The media is an industry. On the one hand, for the media to cover, news needs to be happen. On the other hand, if a news is not covered by the media, then it is not news at all. That gives rise to a strange species of "news", the news that is created by/for the media.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Manufacturing for the media
Many years back, there was a great deluge in Mumbai - 1991/92 and we had a wedding to attend. Obviously, not too many people made it to the wedding. A few brave souls landed up with their fineries wrapped in plastic bags, changed and attended the wedding. There was another function in the same building which had a handful of guests. Someone had a brainwave and the guests of the two functions were combined to create a wedding for the videographer - minus the deluge. So, unmindful of the water all around, the wedding happened with the people closing ranks and the camera taking only short range shots. I suspect that if one looked at the video wedding, you would never realize that it was a "video manufactured" wedding.
In the same way, a lot of agitations that are covered are agitations for the media - token protests, fast-a-thons, candle light stupidities and they dutifully get reported to us as news...
In the bargain, some real news gets shot down.
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