By P.T. Bopanna
After watching today’s cartoon of Nala Ponnappa, my mind went back to 1979 when I was a post-graduate student of journalism at Bhavan’s, Mumbai.
In my research paper (dissertation) as part of the journalism programme, I had done a survey of national newspapers to ascertain the percentage of space provided for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ news. I am unable to access the paper right now because I have handed it over to the library of Field Marshall K M Cariappa College, Madikeri.
I did the study because I was under the impression that journalists tended to highlight only negative news.
After my study, I concluded that the space given to good and bad news was almost of the same proportion, though the percentage of bad news was marginally higher.
But much water has flown down the Cauvery since I did my study on the percentage of good and bad news.
Now bad/fake news dominates on all mediums, especially television channels. The situation has gone worse after Arnab Goswami set up his Republic News channel.
Arnab thinks he holds the copyright for being boorish and engages in verbal diarrhea. He keeps interrupting other panelists during his shows.
Arnab behaves as if he is the high priest of ‘Godi media,’ a term coined by former NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar, which means Indian print and TV news media that supports the Modi government.
Prior to NDTV being taken over by Adani, I used to watch the channel which was then run by Prannoy Roy.
Nowadays, I hardly watch television news. Whenever I watch, I watch Rajdeep Sardesai’s programme on India Today channel. I get the impression that even India Today is part of the Godi media and some of the anchors like Gaurav Sawant tries to imitate Arnab, in the presentation of news.
I feel it is time we sent our news anchors for an orientation programme with the BBC on how to present news.