Recently, the Republic TV had been airing news about the death of senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar, over which the Delhi High Court asserted that “journalists are free to investigate but they cannot pronounce anyone guilty and/or pre-judge the issue and/or prejudice the trial”.
The court on a lighter note also observed that “TV viewers who want to watch action films should not watch TV debates on current affairs on the grounds that it contain more action and violence than any action film.”
Although conveyed on a lighter note, it relates the real story behind the sensational journalism. The actual meaning of journalism has been belittled by media outlets and it is these people who have made a mockery of the profession. The credit to such journalism goes to people like Arnab Goswami. Whenever one flips through TV channels or reads newspapers, the news reporting is more or less same. The normal news has taken a back seat and instead BREAKING NEWS is stealing the show. This shows it is the USP of media outlets that operates nowadays.
The culture of news portals/e-newspapers is the latest buzzword of the town. We observe in recent times the online newspaper is mushrooming rapidly. The biggest advantage of the news portals has to be that they report news a lot faster than regular newspapers and by virtue of mobile phones we have all the news at our disposal. We are constantly in touch with what is happening around as the online news gets updated on a regular basis. One extra feature, these news portals have adopted, is video journalism. This is a new way of luring viewers online. The videos are uploaded frequently in order to get maximum public attention through LIKE button below the video on different social media sites. Quality and substance are no more the criteria. In the rat race of getting more Likes, the factual news reporting is getting neglected while a new trend of Likes is setting in, and this is what defines the success rate of the websites nowadays. The more Likes are correlated with more business. This is the success mantra of such websites.
Now, the question is what does these Likes convey in the language of social media and who is the audience behind such Likes. There is an astonishing psychology behind Likes as per different researches conducted by Facebook and other websites. It is yet to be ascertained whether Liking means actual liking for a page or news. It can be a mere accident or solidarity with a particular group because your friends have liked the page, so out of courtesy you are bound to like the page as well. Or maybe because you want to convey to others who you are and what your preferences are since you don’t have time to comment on the post so you prefer to hit the LIKE button on the page.
The media outlets have to play their role sensibly and responsibly while displaying the true essence of journalism. After all, the number of likes on the videos too can reflect people’s reaction on a lighter note without revealing the real essence of actual liking of any video. This mantra has to be understood by such media outlets who are in the rat race of getting more LIKES.
The author is an Associate Editor at the INS
