Ad-worse-tising

I hate Osama Bin Laden from the core of my heart, and for entirely personal reasons. Yeah, he brought about radical change in the mindsets of Muslim youth setting the Middle Eastern dogmatic ideology in direct collision course with the Western way of life, but my revulsion for him has little to do with wars, cultures and mind controls. I loathe him for what he did to the real estate of my television frame. Right until Sep. 11, 2001, the frame was full size with a little transparent corporate branding at some corner of the screen, letting my attention entirely undivided and focussed on the proceedings on the raster. Content was the king and all the distractions had to make do with their special slots interlaced at every 15 min interval for about 5 minutes, and the world was fine with the arrangement. And innovators (or, the impatients) who couldn't even put up with the minor break away invented devices where one could watch the program almost uninterrupted, albeit recorded, leap-frogging over the annoying ad-breaks. Lawsuits followed immediately from major advertising companies accusing the makers of these digital video recorders that they were denying their customers of their right to watch the ads in their entirety so as to make a conscious and a calculated decision based on them. Enough to say, common sense prevailed over crocodile tears and the courts threw out with the ridiculous cases and sided with the customers. And once the customer got used to the DVR, a whole new world, sans subliminal, intrusive and even obstructionist advertising, opened up for him. He made choices and bought products based on his preferences and his liking than on some catchy jingle on some picture perfect model that refused to be dislodged from the brain, thanks to the incessant exposure to the widespread advertising. Consequently ad-revenues fell for the broadcasters, and obscure, but better products rose to prominence through sheer word of the mouth, and the consumer benefited from this, in every which way possible. Seething in anger, the advertisers and the broadcasters bided their time, as help arrived from a completely unexpected direction. As the date turned to Sep. 11, 2001, the world was never the same again, including the realm of television broadcasting.

It is quite ironic that Osama Bin Laden, whose tirade, among other things, was against the wanton nature and the excessiveness of the Western culture, inadvertently came to the aid of down-and-out promoters of consumerist culture and leased them a fresh breath of life. It all started quite innocuously, (just like any other social malady that started out small and quickly consumed everything in its sight) with a little scroll bar at the bottom of the screen on Sep. 11, 2001 providing the desperate populace more information about the tragedy unfolding on the screen. Since the incident of that magnitude spread out its tentacles of impact on several spheres - social, economic, medical, welfare, national security and many such - and since the prime time anchors were entrusted the unenviable job of breaking the bad news that piled up with each passing hour with the right amount of compassion and professionalism, there just wasn't enough time to push through all the news that was pouring in through the anchor in the traditional fashion. And some news producer got the brain wave of inventing the round the clock TV scroll at the bottom of the screen that could provide more information about the tragedy as and when it arrived and the public lapped it up with eager arms and thus was born the phenomenon. That was 10 years ago. I was flipping through the channels and stopped at the entertainment channel, which, of course, had its scrolling bar at the bottom of the screen "breaking" news about the happenings in the tinsel town with all the seriousness as a regular news channel. See what you have done, Bin Laden? You helped promote the same licentiousness and profligacy of human culture that reportedly drove you into caves and pick up the arms. Happy now?

To think this dumping of data by staking a permanent place on the prime real estate of TV is all Western ingenuity and innovation, is to once again undermine the contributions of the Eastern thinkers who made great strides in this direction, before the Westerners were even familiar with this in-your-face advertising. In the mid-80s Robert Zemeckis, the Hollywood director, made the now famous "Who framed Roger Rabbit" combining for the first time on the silver screen animation elements with live action characters. And it didn't take long for a no-frills inventor from Gurgaon to take the idea one step forward and devise what was probably for the first time the amalgamation of content and advertising on the television screens. This idea was tested out, not on the widely watched (for lack of choice) only TV channel, Doordarshan, but on an even more popular platform that had just as enough reach across far flung areas of the country as Doordarshan - Video Cassettes. Conventional wisdom states that broadcasters need ad-revenue to support their programming, particularly when it is distributed for free over the air, like DD. But video cassette advertising flouted every norm, logic and convention of advertising by exploiting a glaring loop hole in the trade - captive audience. (which loosely means, if the content is captivating enough, the audience will put up with ANYTHING). Mind you, this was in the late 80s, and the propounder of this theory was no Ivy-league business school graduate, but just some low level marketing employee working for a mildly reputed video cassette distributor. And here is the idea - instead of separating the content and the ads, how about overlaying the ads across the bottom portion of the screen OVER THE CONTENT! And before long, millions of cassettes distributed around the country had ads dancing across the screen, blocking out at least 25-30% of the content, for the entire length of the movies. And even more unbelievable is the fact, that the consumer was in fact paying for this (torturous) movie viewing experience, where only action that was relegated about the waist height translated well, and anything under got drowned in the sea of ads. It had gotten so bad that watching the movie in a theater, with all the expenses, travel and trouble, seemed a better option than this low cost freak theater. Sanity prevailed after about a decade, when competition in that cut throat industry eventually started to cater to quality and decency rendering on screen ads a slow and a painful death. And if I had thought then that I saw the last of this kind of blatant insult and assault on the intelligence, sensibilities and helplessness of the hapless public, I didn't have to wait long.

Truth be told, even with all their faults, Western advertisers (and the product makers they promote) are at least image sensitive/conscious, worried about the mood swings of even a small minority of their customers. An offending ad is immediately apologized for, an offending statement is immediately retracted, and an offender, quickly shown the door out. They respond to the customer complaints, campaigns, drives, and have their ears close to the battlegrounds as to notice even the slightest tremors with the mode or message of the ad and take corrective action before the whole thing snowballed into a major controversy. Move a few time zones away to the subcontinental airspace, where publicity doesn't need to be prefixed with a "good" or "bad", as long as people notice it. As an example, switch to any "news" channel. The whole idea of scrolling information has been taken to ugly heights and blown out to grotesque proportions. Not content with just a single band of useless information, a second band propped right on top of it, provides even more worthless drivel. And some savvy TV marketing executives started selling this second band as ad space. After all how much news can happen all the time that warrants 2 separate scrolling bands. And this improvisation didn't just stop with the news. Cricket broadcasts, which garners the largest captive audience trumping even the news, have been reduced advertising playgrounds. Just like peace is termed as respite between two wars, a cricket over is reduced to playtime between two ad slots. With plenty of overlaying space for ads across the vast cricket field making them almost indistinguishable for the real painted ads on the ground, with exploding ads which blast out of the ground and completely occupy the screen, the L-shape technique which minimizes the action to a tiny square filling up the rest of the space with ads, all this, IN ADDITION to the regular ads slots that duly interrupt the ending of regulation over, here is the re-emergence of the audience-annoyance experience from its decrepit crypt from the 80s, in a totally new, but equally ugly garb. How much more bombardment, with utter contempt to the ethics and disregard to the standard practices, can the captive audience take? In a country that routinely brushes aside gripes and grievances, how does the audience make their voices heard to the tone deaf advertisers and the greedy broadcasters, who have their heads buried deep in ad-revenue, that these practices are unethical and insulting to the sanities and sensibilities of the common viewer?

I had to start somewhere. I made a list of all the brands that support these ad blasts and made it a point to find and buy only their rival brands (Run, instead of Rin, Varma, instead of Nirma, Roost, instead of Boost and many such. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of store brand alternatives). Granted, my pittance doesn't go a long way into shaking the foundations of these ad revenue models, and my revolt is more symbolic than anything else, but I cannot, in my conscience, allow this gross violation of human right (to ad-free enjoyment, or even less-ad experience) to continue unabated. The next time I see statements like illegal internet feeds eating into broadcasting revenues, or even piracy eating away the industries, I am not going going to be as worked up as before, because in this current culture, subversion has become the only mode of dissent. With the cynical part of my mind sincerely wishing for a global financial meltdown that leaves no nation untouched, where people don't have enough to buy and therefore manufacturers (and advertisers) cannot peddle their wares, I look forward to the bleak future where ad companies are out of business and broadcasters return to the roots of catering to the simple pleasures of their audiences with content alone. I might be out of a job, I might have no money, but with no ads on my TV, I'll at least have a little peace of mind, and that counts for a lot.

Someone said, I'd rather be rich and unhappy than poor and happy. Think again.

Faraway Vision(ary)

It comes as a surprise to no one that the news that Doordarshan has finished its 50th lap in the service of the nation a little while ago, went totally unnoticed, quite in tune with the dwindling viewership of the struggling channel. But what a journey it has been to the has-been master broadcaster, which always had the first dibs on anything and everything that transpired anywhere till not so long ago. The first 30 years has seen it emerge as the default victor, by virtue of non-existent competition and the last 20, finding it dead last in every heat, courtesy all its dead weight, bureaucracy, the fat that it couldn't seem to shake off to remain at least competitive, leave alone among the winners, in the open race. If one were to chart Doordarshan's ascendancy, and its subsequent fall from grace and out of the race, it would resemble a plain inverted 'V', with no variations in between. Just as it was 'THE ONE', literally and figuratively, during its days of supremacy, and total hegemony, it quickly became 'THAT OTHER ONE', once the playing field has been leveled. Sure, it is still active in some quarters, particularly when broadcasting sports held in the country, which it wrested through some administrative arm twisting antics, but in the rest, it is fair to say that Doordarshan has seen its fruit-bearing days and the future appears bleak, if not totally lost or hopeless.

Well, it brought all this upon itself, grudgingly say many, with its ham-handed way of dealing both with its administration and its programming, and therefore doesn't deserve even the slightest sympathy when things do not seem to go well for the state-run television. The issue is not with it being a public sector undertaking (which of late seem to have lost the shine and sheen in the current capitalist marketplace) as that other state run enterprise from UK, the BBC, seem to be doing pretty fine for itself, remaining lean, mean and hungry for the current age of overloaded bandwidths and information asphyxiations. So, is it just ours, the duck that laid golden eggs, that was strangled with greed and avarice rendering it barren, inconsequential and useless? Yes, would be too simplistic a reply, but the real answer lies somewhere between faulty management, outdated programming and changing standards of the society. What is now touted as fair play, a level playing field, for private enterprises to finally have the approval and the wherewithal to compete with Doordarshan, on closer inspection, isn't fair at all on any measured standard. But then it is too late to cry 'foul play' on part of Doordarshan, with its unfair trade practices and monopolistic strange-hold that it once exerted on the airwaves, before the era of liberalization. But that's on the business end of things. On the creative side, the story was completely different.

To make a fair comparison, how many programs on the countless channels today can measure up to Doordarshan's offerings of high quality, informative, educational, entertaining programming of yester years - Bharat Ek Khoj, Chanakya, Tamas, Surabhi, Buniyaad and many such - that weren't just mindless fodder for the lazy mind? To put it differently, how many private channels of today's world can boast of being socially relavant, as Doordarshan was during its heyday? And it is just not for lack of other avenues that such programs of substance invariably found their home at Doordarshan. Social responsibility was a necessary burden that state run media had to shoulder no matter the cost, and it is a luxury that the private enterprise can conveniently choose to ignore. After all, it is the government's duty to care for its citizens, isn't it? And this is the prime reason, more than the mismanagement, that saw Doordarshan fall out of step with the current entertainment driven generation's mindset. It is much easier to provoke than to exercise restraint, much profitable to promote profligacy than to preach judiciousness, much 'too cool' to turn anti-establishment than to stick to values. And the loss of Doordarshan's is not just of its own, but of the very social fabric of the country.

It is not merely a subjective opinion nor is it a fond longing for the long lost times to say that the programming on Doordarshan was far superior in content, if not on the presentation, even by the present day standards. That it had to achieve this without ruffling the sensibilities and sensitivities of a wide diaspora of diverse cultures that extended through the lengths and breadths of a vast nation was no mean feat. Its hard stance on airing the controversial series 'Tamas' against the protests of fundamental elements in the country, its news division's sensitive handling of the Babri Masjid demolition and its aftermath, its steadfast loyalty towards preserving and promoting harmony - religious and cultural - of the land, would put to shame what passes off as television nowadays. Constraints, by ways of sensitivities, and restraints, by being the mouthpiece of the motherland, forced it to find a middleground, where news was simply handed down to the public without coloring it with a broad opinionated brush first. News, back then, meant what just happened, and never what it meant. And it is not just with the news that Doordarshan would stand head above shoulders over its current competition.

Agriculture, art and culture, the three cornerstones of any civilization figured prominently in its program lineup. What was then ridiculed as substandard programming concentrating on trivial aspects of agriculture and animal husbandry, now finds a greater resonance in the calamitous news of global food shortage, environment taking a hit with improper agricultural practices or the extinction of certain bird species altogether owing to lack of understanding of ecological balances. And all of a sudden proper raising procedures of piglets do not sound ridiculous anymore, now, does it? And not enough can be said for the yeoman service that Doordarshan did to the cause of arts and culture, promoting them at every given opportunity. With the recent UNESCO report that everyday a language and a culture are losing their way and way of life adopting the ways and means of 'mainstream', Doordarshan's efforts to turn the spotlight on the cultures of the far-flung regions and the arts of deserted peoples, was not just laudable but indeed noble. Granted the programs didn't have the glitz and glamor of the tinsel-town chaff, granted they never enjoyed the patronage of corporate sponsors, granted it was, at times, difficult to sit through the amateurish presentations, but the efforts of the staff - the producers, the researchers, the promoters - who have gone to great lengths crisscrossing the country, unearthing such hidden gems and gave them a platform to perform, deserve all the praise and applause. And this job of covering the arts and culture was much more than mere discharging the daily duties and obligation of the job, it calls for patience, perseverance, and more, passion - the three aspects that is virtually nonexistent in the current profit motivated private enterprise. All the above rendered Doordarshan for a little more than three decades an important seat at the table of relevancy, as people heard, discussed and listened to what Doordarshan had to say about. And with all this, it couldn't have asked for more.

From there, the curse of being casted into oblivion was as much the result of changing trends as much as it was self-inflicted. Being saddled with the responsibility of shilling for the party in power, the credibility of Doordarshan was always called in question and the clamor for relaxing the rules for private enterprise to compete with the official media on an even keel grew with every election cycle. And so in the 90's along with the liberalization measures initiated by the government to bring the foreign investments in to ease the burden on the public sector, and to kick start growth on the private side. The advent of the private media saw a sharp turn in the quality of the programming offered not just by them, but also of Doordarshan's. And the coining of the word 'infotainment' as though the bitter pill of information has to be sweet coated with easily digestible entertainment for public consumption, spelled doom for everything that stood for quality, credibility, integrity and intelligence. News has been reduced to opinions and perspectives quickly replaced partisanship, and the Goebbels' mantra that the public would come to believe even a blatant lie, if repeated over and over, became the founding principle of the private news media. Add to that the unholy alliance of the corporate world and news media, each badly needing the other for survival, slammed the final nail in the coffin of objective news reporting. And the impossibility of the task for Doordarshan to suddenly shift from being an unperturbed balanced observer of the proceedings to becoming an active participating, partisan and passionate party to the politics, proved too much for its taste. The shrieking and the shouting matches of the talking and bobbing heads brought news down to a new low standard that Doordarshan was neither equipped nor willing to go under. And that ended the age of fair play on news day.

And the less said about entertainment, the better. Despite the ample coverage on arts and culture, Doordarshan had always had a healthy dose of entertainment programming on a weekly basis, that was moderate, satisfying and just enough. Having made a conscious choice of ignoring the indigenous culture of the land, the private media quickly settled on movie based, movie related and movie coated morass to account for much of the broadcasting time. With far much easier production standards to meet, and with far less production costs, movie based programming became the savior of private media, one that beat the arts and culture programming of Doordarshan handily and by a large margin, thanks to the changing tastes of a lazy audience. Of course a film based program is easily consumable compared to dance recital or a vocal rendition, and the chances that more people would be drawn to the former are far more, and with more people watching cometh more advertising money into play, and thus was born the vicious cycle of rating-programming, with merit or quality of the program no where in play. Caught between societal obligations of having to cater to the diversity by promoting the flavor of the land, and the business diktats of the market to reinvent itselt alongside the 'dirty cheap and quick' channels, Doordarshan now stands at the crossroads held hostage to changing times and growing pressures. And there is no magic bullet no where in sight as it now stands too old to adapt and too rigid to change . All it could probably do is keep doing what it has been known for, and hope for the jaded audience overdosed on excess, to return to their roots. Short of that, it could always take comfort in the fact that it truly stood by its motto - Satyam Sivam Sundaram - for however long it could stand for, with its head held high...and for 30 years, to boot.

Media(o)cr(e)acy - news business - electronic

Newspapers had it made for more than half a century, before the marketplace madness started to corrode their credibility. The smoke filled board rooms and dust filled store rooms would speak volumes of all the actions that made up real news reporting - gathering, filtering, judging, deciding and finally printing. The number of levels that were put in place between gathering and printing made sure that only such news items that bubbled its way up the thinking heads' ladder earned its right to occupy the finite real estate in the fourth estate. Two things worked majorly newspapers during their halcyon days - premium on space and lack of immediacy. And it is in this second arena, immediacy, that the newspapers are getting clobbered by its brash brother, the latest entrant to the game, the 24 hrs news coverage on the TV, and ultimately would redefine the way newspapers think about news reporting. The point when all news reporting started to climb down the credibility hill can be traced back to the exact moment when CNN announced the world's first 24 hr news channel - ALL NEWS ALL THE TIME, and suddenly both the handicaps that newspapers had to contend with, space and time, turned in the TV's favor, with its seemingly unlimited bandwidth (talk time) to devote to issues, and all that, while the events were unfolding in front of the eyes. Like it is always with the inventions started off with good intentions that somehow can't seem to shake off unwanted side effects (dynamite, splitting of the atom), not many could foresee the damaging effects of the 24 hrs news, beyond the space and time advantages. And the kind of reporting received even more impetus, when for the first time in the history of human civilization, a war was beamed live (if you can discount Sanajaya's running commentary on the Kuruskhetra war to Drutharashtra), together with the commercial interruptions, to millions of households first during the Gulf war in 1991 when US drove Iraq out of Kuwait. It was hailed as the greatest moment in television broadcast history, beating out Neil Armstrong's baby steps on the moon. What more could be proud moment for a country, when the entire world turned up as an audience to American mighty military histrionics, enacted on the global stage, broadcasted by an American network, with reporters on the ground and commentators in the studio, playing diligently the role of the stage hands. Hail the American spectacle!

The 24hr news cycle couldn't hope for a better advertisement - all's well that started well. And it really thrived when it had something substantial to report on - the 9/11 tragedy, the natural disasters round the globe, and the like. But what about the off-days, the one that White House fondly dubs as the "Taking out the trash days", when there is nothing important to report on, no pressing issue to talk about, nothing of any consequence on the horizon to spin yarns about. It is with this issue that the 24hrs news cycle turned on itself, diminishing its own role, undercutting its own importance. The problem was it never knew how/when to shut itself up, and its own advantage over the newspaper became its own undoing. There is a childhood story that comes to mind which applies quite aptly to this predicament. Vexed up with the tirades and the offensives launched by the wife for not sharing his part of the duties and the responsibilities, a magician husband conjures up a workaholic genie and gifts it to his wife on her birthday. The genie would patiently patiently perform any and every task assigned to it without any grouse, and the wife couldn't be any happier of her husband's thoughtful gift. There's however a catch (isnt' there always?) though - the genie has to have something assigned to it to keep it engaged, and that means, all 24 hours, 7 days, 365 days. Otherwise it would turn on its own masters. Clean the entire house - blink of an eye, do all the chores - snap of a finger, till the arable land - without breaking the sweat. Every few minutes the genie would return to the wife with a 'now what' expression, and even before the end of the first day with her new toy, the wife realizes that the gift of the genie was more than what she bargained for. (Catching on to the similarity here?) Like the Eagles' 'Hotel California' song, 'you can always check in, you can never check out', the 24hr news became an unwitting, unwanted, unwelcomed guest in every household that no one can seem to uninvite anymore. At least the magician in the parable above was smart enough to think on his feet and assign the genie the task of straightening his dog's crooked tail, thus getting rid of the problem for good. Is there even such a reset button to the shut off this (dis)information spew, or has it sailed past the fail safe point? But what has the news cycle done to become the most reviled innovation from being the most revered just a little more than a decade ago?

To answer that question, let's stick to the basic rule of any investigation - follow the money - and that automatically would lead to the motivation. Fair enough. Imagine the scenario of a rich entrepreneur willing to start a new 24hr news channel (like the umpteen that mushroomed all over the cable space in the past few years). Rather than try to second guess the motives and reverse engineer the machinations of the existing media houses, a clearer understanding of the practices of fledgling news network to eke out a living in the current marketplace would help grasp the key reasons behind the contribution of the electronic media to the downfall of news reporting. So the moneybags are in place to bankroll a new channel. Before plunking down the first penny, the powers that be usually decide upon a mission statement. No, this is not that mission statement that is released to the press, as to how it would uphold the values and ethics of journalism and work steadfastly on the side of the people in the constant pursuit of the truth. This mission statemetn is more the promise that it makes to the insiders, particularly its investors. What is it that the founder of the network precisely promises his investors - that no matter the cost or consequence, the network would always place the news above the business, even it means going against the vested interests of its own investors? Or would it be fair to assume that the founder promises the investors to have their investment recouped in no time, and more, get paid top dividend from time to time, just like any other business would promise to its investors? After all, who would want to see their investments employed for losing/charitable causes, unless explicitly expressed so. So, news organization or otherwise, the investors are in the game for the returns (monetary or political). And before anyone knew, the network is in the market fighting for survival, elbowing and edging out of the competition like in any other business, except here, quality does not always come out on the top, as the consumer is in the market for an altogether different commodity, when shopping for news - entertainment, and not mere information. And the race is one of how best to mix entertainment and information, in a way that is seductive and addictive, and whoever has the right formula wins the game.

Why and how did it come down to this, is a different argument for another day. Obviously, the first network that did this, becoming wildly successful in the process, opened the Pandora's box forcing the other networks to follow suit. The name of the game became how to sugar coat the bitter pill of even the most boring news with a wistful taste of entertainment, so as to appeal to the end audience better. Take any news program on any news network and observe if the aim of the program is to entertain or to inform. The motivation of the network is pretty simple. The more people tune in, the greater the popularity; the greater the popularity, the madder is the rush of the companies to book the advertising slots, and thereby, more revenue. There are no hidden angles here to see through the game. If the news dissemination operation is indeed a business enterprise, then none of what the channels resort to, to attract more viewers, would seem as unfair, unholy or unjust. After all, the same practices are widespread in other sectors - propaganda, falsification, exaggeration, over-simplification and many such. How many businesses in the world have thrived on honesty and integrity alone without ever walking on the wrong side of the road even once? So why all this venom towards news organizations alone? What is exceptional business acumen, to increase revenue and profits in other sectors, is pandering and fear-mongering in the news business? Why this double standard? The answer is simple. News reporting is not and should never be treated on par with any other regular business in the first place. News is public property in the public domain and should not be profited upon. News enterprises should be always non-profit in nature like any other philanthropic or charitable organization, equipped with only enough revenue to cover the operating costs, as clearly there seems to be a conflict of interests between profits and news, profits and public welfare.

This discrimination between news business and the rest is primarily because of the former's far reaching influence and the effect that it has on its consumers, well beyond what is normally applicable and accepted to any other business. As an example, consider the news story that made rounds a few years ago that a certain soft drink had traceable amounts of pesticides in it, and therefore harmful for consumption. Had this been played outside of the television arena, the company would have quickly recalled its product, sent it for lab analysis, published the findings that disproved the false allegations, set the PR wheels in motion and went about its way. And what about the recent case of another wild accusation hurled at another corporate house of orchestrating the death of sitting chief minister, where the news channels went overboard amping up the decibel level on this incredulous story picked up from a tabloid site. In both the cases, losses to the tune of the millions were incurred by the companies below the flames were contained. It needs to be argued, in what other line of business can such inflammable statements be made and stories be concocted with impunity and with all the credibility of the accuser in tact at the end of it all. Which makes it even stronger a case to regulate the news business and bring it under the non-profit umbrella.

Sensationalism became a short cut to success, when dealing with the news stories. The tags 'explosive', 'breaking news', 'investigative', 'hidden camera' became synonymous for sensationalism as the news is angled more to titillate the viewers than to educate. Inciting, infuriating and inflaming became the standard tools (tricks) of the trade leaving sensitivity, restraint and objectivity long behind. The objective of the game became how best to polarize the audience by taking the extreme stand points, pitting people on both sides of the fence against each other, one to defend and the other to attack. And lost in all the verbal jousts and shout fests packaged in the form of opinions and reports that surreptitiously push through the agendas of the corporate backers, is the original noble intention of the news, which is to inform and ultimately educate the viewer of the issue. Amid all the cacophony, what becomes of the naive, nascent, young, gullible and impressionable viewer who starts getting his share of the social ways and political plays of the world through the only source of news known to him - the TV? The situation looks bleak with no signs of any improvement, and worse, there seems to be nothing around to stop him from turning either into a cynic who is completely disillusioned with the system or a rabid ideologue who can view the world only through the monochromatic lens of good/bad, right/wrong, with nothing in between. Both these situations are equally undesirable, particularly at this time when today's youth have already turned their backs on anything that is remotely connected to politics. Can't this vicious cycle of self-perpetuating half-truths and hard opinions be broken and things be returned to more moderate middle ground? The solution is quite simple, and all that it needs is the discipline to stick with it. The viewer, on whom majority of the onus resides, has to own up to his own viewing habits and attack the channels where it hurts most - their money purses. Turn off/away from the networks that constantly practice polarization and remain fixated on wedge issues, just to aggravate the viewer, without offering any kind of workable solution to what they perceive as an issue. The reason why the networks turned into propagandists, money, should be the same reason why they should bring back sanity to their mad cap proceedings. In the current crowded marketplace of constantly warring opinions, the viewer has to seek out other sources of objective, non-opinionated, balanced news reporting which are not influenced by the unholy nexus of corporate agendas and profit motives. Evolution, in the social and corporate world, has proved time and again that mighty empires have met their doom unable to sustain the success built on canards and propaganda. And in the sincere wish that the end is near, objectivity lies patiently waiting in the wings, willing to be rediscovered all over again.

Media(o)cr(e)acy - news business - print

What exciting times these are, standing at the doorstep of the great technological leap. There is no other time in recorded history, where people are this aware of what is happening to/with one another, right at the moment of the transpiring of the event. They called it NEWS, before technology took over and reshaped the word as INFORMATION. Ask any grade-school kid, what NEWS stands for and pat would come the reply - NORTH, EAST, WEST, SOUTH. The acronym worked well in the B.T (Before Technology) era. Because of the dearth and demand of the newsprint, only what was deemed fit to print as decided by a group of wise men sequestered in smoke filled rooms, eventually made it to the newspapers; thereby, whatever made the final cut after much deliberations, considerations and much scrutiny, bore the official stamp NEWS. Most of the times, whatever was published in newspapers was accepted on its face value, and arguments and opinions were expressed after the fact, after the NEWS was published. If the INDIAN EXPRESS (and its brethren from the fourth estate) decided and published that the imposing of Emergency in 1975 by Indira Gandhi was unconstitutional and even evil , there never were any questions as to who made that judgment call and how that conclusion was arrived at, nor were aspersions casted against the editorial boards by the general public accusing them of rabble rousing, simply because the people running the paper were at odds ideologically with the government. The integrity of the information was never a casualty of petty perspectives. The aftermath of the Watergate scandal during the second term of Richard Nixon's presidency (mid 1970s) revealed the role of editorial boards of the newspaper which broke the story first, as to how much discretion and restraint they observed, when tying a few low level operatives, who broke in the Democratic headquarters in Watergate hotel, to the White House and the eventually the President himself. Until there was a solid proof, not speculative, not circumstantial, not hearsay, but solid verifiable and corroborative proof, that caught the President's hand in the cookie-jar, the board flatly refused to publish anything against the President, however much sensational (and eventually profitable) the story would had been to the newspaper (Washington Post).

Just three decades later, when the technological revolution has swept through the entire world, the term NEWS no longer applied to whatever important happend, but instead got modified to whatever happened. While on end of the spectrum stood quintessential journalism (the Woodwards, the Bernsteins, the N.Rams, the Chitra Subramaniams and such honorable lot), the other side is packed with instigators, flame-throwers, gossip-mongers and rabble rousers, turning journalism into sleaze. And no, this is not the kind of yellow/tabloid journalism, that whets the voyeuristic appetite concerning celebrity gossip. At least there is a certain amount of honesty in that kind of flesh trade. People know what they are buying, and what they are buying for. Sleaze is the much more dangerous form, opinionated journalism, masking itself as NEWS. But doesn't NEWS (not the traditional reporting of facts variety, but the editorializing kind) always come bearing an opinion, a perspective? Yes and No. Depending on the facts and merits of the case, just as a judge in the court of the law presiding over a case decides what is right/wrong, the editor is entrusted with the grave responsibility of deciding it for the masses, whether a piece of NEWS is indeed beneficial to the society, and therefore worth writing about, or would send out the wrong signals, and therefore worth withholding. Call it self-censorship or self-restraint, but the practice has been in place, since the advent of the newspapers, and the primary intention behind it being, the greater good. That is the duty of the editor, to provide the information, a proper place in the grand scheme of things, as the objective of NEWS, is not only to just inform, but also educate, and thereby improving the status quo. As an example, consider the piece of irrefutable NEWS that global warming is harmful for the planet in the long run. But the pressure applied by the developed nations on other developing nations to cut down on the emissions, at the cost of the productivity and the growth of the latter, is the perspective that throws a completely different light on the same piece of information, educating its readers of the unforseen dimensions in the said NEWS.

But sadly editors are humans too, with emotions, beliefs, convictions, and worse, prejudices and biases, empowered to skew the information at their disposal to suit their persuasion. And that is exactly what is happening with the current print media. Editorializing has given way to proselytizing. Instead of informing and educating the people, there is a growing alarming trend nowadays to force the agenda of the publishers on the gullible public. When, why and how did this change come about all of sudden - from being the upholders of values, to becoming peddlers of sleaze? The roots of this degeneration can be traced back to when technology opened the floodgates for uninhibited and unrestrained communication, in the form of satellites and internet, that made the creation of the NEWS and the consumption of the same into some sort of a vicious cycle, that constantly feeds on one another - why sensationalism and sleaze, because there is a market for it, why read it, because that is the only thing out there. A recent study indicated that India has the largest population of newspaper readers and thereby, a growth in newspapers as never seen anywhere in the world. What technology has done by ways of facilitating rapid and instant flow of information, is inadvertently pit the publishers against each other, vying for the same segment of the market, forcing the mature and the balanced to fold up, and the sensational and sordid to rise up. In this battle for survival, the term 'fittest' no longer meant stronger and mature, but one who is slippery and silly. And the great responsibility that was entrusted to editors and publishing houses of filtering out the vile, provocative and inflammatory aspects out of the information, and spinning a sensible, balanced and nuanced wrapper around the data, fell on the wayside in the rat race to riches. Sensational journalism existed ever since newspapers came into being, but it is now, more than at any other time, that it has found place on the front pages of major publications, as against being relegated to the ignominious corners. And the reason being, survival, in the short run, and profitability, in the long run.

In short, newspapers have made a Faustian deal with the establishment, vouching to look after its interests and the interests of its masters first, putting its self-preservation before the community's interests. Take a good look at the local newsstand, and notice how easy it is to spot the ones with hidden/overt agendas, and how hard it is to find a publication that has nary a motive. Conservative, liberal, for the government, against the government, for this, against that - amid all this was lost the original motive for the founding of the newspaper, which was to provide a voice for the people, to represent the people, ask what the people themselves cannot ask, write what the people themselves cannot petition. Media, ideally and ideologically, should always be anti-establishment, no matter who is in power. This noble principle however got buried under the collective collpase of objectivity and integrity, the two pillars on which the word NEWS resides on. When one outlet started peddling sensationalism, gaining popularity, publicity and profitability in the process, it became hard for the rest of the players in the fray to remain neutral, watching themselves decimated by the cut-throat competition. If one outlet took a stance towards pro-establishment, endearing itself to one segment of the population, the lure to quickly jump to the other side to grab the remaining share of the anti-establishment segment was too great to ignore. And thus it is easy to see, how one drop of poison polluted the whole pond, forcing even the honest and the just to choose sides, lest they perish.

What now, of the people? Well, what of them? One school of thought is, they brought it upon themselves, this mess, being lazy and lackadaisical, refusing to involve themselves in the process of demanding quality, accepting, encouraging and even egging the mud-slinging matches transpiring on public fora, deluding themselves that justice, however crude and uncivilized, is being meted out to the unjust. And now, when they are saddled with nothing but sleaze all around, they cry foul and look around for a savior, who would never come. But is it fair to lay the total blame at the doorstep of the people who patronized the peddler into producing more of the easily digestible garbage? It is in the nature itself, not just of human beings, but animals and even the elements of nature, to rush out for easy options taking the path least resistance. Place two gratifications side by side, and tell them that one is instant and the other delayed, that they don't have to work at all for the instant one, and for the latter they have to work doubly hard. Chances are that 9 out of 10 times (or even, all the 10 times), the majority would choose the easier option. And they cannot be blamed for that. The responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the wiser heads to not bite the bait of profit and bail out on the foundation principles of the newspapers. What is Hippocratic oath to the medical profession, integrity and objectivity are the same to the journalistic profession. It is a tough job, it is hard task to remain neutral, but such is the nature of the game.

But now that Pandora's box has been opened, and there is no turning back to the traditional reporting, and now that profit making has become the sole objective of the fourth estate, the only glimmer of hope for the discerning minority comes from the same technology the created this Frankenstein in the first place. Since it is the motive of profit that led to the downfall of traditional reporting, how about separating the concept of business from the ideology of NEWS? Decentralize the single source from where the NEWS is disseminated and split it up into tiny broadcasting sources, each independent in its own right, at which level the sustaining costs are simple, the drive for profits is minimal, and ultimately, the NEWS is free of sensation, prejudice and bias. But how can a single provider of information be split up into tiny entities, without losing its core values (if there are any remaining, even)? And the answer, Franchises. What McDonalds or a Pizza Hut is to food business, a New York Times or a Hindu should be to local franchises, in essence, the parent company acts only as the aggregator and disseminator of information, while the majority of leg work, the gathering of the NEWS, is done by local individual franchises. This is where the internet comes in. Since technology has made communication faster, for a far cheaper price, wisdom lies in shifting the operation from traditional newsprint to bits and bytes, where the chances to remain fair and balanced, without succumbing to pressures and expectations of the marketplace, are much more, since the self-defeating need for greed is not as pronounced in this form. When the costs are less and profits are negligible, the business virus would automatically detach itself from the NEWS host, allowing it to return to where it all started - being a platform for sensibility and sensitivity, serving up a view of the world that is fair and just.

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The term 'perfect storm' is used to describe one of those rare occurrences, when a combination of calamitous forces come together and create a devastation on a scale that was unheard of. Singly taken, each of those forces isn't much to reckon with, but the timing, the context and the combination create such a chain reaction, that one feeds off the best of (or, the worst of) the other, gaining strength to strength along the way. The events in the past few months in the social, economic and political arenas all over the world warrant the use of that term 'perfect storm'. Election races are quite common, stock market upheavals are dime a dozen, political uncertainties and wars of all kinds - political, territorial and religious - are not new to the mankind. But never, in the memory of history, have these 'acts of man' brought about such a consternation among all classes of people, affecting each and everyone in all far corners of the globe. Perhaps for the first time, the world is witnessing what is a true global event (even if it is a turmoil), and the recent collapse of the stock markets is only a footnote to what has been brewing up over the last few years and finally boiled over. The talk about the hundred years war between England and France, the facts about the plagues that had wiped out millions of people, the pogroms and genocides that erased civilizations and cultures without a trace, if viewed on the actual time line, happened over a protracted period, leaving enough time for humanity to recover from one cataclysmic event and brace for the next. Some of those events of the past, even the World wars included, left a few countries and continents completely untouched, unlike how it is right now, and the distinct divide between the two is the concept of globalization.

What was once thought about as just an innovative economic principle, globalization has reshaped social, economic, cultural and political landscapes in every corner of the globe, a fallout that even the most intelligent minds couldn't have foreseen. A butterfly flaps its wings in Taiwan which would bring about a hurricane off the United States sea coast isn't just a theoretical assumption anymore. It is, fortunately and unfortunately, a tangible reality. Just to demonstrate the power of that perception, consider this. Oil jumped to record high prices a year ago, driven entirely by speculators, predicting that the demand for oil in US, would only go in one direction, up, with China and India close on the heels steaming up their red hot economies. This speculation brought about untold billions of dollars of fresh funds, for the same quantity of oil being pumped out of the ground, to countries like Iran, which has been testing the political waters with its nuclear overtures. The extra funds in its coffers bolstered its confidence of taking on the world single-handedly, which then threatened to play with the oil production and supply numbers to the market, creating enough uncertainty to further drive the prices. The US, no longer in a position to dictate terms in the Middle East, played its bluff and threatened with economic sanctions and military action, doing nothing more than inch up the prices even more. The spiraling prices raised the costs on practically every commodity that required shipment, which included food. This, coupled with the global shortage of food items because of the loss of key crops in the producing countries due to droughts, caused a global scramble, something that no one would have imagined of in this day and age. In India, the oil prices took a different route of increasing the prices of the construction material - cement and steel, the brick and mortar of real estate development, which pushed an already inflated market out of the stratosphere. The perception became pronounced that real estate is the way to go for foreign investment in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies, making it even lucrative than the traditional investment in gold. Forex reserves flowed in from all the prominent brokerage firms in US, building up the a pack of cards to unprecedented heights. The degrees of separation from oil in Iran to real estate in India have become fewer and fewer, and all that it needed for the pack of cards in India to come crashing down, is a little sneeze somewhere in the Middle East. 'May you live in the interesting times' goes a Chinese saying. Little do people know, that it is in fact meant as a curse. Another Sanskrit saying comes to mind, "prusTa taaDanaath danta bhangaha" (A swift kick in the behind would let loose a few teeth)

This intertwining of fates of every breathing entity in the world is the first of its kind. This interactivity and correlation didn't come about just with bilateral relations, trade agreements or even military aggressions, as all these have been happening from time immemorial, but not with this kind of global impact. Though it is never accorded its due credit, the one singular entity that brought about this global revolution is the advancements in communications. Back in the 15th century when Gutenberg invented the first printing press and spread the word around with relative ease, no one, including Nostradamus, could have predicted how much the world would come closer by the mere sharing of ideas, much more than trading goods. The open skies have opened up infinite possibilities for people to come together, in real and virtual ways alike, exchange and get better off (and worse off, too) because of the facilities. The influence that this seamless exchange casts on the cultures and mindsets of peoples is unimaginable. Back during the days of the Second World war, when the only eyes and ears on the evil Nazi regime, were of the journalists belonging to the print kind, the world reacted at leisure to the barbarity perpetrated on the human kind. Move a few years down to the 90s, the world caught a glimpse of that brave student activist, in Tiananmen Square, first hand, who stood up to a tank and dared to mow him down. This time the printed word was no match to the television signal. In this day and age, political battles are not waged on the turfs of the fourth estates, or in the television realms. Cyber world is the new battle ground and electrons are the new weapons of mass destruction. It is never more evident that in the propaganda launched by the Islamic extremists in the cyber world, to counter the conventional warfare and convert and recruit new followers.

Communication's impact over a culture and its consumption plays a very direct and important role in the economic and political say of a country. No longer does one country need to wage a war on another to usurp power, dictate terms, and ultimately benefit economically (which ultimately, is the purpose of any war). The Americanization of the world that has happened in a little over just a decade and half is primarily brought about, not by politicians or policy makers, but by simple minded media barons, who beamed their mindless programs all over the world in thoughtless fashion. Satellite TV and internet have become probably the most potent mouthpieces of anyone with an agenda, more than battle tanks or nuclear heads. No other country has wielded (and still does) this much of a cultural impact in this short a time, and the tide doesn't seem to be ebbing anytime sooner. The surprising aspect is, the only resistance to this quiet cultural takeover comes in the form of radicalization reforms proposed by extremists, like the Talibans or other culture zealots, automatically turning off a majority of moderates, helping the cause of consumerism implicitly. If a clap/slap at one end of the world is heard immediately at the other end with sound traveling at the speed of light, as the entire world is tethered to the same string, causing it to rise and fall with the same wave, it is enough to say that the world has become a much smaller place, a lot smaller than everyone thinks it is. And the units of distances aren't miles or kilometers anymore. It is micro- and nanoseconds.

Once the ground is fertile enough for the global activity, even before economics started laying down the ground rules, political decisions pitched up the tents and began affecting the world around in a profound way. No longer are problems in the Middle East its alone, no longer is Russian aggression on its sister republics an internal security matter, no longer are political speeches delivered during rallies and campaigns just election rhetoric. Every move is observed, every tactic is watched, and every word is dissected more than ever. More than the financial pundits assessments and assertions on the state of the economy that set the markets on wild swings, political speeches (often inflammatory) started to play on and stay in the public minds to affect their judgments and sentiments indirectly affecting the markets. In 2000, the then leader of the right wing Likud party in Israel, Ariel Sharon undertook the controversial trip to the Temple of Mount, a disputed site for all the three religions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity), to shore up his base in the upcoming elections. (mirroring Advani's Radh Yatra to Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya before the country's parliamentary elections). Nobody, including himself, would have predicted the violent repercussions of that politically motivated move in a volatile region that was just beginning to get on the road of reconciliation. All the ground work done by leaders like Clinton, Arafat and Yitzak Rabin in trying to solve the Palestinian problem through amicable means was destroyed in one swoop and the embers of the Second Intifadah (uprising) are still raging even to this day, the reverberations of which are felt in the Muslim community from as far as Indonesia to practically every Muslim nation in North Africa. The term universal brotherhood took a different meaning in an entirely different dimension. Just as it has become a standard protocol for suicide bombers with releasing taped messages in their last hours alive, which will then be used as recruitment material by the extremist organizations, it has become a standard practice with the extremist muslims to heed to those messages, cross the countries' boundaries and fight for what they feel is a common cause in lands that are not theirs to being with. Several reports suggest that most of the fighters warring against the American forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and other vulnerable points the world over, are seldom the sons of the soil themselves. The forces have become multi-ethnic and multi-racial.

Countries specifically in the European continent are bearing the brunt of the forcible fusion of the cultures. Till a few decades ago, Europeans, predominantly white, mingled within their own race and religion, to such an extent that it was hypocritical of them when they talked about the cultural imbalances in the African and Asian societies, and how far behind they were, in social progress and economic advancement. Now, when Europe is overrun with major influxes from the same Asian and African populations, the chickens have come home to roost. How would advanced societies come to terms when coming face to face with what they consider an uncouth bunch - fiercely protect their own turf and force their way of life on the immigrants or allow the visitors with open arms and embrace the idea of having their culture amalgamated with the others? India went through this painful process a few hundred years ago with the Muslim invasions, and is going through a different culture war with the Christian missionaries currently. Now it is Europe's turn and in a few more years, the Americas'. The concept of globalization turned out to be not as romantic in reality as it started out to be. Which culture would willingly allow to be taken over by a foreign one, remains at the center of clash of cultures. And taking major part in it, are activists from all over the world, and not just from one place alone. If at the end of it all, there emerges just one victor, remember that you were here in these last few years, and the trigger that set off the change is in the invisible airwaves in the sky.