BREAKING NEWS

The most common thing in India along with 70 year old politicians is BREAKING NEWS. I got up one morning to read "BREAKING NEWS: AKHIL KUMAR JAIL VIBHAG SE PARESHAN". "BREAKING NEWS: 3 MAHINO SE TANKHWAAN NAHI MILI" "BREAKING NEWS: BLAH BLAH BLAH".

The first time I ever saw BREAKING NEWS on a Hindi news channel was when there was a bomb blast at Ghatkopar in 2001. It was really a biggggggg news as one would call it and it deserved to be categorized as BREAKING NEWS. After that tough I agree that the number of blasts taking place have increased but the number of BREAKING NEWS seem to have risen in multiples of 1000. News channels these days just want a small news to call it BN (I'm bored of BREAKING NEWS). Infact, there is an Hindi news channel INDIA TV which has a complete time slot dedicated to BN. They call the show BN. How stupid of them and even more stupid of people like us who see it. Khali came to India and his drinking water was something that the media highlighted as BN. What would you do if you meet your mentor after 1 year or your parents. You would surely bow down to take their blessings. News channels took it as an opportunity to have one more news as BN: 'Mahabali Khali ne jhooke. Maa ka aashirwaad liya.' The list of such stupid news is endless. You can't even call it BN. It is nothing but SHITTY NEWS.

News channels feel that the audience likes it. Do we? I don't think so. No sane person can watch such news. There are a few exceptions like TIMES NOW to these channels but then 90% of the news channels concentrate on news which are totally unworthy of the publicity that they get. There is only one word for these news channels - cheap. The news channels have become more of gossip channels rather than anything else. There was going to be a solar eclipse and after the eclipse there was BN: " SURYA GRAHAN HUA. SHANI KA PRAVAH". Nothing but nonsense. You get up in the morning and are trying to catch up on what happened yesterday but the only thing that you get to see is a fat woman with curly hair talking some crap about astrology. This is what news channels focus on when they could have 100 other things to talk about. If it rains for a hour continuously in Mumbai, you get another BN" Mumbai mai barish, Sab jagah pani". By 'sab jagah' they intend the regular areas where there is water logging. The has been water logging at Milan subway since years every monsoon even if it rains for 30 mins continuously. That doesnt cross the editors mind when he wants some feed as BN.

There needs to be a change. There needs to be an independent body out there to penalize news channels in case they provide people with such kind of false (or low quality) news. We need to have a 'News Ethics and Code of Conduct'. A 24 hours news channel should not become a 24 hour entertainment channel (sometimes they are worse than saas-bahu serials) . News channels on their part should change. That would certainly be a BREAKING NEWS for us.