Broken News

This Tuesday I was on Delhi airport for almost 8 hours waiting for my connecting flight, which fortunately was only 1 hour late.

Delhi airport being many times better than Bangalore airport, I got a seat easily in comparison to the struggle for standing space on Bangalore airport. The plasma TV in front was airing IBN7 (Hindi news channel from IBN and network 18) and here is a short extract from one of its breaking news.

My assumption that every alternate news is tagged as breaking news was proven incorrect as the red flash for breaking news never disappeared for the next 8 hours. Yes, every news was breaking news!

One of the news goes like this:

delhi hawai adde pe hua hungama

Indian airlines ki flight pe hua hungama

Flight 102D pe hua hungama

Already 5 minutes into the news there is no reason explained for the so-called "humgama". Each line of news flashing as a headline. The news report continues with red flashing light stating “BREAKING NEWS”.

yatri subah 5:30 se airport par

Flight ka samay 8 baje

yatriyon ne plane par chadne se kiya inkaar

Plane par 104 yatri sawar

Plane ki der se yatri naraz

These pieces of headlines flashed more than 5 times each. How much was the delay, what made the travelers unhappy etc. - no information. May be the news channel did not find such things important enough. This was followed by the next breaking news about some guy buried alive etc.

Now that being breaking news I think IBN7 will soon have brothers and sisters like IBN8, 9, 10 etc. because there are so many flights getting late everyday on so many airports in India, there would be surplus content.

This poor quality news is not unusual neither are people like me writing about it!

Sad part of the story is, "hindi' news channels are miles ahead of English news channels in this with STAR news and AAJ TAK miles ahead of their competition too. Hindi seems to have become a language only for 'masala' and 'gossip'. In fact growing number of Hindi news channels- there are already around 9 each having short slots for national news and rest all booked for such breaking news and about 4 English news cahnnels further emphasizes that there is definitely a lot of market demand for such content which is not a great news in itself.

People who may still want to watch news in Hindi would depart too as there is hardly any news and probably we would soon get to hear parents telling their kids "beta hindi news channel mat lagana, achhe bachhe aisa nahin karte".