The Indian media has often received flak for its tendency to go overboard, be sensational and milk any trivial event much beyond its worth.
All things argued about the Indian television news media, there are a lot of factors that need to be understood.
The private news channels’ boom in India may have been triggered initially by purely commercial motives, but to attribute the phenomenal growth to successful business conspiracies would be parochial.
The news media in India may not have proliferated, had there not been a supervening social need for it. News corporations brought in the economic element; the socio-political-cultural situation in India enabled the news channels to enter and then thrive. The four factors acted in tandem –– sometimes overtaking each other, sometimes simultaneous to each other and sometimes paving the way for each other.
The socio-political-cultural events in the 1990s had created a need for a platform for people to access information. The advent of Zee News and Star News networks merely filled that existing vacuum. The Indian government's liberalisation and globalisation reforms of the time, the gradual changes in the broadcasting laws and policies, the changes in the allowance of foreign direct investment, the advent and rise of cable television markets, the lowering of production costs for the starting of news channels, the reaching of a saturation point in other segments of media business (i.e. TV entertainment channels, music channels, movie channels), the prevalence of a non-hybrid market (26 languages and 146 dialects) and the chain of 'dramatic' events all around, necessitated the news for information.
These factors are important to realise. Rather than creating the need; for the media it was about being at the right places at the right times. When Rupert Murdoch saw India as a potential ‘market’, he may not have predicted the Indo-Pak Kargil war that led to Star News’ success. When Aaj Tak was just consolidating its position, a train compartment full of people was slaughtered, leading to one of the worst communal riots in the country. These news networks consolidated their positions by their coverage of these dramatic events; events that were affecting the people’s lives.
With each event, a new audience for the news channels was created. Having once got hooked on to the news genre, these audiences stayed on. This further created a market, and caught the attention of advertisers. News media business became lucrative and hence, more players ventured into the genre. They have further penetrated the 'regional' and 'niche' markets. They have been thinking of content that is appealing to 'local' audiences. The creation of such localised content has, in return, engaged the audiences, and this has led to further interest in this potential market from foreign players. The development that was triggered by a foreign network, in a way has reached full circle.
The industry players do admit that the coverage of news in India has been at times laden with inaccuracies, exaggerations and titillation. This, they attribute to the fierce competition and need to secure more eyeballs for a longer duration. It is noteworthy that though the news industry players condemn the seeping of sensationalism and tabloidisation into the news channels’ content, they adamantly support ‘infotainment’. Their conviction has been that such style of news presentation at least drew audiences to the news genre. The news channels refuse to take up the onus of ‘enlightening’ the audiences and perceive themselves predominantly as business enterprises.
But they have exhibited the resolve to conduct this business with ethical responsibility. The television news business in India is in its nascent stages. So it may be slightly unfair to relate the deviations of news channels towards sensationalism or high-decibel levels, as constant pursuits for increased viewership. Inexperience and anxiety to excel could be cited as a reason as well.
But despite the criticism the Indian news channels face, the Indian news channels has managed to create an informed public sphere. Not only has it managed to give vent to topics that would otherwise have not been explored, but it has also succeeded in winning the confidence of the citizens of the country. So even if the news channels have targeted the audiences as ‘consumers’, the ‘citizens’ are reaping the benefits of this increased competition.
The news channel genre has evolved in India in an era of dramatic events, and an era where other contemporary audio-visual genres are slick and pacy. So the challenge for the news media is not only to succeed, but also to sustain. In such a scenario, the Indian news channel media’s interest in infotainment seems legitimate, as long as they function within legal and moral limits. The formation of a regulatory body could help in this regard.
In some respects, Indian phenomenon can be compared to what Al Jazeera is doing to the Arab world. One of the criticisms that has often been levelled against Al Jazeera is its desire for audience ratings and being led by the masses. But as Mohammed El Nawawy and Adel Iskander argue in their book on Al Jazeera, “should the media lead the masses? Is this the role of the media? Ideally, the news media is completely objective; however, in its role on commercialised television, it would be hard to find any media that is completely objective, being also driven to respond to local sensibilities”.
To others who criticise Al Jazeera’s drive towards sensationalism to boost its ratings, the authors argue that at least the Al Jazeera has stirred up some emotions, whatever the means.
And as India’s industry professionals have been arguing, the Indian news channels have done that. Not only have the channels exposed scandals and scams, they have also encouraged people to act and respond.
In the future, things may stabilise and the current drive to steer ahead of competition through compromising on content could subside. With DTH and IPTV coming in, the channels will be forced to concentrate on improving their own content, rather than merely aping their competitors. Niche players will enter the market, catering to the needs of specifically targeted consumers. Consolidation between transnational-national-regional-local and niche channels could see only a few consolidated groups seriously in contention, and such wide tie-ups could enhance variety and quality of output. The local players should rise to a better standard of technical and editorial practices, and the international players could expand their reach, both, in terms of audiences as well as resources.
This may take time. The current obsession of the news channels for speed is generating a kind of fast-food journalism, where news is losing its nutritional value.
But who is to decide what the “perfect” form and format of journalism is? In the Indian context, it would be pertinent to draw a parallel, by citing the example of India’s film industry. The song-and-dance routine of ‘Bollywood’ films may be unlike other styles of filmmaking. But that does not imply that the films generated this way are not good films. Similarly, television news journalism in India has developed in its own unique way.
And it will continue to do so. As Thomas Abraham of Indiantelevision.com, said in an interview: “The day that the editorial takes over in its right sense, you will find that India will be vastly improved, and the transformation always comes through television. It will be like what the 1950-60s were for the Americans. Whatever you heard and saw on TV, as long as it was done the right way, you believed in it.
“That’s what is happening here, and it will continue to happen. You can’t escape that.”
