Shortcomings of the India news channels in coverage and delivery
The Constitution of India guarantees Freedom of Speech and Expression and included in it is the Freedom of the Press as well. Ever since India gained Independence, there has been a freedom of expressing ideas and opinions with certain due constraints. With the onset of the era of liberalization and globalization and with the participation of the private players, the India news media has grown tremendously. Today you find a number of news channels on the TV in different languages which compete with one another to get the maximum number of viewers. However, the growth of the media technologically and also numerically has not necessarily made it mature. There are certain shortcomings of the TV channels which are quite evident to everyone. Some of these shortcomings are the following:
1. Sensational Delivery of the India news: There is an unmistakable tendency to sensationalise the delivery of news by most of the channels. This might be a ploy to gain the attention of maximum number of viewers but this looks, at times, highly unprofessional.
2. Negligible coverage of foreign news: Except for some channels which do give some reasonable time for coverage of the foreign developments on a regular basis, most of the others do not cover. At best, there are confined to the quick fire round of news headlines only unless there is some really big development.
3. Incorporation of soap programs as news: If there is some popular soap opera running at some other or same channel, the excerpts of the same are used an a news item. The underlying objective is to keep the viewers glued to the channel by showing the popular program clippings.
4. Abysmal coverage of development news: There are dedicated programs on crimes and criminals but there are very few channels which make it a point to cover something interesting, valuable, creative and positive in the real life. You can find the dedicated political news, business news or even the sports news but there is extremely less coverage of the development or socially relevant news.
5. Encouragement to superstitious tendencies: It is quite common to find the news channels predicting the end of the world at some time in future. This kind of news delivery clearly shows the lack of maturity of the media.
These are some of the shortcomings of the India news media which needs regulation. The poor selection of the content, the highly biased coverage of the news, inappropriate time allocation to different categories of news and unprofessional delivery of the same to the viewers are some of the main shortcomings which the media faces. To an extent the same shortcomings are also present in the print media as well. Whether it is the newspaper or magazine, many of the above mentioned issues can be pointed out. Some people argue that the most of the India TV media channels have lost their way and are also deviating from the journalistic ethics and professional code of conduct. This calls for stricter regulation which does not adversely impact the Fundamental Right.
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