The Indian media has been reporting to us Indians about day to day happenings in each part of India and around the world in every sphere of life. Enter the role of the private sector into the media and it brought along the dirty face of commercialization of the press. With it, it brought so much competition within the media. There is so much pressure and competition within the media that hey have made a total joke of the Indian media.

This competition which is very intense has given way to total insensitivity within the media. The media tries to sensationalize every little thing even if it is unimportant and blatant. It is most paining when they visit struck areas and ask extremely insensitive questions while interviewing the affected. Questions like “what do you feel right now?” or “what is the state of your mind right now?” or “can you tell us what all you have lost?” etc are asked to grieving families. This is extremely insensitive. Obviously, it is a grieving family who are extremely sad and their minds are in a state of turmoil. On top of that the media is clamoring on how their state of minds are.

Another example is when Om Puri’s wife released his biography. A certain channel interviewed his wife. She had mentioned about her husband having a sexual encounter with his maid in his early teens. Though there were so many other good parts in the actor’s life, the media went on dragging that part and making a big deal out of it when it was such a trivial fact. As a result, there were arguments between the couple. Here, the media did not try to fix anything. They capitalized on their misery and spoilt their relationship.

Also, the media is extremely negative. If one must have noticed, the media reports the most negative stuff with the highest levels of enthusiasm.

You see them reporting about rapes, bomb blasts, instances of terrorism, crime, hatred and all other kinds of negative incidents. There maybe a few positive stories too. But they are completely marginalized. They are not the things you would notice first. The reporting is such that our country has nothing good happening within its borders. This poor reporting makes us lose faith in our country.

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam mentions this in his book “Vision India 2020” about the same problem. When he was in Tel Aviv in Israel, he was reading the local newspaper. The day before, the Hamas had struck and had caused a lot of deaths and damage to Israel. Yet, on the first page was the picture of a Jewish gentleman who had transformed the Negev desert into arable farmland. This was the positivism in their media. Israel, as we all know is an extremely progressive nation. The prosperity is due to the positivism created by the media.

Seeing so much negativity, we tend to believe that our country has failed. We have come to believe that India would progress at a very slow rate or not progress at all. We have lost our faith in our country due to such insensitivity and negativity. We can see it for ourselves. We must reform the media and not let it come in the way of our country’s development.