THE INDIAN MEDIA – SECOND LEAST TRUSTED IN THE WORLD

By Ruma Dubey

Usually, the Indian media is so fast to report any survey where India has got a mention. But one such survey by the World Economic Forum strangely found no mention.

Actually, there is nothing strange about this – the media is extremely selective, it reports what it thinks is deemed “fit” and completely ignores news which people want.

Edelman of the World Economic Forum released the report and has labelled the Indian media as the second least trusted institution in the world. The survey showed that the trust of people of media, NGOs and business was at an all-time low and the credibility and motive of these institutions have been under question.

A total of 28 countries were surveyed, out of which 17 countries expressed their mistrust on the media. The report said that people do not trust the media content as most of them seem to have vested interest and exploit the situation for gaining TRPs. Eldem report said that overall there has been a “global implosion” in trust.

Over the years, we have actually become desensitized.  Our news genre and nation has only become about Politics, Cricket and Crime. There is something wrong with this world or at least, the way India sees this world. It’s time we change our outlook towards life.

We, as Indians have become eternal pessimists. We can only see the glass as half empty, the news as only bad, worse and worst. When the entire electronic media feeds you only negative news – if it is not politics, it is rape; isn’t there anything, nothing good at all happening in our country? Why no meaningful debates beyond politics?

Surely, the Indian media is going through what is called the ‘Breaking News Syndrome.’ A few years earlier, when a news channel flashed the Breaking News in bold red, bright colors- it actually stood for something relevant. Today, breaking news can be something as inane as“…political rally delayed by an hour!”

Even the business news channels are nothing different. A company might post very good quarterly numbers but just because it was “below our expectations” the stock price is battered down despite a good performance. Or for that matter, did even a single analyst on TV predict the 1700-point crash of yesterday? Now when the mood is bearish, we see only doomsayers and when the tide turns, they give buy calls. So what is this that we call “expert” advice?

And the TV screens- it could cause mild concussion if one tried to read all the scrollers – on the top, at the bottom and even on the sides, all this reading while trying to listen to the news.

There is one more thing which needs to be changed- stop Indianizing everything! The rush to tag every achieving person with an “Indian-born” tag. Why? It should be a shame as the same person could not achieve this in India; he had to go abroad and is today earning accolades and moolah for the others.

The Indian media is a regular Casanova – flirting with one story and then the other; committing to nothing till the end. We seem to be rushing through all, giving no due credit and importance to anything relevant happening in the world. And does the media ever do a follow-up on its previous ‘breaking news’? What happened to the ‘Prince’ who was rescued from the man-hole he fell into some days ago and the entire country cheered when the child was pulled back to safety? How much money did the Govt get back in this demonetization drive?

We are “know-it-all” fools who have no knowledge about the world happenings.  It doesn’t end by simply calling ourselves ‘global citizens’; we need to act like one too. We need to grow up- people and the media alike, move beyond Politics and Cricket and cover reality, cover life.