households among 20 Crore viewer industry of India , which in itself is just selected 0.0222% of total. This is where the scam starts. You surely have heard about Republic TV TRP scam. Republic TV and two more channels allegedly bribed and leaked secret information of selected sets for their use in increasing their TRP resultantly creating fortunes, increasing revenues. This profit making attitude is poisonous.