One day I was switched on the TV and watched Aaj Tak, a channel I have respected in the past and given serious exploratory interviews. To my horror the reportage on the Arushi murder case felt like the most C grade exploitative Hindi Movie, or worse a cheap TV Soap. Replete with brutally inter-cut shots of the poor girl and her parents with a song from Tare Zameen Par called “Tujhe Sab kuch Pata hai Maa”. I wrote off Aaj Tak as a serious news channel. Last night i saw Star News do something just as bad on the same issue, so do I write off Star News too ?
\nHere is my issue then. When I direct a film and if there is criticism I take a direct hit personally. An editor of a newspaper (in better times) would take personal responsibility for the content of the paper and it’s views. But who is responsible for the quality on a news channel ? I personally know the owners and promoters, and have known them to be intelligent and in-depth thinkers. They were the ones that used to eloquently talk of the bad taste in Hindi Cinema and denigrate it when I first came to be part of it. And this is not just the news channels, some of our best loved and revered morning newspapers have turned into gossip broadsheets.
\nQuestion is, does becoming a corporate body put a barrier between you and questions of personal taste ? Does being a corporate body suddenly switch your personal responsibility from value in quality to valuation on the stock market ? I completely understand the idea of economic growth, and market capitalization. Hey ! you put enough sex on the third page, enough skimpily clad sexy girls on TV and you will make money in any case – but turning a murder (and perhaps attempted rape) of a 14 year old girl into pulp fiction is so much worse.
\nIncidentally anyone remember or anyone in the media interested anymore in the Nithari murders, when over 20 bodies of children were found with their heads cut off. That also happened in NOIDA, not far from where little Arushi was murdered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One day I was switched on the TV and watched Aaj Tak, a channel I have respected in the past and given serious exploratory interviews. To my horror the reportage on the Arushi murder case felt like the most C grade exploitative Hindi Movie, or worse a cheap TV Soap. Replete with brutally inter-cut shots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-point-of-view"],"yoast_head":"\n