Plight of 24-hour news channels

Television news reporters are a harried lot these days. As channels fight for higher TRPs and ‘need to’ report round the clock, content quality is steadily tending towards comic. A few instances

A few weeks ago my father was approached by a reporter/cameraman duo from a Bengali news channel at Calcutta airport.

Reporter – Aapni ki bangla boltey paren? (do you speak Bengali?)
Dad– Hain (Yes)
Reporter, pointing up – Airporter naam ta dekhun (Look at the name of the airport)
Dad– Looks at the name and then gives the chap a puzzled look
Reporter – Subhash* eir banan ta bhool achey; eta kal ker moddhe theek kora hobey (Subhash is spelt incorrectly; it will be corrected by tomorrow)
*Calcutta airport is called Netaji Subhash Chandra International Airport
Dad– Theek-i to achey (Looks correct to me)
Reporter – Netaji S-U-B-H-A-S likhten. Aamra jonotar interview niye sorkar kay force korbo banan ta theek korte (Netaji used to write S-U-B-H-A-S. We will report public reaction to this mistake and force the government to change the spelling)

Last I know, there has been no change. Maybe the reporter could not get anyone to agree with him, or maybe Netaji did end his name with an H after all.

Manoj Kumar feels hurt by a scene in Om Shanti Om. In walk all news channels worth their salt, showing Manoj Kumar narrating his despair and Farah/Shah Rukh Khan apologising profusely. That wasn’t all for one of the channels – they even got in Rajesh Khanna to comment on what he thought about the incident.

‘Breaking News’ is the most abused phrase in news channels these days. While the term should stand for an event whose importance warrants interruption of normal programming, in reality, every news channel ‘breaks’ some news every other hour. Aaj Tak’s classification of 'breaking news' attained sublime stupidity when it ‘broke’ the following ‘news’ - Aaj Tak wins best news channel award…

Then there is always the scene of celebrities going to jail – Get 15 seconds worth of footage and keep playing it ab-nauseum. And, of course call it breaking news. The grandest ‘breaking news’ was when the victorious Indian T20 cricket team was having its bus-ride through the streets of Bombay. Of course it kept being ‘broken’ for about 4 hours till the bus reached Wankhede stadium.