Indian news broadcasting

Gone are the days when we used to watch to news on Doordarshan. Those days, there were charming newsreaders. I remember Amita Kohli, Minu Sanyal, Geetanjali Aiyar, Sangeeta Bedi, Sukanya Balakrishnan and others. News was plain, crisp and dispassionate. So also were the correspondents. If you compare them to their modern counterparts, you might even think that they were boring and dull. Of course, there were no other TV channels in those early to mid 1980s and we were quite satisfied. Since the last couple of years, Indian TV has been taken over by a host of news channels. News beams in 24/7 and there are multiple channels to choose from. I am not sure if it’s my plain imagination or a viewpoint that others share but there are some aspects to the latest breed of news programming in India that I simply don’t get.

For one, there is uncanny similarity between the programming style followed by these channels and that adopted by FOX news. Personally, I don’t like the FOX brand of news broadcasting. I sense a strong element of drama in everything they present. Loud headlines that come right into your face, rapidly moving tickers, use of certain words that I feel are unnecessarily hard-hitting, overly passionate and dramatic… sometimes, I feel that FOX presents its viewpoint in a way that maneouvres the opinions of the viewers in a subtle manner towards that presented on the screen. Well, maybe all news channels do that, covertly or overtly. My point is, the Indian news channels seem to be going the same way. There are ways and means to articulate and I think news networks have to be very sensitive to the impressions their viewers have. Words and thoughts are associated strongly in people’s minds and as a correspondent/news reporter, one should be extremely careful when one mentions anything on the screen. Countless viewers are tuned in from all over the world trying to get information and it is the responsibility of the news network to be aware of that and act responsibly. I noticed that the Indian correspondents used a lot of Hindi words that seemed very unnecessarily dramatic, even shocking. The tone is slightly high-pitched, giving that element of urgency to the delivery and they speak quite rapidly. They beam images that are quite graphic in nature and frankly speaking, we can do without seeing them. These pictures don’t really serve much than shocking the viewers, I think.

Secondly, why do the women broadcasters dress in Western formals? It is no big deal but I find it quite incongruous. Do they think that they won’t have a universal appeal unless they dress in such clothes? In any case, they speak in Hindi. Why can’t they dress in formal salwar kameezes or sarees? I am quite curious to know what is the reason behind this dress code.