About a week before 19th march 2011, we heard news that the moon is going to be on its perigee on the 19th. The predictions of various natural disasters started rolling in. We have heard and read since our childhood geography that the tides in the ocean are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. So when the moon was coming so close to our planet, we expected bigger tides. But the predictions that were coming in warned or disasters from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to tsunamis and hurricanes.
I had put up a post a couple of days back thinking in the same direction and postulating what will be the adverse effects of this perigee on the pre-existing condition in Japan. Several newspaper articles and TV news did all they could to worry us out of our wits. And once that day was here, the only disasters I saw was that the moon was brighter and only slightly bigger in the night sky. No disasters, not even a hard breeze. And the next day, the same newspaper that was publishing humdrum articles, publishes another article saying that all the claims of disasters were hoaxes and scientists say that the perigee would not cause any disasters, perhaps slightly higher tides and nothing more. That did piss me off.
You know guys I never watch news on the television. The reason for that being, the news here in India is extremely negative. If there is any negative thing which has happened, or even if there is a remote possibility of something bad happening, that would make the primetime news for a couple of hours at least. Can you image, if shah rukh khan were to slap a cameraman, that would make the prime time news and would be telecasted on almost all the news channels for at least 4 hours, with that slap recording being shown after every 2 minutes, and in super slow motion. This really pisses me off. Even if there is no bad news to report, they will make up stories of traumatizing the common man, like ‘is your ketchup made of tomatoes or of poisonous chemicals?’, ‘is your house maid plotting to loot and kill you?’, ‘is your tube-light emitting ultra violet light which can cause skin cancer?’ and so on. Apart from this, what is even worse is, that when they do not have anything cooked up or anything worth reporting, they would show other channels soaps on news channels, I mean not some scenes or something important, the complete show. For example, I have seen news channels show the complete running episode of Rodies on the news channel. I mean if we wanted to see roadies, we would tune into MTv and not watch a news channel.
Newspapers are not much different these days, a bus crashes and you have ten articles and almost a half front page of the terrifying pictures. Whereas, even if a man discovered a cure of cancer, he would not make it to the front page. The same thing has been said by our former president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam in his letter to Indians, which I have put up in an older post. News is not news anymore, it has become a business of viewer ratings, and they don’t give out any useful information anymore. Also, the poop on top of the mud pie that the news channels have become is that they really talk in a piss off accent. For example, just to sound more ridiculous, they would dress up and tame their accents so bad that you would wanna break your TV set. Like this program where an anchor dresses up like a police inspector and even holds the cane and talks about police crime. Can you image? is this a costume party? The professionalism in news has totally disappeared. All I know for sure is that the only professionalism that you will see in any news channel would be those which work on the stock market, only they seem to appear professional and courteous to me.
So all I can say in conclusion is, I am glad nothing bad happened in the world on this perigee of the moon, and FUCK-OFF you piss-off news channels.
Widersehen..
Best way which I opt is -watch the headlines and then run away (unless it is very important). If it is important, prefer DD National. They at least don't show all the crap. I can't tolerate AajTak for even a minute now when I'm at home. I don't even allow my Dad to stick to it. Years ago, I had an entirely different view when it was just a new 24 hr NEWS channel. Now, well the case is different. Either the audience is real fool or they have assumed us fool. God save them.
ReplyDeleteAnd the worst part? The way (tone and words) they say it. I'm sure many viewers must have acquired hypertension. Thanks to them.
ReplyDeleteI cannot agree more. I especially hate the tone, the way they try to put in drama into everything they say. I say, they have become much worse than the saas-bahu (mother in law- daughter in law) soaps which run on TV. At least they stick to showing tortured and always crying wives, but you have a choice, some people actually like to see that. But these news channels, YUCK!!!!!
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