Risks from Tabloid Journalism
There is a place for tabloid journalism and there is a place for serious journalism. Today the 24/7 News Channels have become the personification of what Tabloid and Paparazzi journalism used to be. They are now mere a play thing in the hands of the ruling elite. They are not merely mouth piece of the ruling elite but rather the instigators of social mob lynching called the prime time.
Since many years media trials had been done but now targeting the Bollywood, celebrities and the intelligentsia who opposes the ruling narrative are targeted at mere token of opposition. From 2019 we are entering the realm of Anarchy and media seems to be the blood hound who are waiting for the scent of the next target to attack. And they will not rest till they have eaten the last flesh on their targets. They use the public opinion as the weapon and their blood thirst as the adrenaline to rouse public interest. But the cost for this is too high.
While for public figures who already have been always under constant public scrutiny, supporting or opposing the government is a very tight sword. This dangerous mix of tabloid, paparazzi and state sponsored intimidation may be too much for the bold and the beautiful, but the cost to society, mental well being of people, security of journalists on ground and also the scope of retaliatory action that one may get in future is very high now.
These are very dangerous times now, the youngsters have stopped taking the news channels and journalism seriously. Because of a handful News Houses the whole journalistic fraternity is already under constant ridicule, threats and intimidation. In these Covid times while many in the media are staring a bleak future, those few who are left are making the life of others a hell. Even if you today heckle the opposition or intimidate them, you make your future risky, and while the media owners and editors bark the orders, the life of the field journalist has only becoming a circus and even precarious. And in all these muddle the news that matter and the facts that should have come out, is lost in the flood of tabloid journalism.
Today I can not even see or show to my family the low standard of news coverage that is being shown on TV. While I have stopped watching TV altogether, only few Online news portals and few media organizations are left who have some semblance of serious journalism. Today Stand-up comedians, YouTubers and satirists give more news than the whole 24/7 news channels can give in a whole year.
The final looser are us, our pains, our job losses, the deaths of the people, our stories and problems are all lost in the flood of sub par journalism. When we are loosing jobs, farmers and laborers are loosing their income and rights and the poor is loosing its last hope. Society at large has become a big echo chamber where people in their closed rooms watching TV either become carpet bombed with propaganda or changed into blood hounds. And the hapless targets of media are the gladiators who also are the victims who did not ask to be thrown into the bloody rings of prime time stories. Their lives thread bared and rained with arrows of lies and deceit, at the end of it what is left is a perpetual sense of false justice and self riotousness quenched with the 24/7 dope of the tabloid media.
There was a time when tabloid was page 5 but today gossip is no more entertainment but sold as truth and also converted to accusation and judgements are sold as media trials. I see a bleak future for not only India but for the future of journalism and hope it ends soon before it has burnt everything in its path.
