One for the Indian Broadcast Media: Mind Your Steps, Keep Your Cool!
Incidents and events are treated differently by different channels in order to be, well, "different" and attract audience. Good enough because viewers also want variety. Channels are even taking tips from foreign media and introducing trends and features which are completely new to India like citizen journalist etc.
However, being different is alright to an extent but going overboard can kill the appeal of the incident or story. Moreover, experiments with routine stories are justified but incidents like the 11/7 Mumbai blasts have to be handled subtly. CNN-IBN has quite a few things which ressemble foreign media. It's commendable! But it would need to draw a line.
The CNN-IBN screen was full of blood during the Mumbai blast coverage. Rajdeep was anchoring the bulletin. He kept on pointing at and showing blood splashed window glasses of the train for a good 10 minutes. As if this was not enough, what followed were blood smeared bodies of injured people. Then there were limbs and other body parts of the dead on the platforms and rail tracks. Blood blood and more blood. One thing needs to be checked: is the Indian audience ready for so much blood on screen? Or better still is it okay to pour so much blood into people's living rooms?
Star News was fine though it missed out on some aspects like following the injured to the hospital. Surprisingly, Aajtak failed to keep up to its "Sabse Tez" image. It was unusually slow. For the first hour atleast all it showed was a map of Mumbai highlighting the blast. Later on when the visuals had arrived, there was not a single reporter at any of the sites. The reporter who was giving live chat on the blasts, was nowhere around the blast sites. She had a background of a calm Mumbai night and in the window next to her were being shown footage of the bombed trains which were shot in the evening light. It was quite apparent that the channel was unable to get live footage at any given time.
Finally about the situation at the hospitals. Tickers were running across the screens on each and every channel informing that the injured had been taken to this hospital and that. But not a single channel showed the situation at the hospitals. In the rush to be fast and win the race, news channels it seems are skipping steps. Watch out you may fall!
ENDS
Incidents and events are treated differently by different channels in order to be, well, "different" and attract audience. Good enough because viewers also want variety. Channels are even taking tips from foreign media and introducing trends and features which are completely new to India like citizen journalist etc.
However, being different is alright to an extent but going overboard can kill the appeal of the incident or story. Moreover, experiments with routine stories are justified but incidents like the 11/7 Mumbai blasts have to be handled subtly. CNN-IBN has quite a few things which ressemble foreign media. It's commendable! But it would need to draw a line.
The CNN-IBN screen was full of blood during the Mumbai blast coverage. Rajdeep was anchoring the bulletin. He kept on pointing at and showing blood splashed window glasses of the train for a good 10 minutes. As if this was not enough, what followed were blood smeared bodies of injured people. Then there were limbs and other body parts of the dead on the platforms and rail tracks. Blood blood and more blood. One thing needs to be checked: is the Indian audience ready for so much blood on screen? Or better still is it okay to pour so much blood into people's living rooms?
Star News was fine though it missed out on some aspects like following the injured to the hospital. Surprisingly, Aajtak failed to keep up to its "Sabse Tez" image. It was unusually slow. For the first hour atleast all it showed was a map of Mumbai highlighting the blast. Later on when the visuals had arrived, there was not a single reporter at any of the sites. The reporter who was giving live chat on the blasts, was nowhere around the blast sites. She had a background of a calm Mumbai night and in the window next to her were being shown footage of the bombed trains which were shot in the evening light. It was quite apparent that the channel was unable to get live footage at any given time.
Finally about the situation at the hospitals. Tickers were running across the screens on each and every channel informing that the injured had been taken to this hospital and that. But not a single channel showed the situation at the hospitals. In the rush to be fast and win the race, news channels it seems are skipping steps. Watch out you may fall!
ENDS
posted by sk @ 7/12/2006 03:32:00 am
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