'For the sake of News' - A Zee News initiative, compels the who's who of media and advertising to speak up

Media News

New Delhi, May 16, 2011

News on television is no longer the same. It has high dose of entertainment and reality content. The meaning of news on Hindi TV has changed, but does this reflect viewers' changing priorities or is it just another way of earning TRPs?

Over a period of time, the sanctity of news has got diluted in India. Zee News is aware of its responsibility as the fourth estate and understands the importance of serious news content and the credibility it brings with it, especially during Prime Time - when the nation switches on a news channel for updates on current affairs and important happenings of the day.

With frivolity and non-news content taking prominence during prime time, Zee News started an online campaign 'For the Sake of News'. Through this initiative, the channel reached out to the media and advertising industry and invited feedback on the dilution of Prime Time news content. The campaign generated a lot of buzz and participation. Through its first week, it received multiple responses, some of them supporting the initiative while others simply condemning the sorry state of affairs.

Emphasizing on the need for the campaign, Zee News Limited CEO, Mr Barun Das said, "More often than not we are faced with the unfortunate incidence of channels passing off entertainment content as news on prime time. Not only do we frown upon the violation of the inviolability of news, but feel that such practices - solely for the purpose of garnering numbers - grossly underestimate the audiences' intellect. Viewers today are not just discerning, they genuinely want to be informed citizens. Our campaign is aimed at bringing back 'seriousness of purpose' in dissemination of news."

Hakimuddin Liliyawala from OneUp Arts while commenting on the campaign said, "Yes, TV news is being diluted today. News does lose its meaning with dramatization and sensationalism. What the news channel forget is that they are supposed to report and not entertain."

Sohini Sarkar Noronha of Paradigm Plus Marketing Communications feel that News is a piece of fact, information and not a story or gossip that needs to be dramatized. Delivering news with appropriate emotion is acceptable but not when it is unnecessarily hyped. Reconstruction or dramatization of events sometimes become important to explain elaborate sequence of events, but definitely not at all the times and not with the same degree of sensationalism. News channels perform the paramount task of communicating facts and at no point should take the liberty of unduly sensationalizing them.

Defining sensationalism, Rohit Mishra of Lenovo said, "Sensationalism is akin to a spice that has lost its zing due to overuse." He added that it was high time for journalism to get more serious and news channels a little less funny. Indian audience will definitely give thumbs-up to a news channel that can truly cater to their demand of accurate and varied information.

Even the who's who of media and advertising industry have also joined the campaign against the demeaning of TV news. Agnello Dias, co-founder and chief creative officer, Taproot India says, "Hindi TV news channels are news entertainment channels and not news journalism channels. The dilution of news has been quietly going on for sometime, it is out in the open now. As a viewer instead of getting unnerved, I just switch to other channels." According to independent media consultant, A.S. Raghunath, Hindi news channels say what has already been said by others, they don't take a stance. They've lost their voice. TV news today is a dumbed-down version of 24X7 news reporting phenomenon.

Naveen Khemka, senior vice president, ZenithOptimedia feels that "TV news channels do not have much content anyway. They are looking at differentiated content. For differentiated content they have to make content. In the race of becoming unique, most of the news channels today have more masala than news."

Sudha Natarajan, president and chief executive officer, Lintas Media Group sums the new trend and justifies by saying, "News channels have been GEC-ising news content, but that has been helping them add viewership. As a business call, it must be making sense that's why so many of them are doing that. Doling the news content that catches eyeballs."

Whether it's for the sake of TV rating points or plain profit, unreasonable sensationalism of news content is not going to help anyone. TV channels need a course correction lest they run the risk of losing patronage and viewership both..

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For further information, please contact:

Zee Network

Deeksha Jain

Email: deeksha.jain@zeenetwork.com