Why is the media here so negative?

This blog is an outburst as a result of going through the first page in the New Indian Express today. Headlines read “Militants strike at seven places”. Just above this headline is a picture of a lady crying uncontrollably while speaking over the phone from a hospital bed. On the right side reads another news “Twin blasts in Jama Masjid”. On the left side of the page, in the Breaking News section, the first news read “Bangalore riots ‘caused $160 million dent’ ”. If u go down, last section reads "Restoring virginity for Rs 20000"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a quote from our president’s speech which I have already mentioned in length before.

“Why is the media here so negative?

Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them.Why?

We are the first in milk production.

We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.

We are the second largest producer of wheat.

We are the second largest producer of rice.

Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribal village into aself-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of suchachievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters. I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings,bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.”

I see a live example here. I know that it has been happening for a long time. But today I was very irritated because there was not a single positive news item in the first page and all these news had so many things which aroused my anger.

1. The main picture in the front page is a gal crying which is what everyone wakes up to here. Not only that, this kind of a projection will make the tourists frightened and they will have second thoughts to visit Kashmir. Just now tourism has been revived in Kashmir which will go for a toss with this kind of a projection. It is as if the media is helping out the terrorists in achieving their goal of frightening off the tourists.

2. Again on the right side, the news about the blasts in Jama Masjid, as such there has been no big damage. 13 are injured but within couple of hours, lots of devout people went back to offer prayers which means that the damage should have been very less. The mosque also hasn’t suffered any damage. When this is the case why should such a news make a headline in the first page?

3. In the breaking news section, they mention that, Software companies have lost around $40 million in revenues in Bangalore because of the riots. Well, this is a very small amount compared to the money earned by the software companies each year. And what an irony, in the same paper, in the Business section, they have mentioned the Infy revenue has crossed 2Billion mark. But what will capture everyone’s eye most prominently is that Software companies are facing a huge loss, that too Bangalore being a pioneer in the software industry, this will be taken as a serious issue, when it is actually not even worth to be given a second thought.

4. Finally comes the worst part of all the news. Already the values and virtues set by our forefathers have gone down the drain in most parts of the country. Now to add to it, these kind of “initiatives” will bring down whatever leftover culture and ethics remain. Yes I am talking about the section that reads “Restoring virginity for Rs 20000”. What a start to the passage? It reads “A scientific triumph or a regressive procedure that further compromises the position of women in conservative India?” It seems Gujarat surgeons have found a way to restore a woman’s virginity. Let the invention be true or false. I am least concerned about it. But look at the kind of patients who get admitted to undergo the operation.
a.Most women queue up mainly to keep their virtue intact in the eyes of their future in laws and husbands.
b.Sex workers who want to get married
c.Some don’t want their husband to find out about their premarital affair.
They say if such an operation succeeds they will strike gold!!!!! They are making business at the cost of destroying the ethical values that a woman should possess. Already not many hesitate in having a pre-marital affair and it has become so common. If this succeeds the count will go on increasing and there will be no difference between US and India in this matter(India should become a developed country like US, they say, developed in such atrocious things??). How will a guy or the guy’s parents trust a girl whom the guy is going to marry if such a thing works out? I think Express themselves found it was too much to project such a news item so outrightly, that they have added at the last saying, “Instead of educating the society by spreading information about sex, doctors are making money out of such backward mindsets”. I sincerely pray that this initiative fails miserably!!!!

News items like Infy’s revenue raising to $2 Billion, the process of building the aircraft version of a supersonic cruise missile, Komagan of Autograph ovoru pookalume fame has done music for a film ( a guy who is physically-challenged achieving such a great thing) and the successful test firing of a multi-barrel rocket system feature somewhere in the middle of the paper which can be spotted only if someone can sustain interest in reading till the last page of the paper and also has a magnifying glass. Not only this newspaper, most of them are like this. We should detest such newspapers and read only those with valuable news items in it. The problem lies with both the media and the readers. Just because most of them prefer “Hot” news to informative news, the media is obsessed with projecting such news. For them it is just business. They need not be patriotic. After all they have to earn their living. Only if the readers show that their real taste lies in relishing the achievements of India rather than its black spots, will the media stop being so negative. I sincerely wish that this change in trend happens soon.