The progress of India into the modern age had been spectacular. Starting with the liberalised thinking and investments towards new dimensions and technologies envisaged those days by the Rajiv Gandhi regime, each of the change happened in a big bang model.

Spreading of television network in the country, broadband spread, travel towards global outsourcing partner in the area of IT, private television channels, telecommunication availability are a few of the big bangs that happened in India for last couple of decades. Explosion of private television investments into the news arena was the latest in that.

It is a welcome change and can bring major impact on our masses theoretically. The country is big and the sections are large so ideally there should not be any shortage of news stories for all the news television channels beaming their news stories into our living rooms. But here comes the reality. We are lacking original thinking in our arts for a long time and the impact is now visible on all creative areas of the society. Instead of understanding what their target audience expect and get benefited by, most of these channels were aiming at imitating the well-established television industry elsewhere in the world. In addition, they started resorting to short cuts to create news value.

These days gossip is no longer a topic of people involved in idle talk or yellow journalistic streets but is a main stream trading commodity. Television channels at times are reporting gossips so prominently that the reality itself is getting undermined under that. The issue of Nagma having underworld links is one of such kind. The poor actress got so much of invasion into her personal life because of this careless attitude of the media.

As our mainstream art of the modern days - cinema is doing, the news channels are also trying to attack the prurient taste ahead of realistic news that can help shaping the society.

They are trying to focus on those aspects of the society that can provide some amount of vicarious satisfaction rather than making people ashamed of thinking something.

Many television channels these days are resorting to filming someone's dishonesty or misconduct using hidden cameras and beaming them into our living rooms without even bothering about what kind of impact are they make on the society.

The following are some of the examples of such incidents:

• a channel beamed stories of Government officials demanding bribes for doing their duty or do their duty in gross negligence such as a white ration card can be generated in the name of the chief of TRS using his actual name, father's name and address.

• a channel beamed a story of sanyasi's of a prominent temple in Gujarat involved in blatant sex with a commercial sex worker.

• a channel beamed a story of a person in public squeezing an upcoming film artist in south India in public and filming it using his mobile phone camera.

• a channel beamed the scenes of a film artist in her bath room filmed using a mobile phone camera.

• a channel beamed the scenes of a prominent political leader of Bihar having sex with a commercial sex worker.

• the latest beaming of sexual misconduct by Shakti Kapoor and Aman Verma

I am sure this list is not exhaustive and is not limited to this. I must have missed scores of such incidents the television channels beaming into our living rooms.

If we look at the motives of the channels, it appears like an attempt to create news value rather than helping the society in any way.

Exposing of public servants taking bribes or careless conduct on duty is a kind of acceptable because those acts cannot be fitted into the definition of privacy. If these are public servants their on job conduct should be transparent to public.

But after a few such stories beamed by the channel, I visited an office of the town planning division of municipality for getting approval to my friend's house and to our amazement, things were so smoothly defined, we got full information about how much should we pay as bribe and to whom and when and what will happen after we complete our formalities. We got our approval perfectly as per the workflow the staff there explained.

The most striking event of this incident is the person accepting bribe is in "Deeksha" of Ayyappa a well known god in South India for whom devotees observe 41 day deeksha where they abstain from all wrong things including smoking and drinking. If this swamy (that's the way the person in deeksha is called as) is accepting the bribe even when he is in deeksha, probably in his psyche this is considered as a legitimate act and not immoral. He was not wearing chappals, not smoking, eating the customary pan etc but is accepting the bribe with a smile.

This is the situation with most of the people working in Government offices. They do not consider accepting bribe as immoral. They consider it as a way to correct the inequalities created within the country. If Robin Hood is not immoral, probably these Government officials are not immoral as well.

I have not seen any intellectual discussion or a news story that goes into the reality of corruption in this country. Unless we diagnose the roots, we cannot cure a disease. We probably burn a few spots thinking that it is a cure for the disease. Such an act create an attitude of "We and They" among common man who is not a part of the bandwagon of bribe collectors and impacted by that because someone made him pay bribe out of is nose.

Excessive beaming of such stories can make public insensitive towards such issues and accept them as a reality in the society because more and more people are doing it and so it is not so dangerous game to play. One appreciable thing with this channel is, it has started a public opinion forum where members of public try to express their views on different social ills. This is the right way to expose and impact the society.

In the cases where the expose of people misusing the mobile phone cameras can have the adverse impact of more and more people trying to do that. It has been an accepted fact that at workplaces the mobile phones with cameras are creating trouble because our woman colleagues cannot guard themselves at every moment. Any single posture that can reveal a small flesh will be caught by the alert people at work.

I have noticed increase in such incidents and no measurable impact of beaming them during prime times. One perceivable impact I noticed being a highly networked person both with people and wires is receiving those clippings beamed on the television fifty times.

This shows the impact of beaming. This served as a soft advertisement and demand for those and clips of similar kind grow instantaneously. This can lead to another danger for the CEOs of portals like eBay because these clips can be offered at those portals with a well-known camouflage.

If someone explains that the exposes on Bollywood's casting couch to save some innocents, what is the percentage of public falling into such troubles? Clearly the target innocents the channel that is resorting to exposing the celebrities with their misconduct are very small in number. But because of this story a huge number of people get motivated in many fields.

If celebrities like Shakti and Aman can do this, can I not try this for offering a job or even buying a credit card from an innocent youngster trying to make a life? This impact could be huge. The impact of the student community will be very high. They can resort to filming their teachers in wrong positions and blackmail tem for better scores. This list can be so huge that it can give lot of creative ideas.

It is important for the Press to act as a watchdog and bring out those unseen, unperceived truths to light for the social good. If such acts are taken up for commercial benefits such as increasing its viewer ship to demand better advertising rupees it is another immoral act and then those channels or media houses probably loose the opportunity to expose immoral because they go down so low in the public eye.

It is not for us to decide the editorially appropriate use of technology for generating a news story. The journalists have to make the judgment about newsworthiness of a story and its impact on the society. This society consists of their own families and they better evaluate if beaming of a story is more harmful to the society than impacting the immoral conduct.

The journalists should determine the offensiveness considering the circumstances of the intrusion into the private life of someone, film it and beam it. If the intrusion into someone's private life is to make a socially and politically important story, it may be acceptable but if it is to satisfy prurient curiosity it may not be acceptable.

The way the news stories built by recent exposes of India TV involving Shakti Kapoor and Aman Verma are unacceptable because they satisfy prurient curiosity on the larger section of society and may not protect anyone from that. This can trigger a spurt of people from villages calling established film artists with a clear expression of their willingness to involve in sexual misconduct if opportunities are provided.

This may become an established way to enter the film industry if it is not already because film industry cannot live on meritocratic way of selecting the artists for their films. I have seen such incidents happening in corporate world and I am sure such things might be happening in the Bollywood as a practice, which has prompted some of the "caught" celebrities not hesitating for misbehaving.

To conclude, the media should call for a better judgment of the impact their news stories are making on the larger sections of the society before beaming them into the living rooms of the common man. They cannot get away with an explanation that they are trying to protect some "innocent" people falling into trap if such an attempt is impacting larger section of the society adversely.

Venkat Manthripragada

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