New Delhi. In wake of seemingly poor reporting by television channels during Mumbai terror attacks, Government has decided that the country no longer needs 24-hours news channels, and has banned all of them. The news channels now have two options – either to continue in business as a non-news television channel or to join Doordarshan News. Most of the alleged journalists working in television channels were happy with either of the choices.
“Due to recession we don’t know if our jobs would be there tomorrow. If we become government employees with Doordarshan, at least the job would be there. As far as working in non-news channel is concerned, I feel I’m already in one, so that would hardly make a difference.” Rajat Chawla, a journalist working with a leading television channel told Faking News.
But top management and editors of these news channels are adamant to fight the government and get the ban revoked. Many channels started SMS and online polls to find out what the people think about the government decision. Despite repeated request by Faking News, these channels didn’t share the outcome of such polls hence Faking News has started its own poll to find out public opinion.
Faking News readers can participate in this poll which is visible at the top of the right column of this website. If you don’t have any opinion or haven’t made up your mind yet on this issue, we encourage you not to take part in the poll as there is no ‘maybe’ option. Readers can also comment on this article to voice their opinions, which would incrementally increase their internet bills but would still be cheaper than sending SMS. The poll would run till the end of January 31, 2009 (IST).
Meanwhile government has reiterated that their decision is absolutely correct and in public interest. They have dared the news channels to get a public survey done by an independent market surveyor and have rejected the SMS or online poll results even though they are yet to be made public. Government officials told that they will take a decision on accepting or rejecting Faking News poll result after the results were announced.
“Of late News Channels have lost track. People are mighty interested in knowing whether Salman and Katrina would get married or whether Shahrukh was a gay. That’s what you call public ‘interest’. Who in this world is interested in knowing whether our intelligence agencies work on not or if corruption is there in the system. Give me a break.” Information and Broadcasting secretary told us after the cabinet minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi refused to talk to our reporter.
While this tussle between government and news channel bosses continued, common man missed the news channels and instead spent most of his time watching ‘laughter shows’ on entertainment channels. The common woman missed the ‘behind the scenes’ stories and scoops from the saas-bahu sagas but she hoped that with some television journalists joining Doordarshan, she can get her updates back. The common child missed the crime shows about school going girls.
The ban is expected to increase the readership of newspapers, though the trend is yet to be witnessed. But Faking News witnessed increase in its traffic as it seems that people relied on us for the latest news and updates. But we request our readers not to trust us too much or our website could also be brought down by the government.
UPDATE:
February 1, 2009. Well, the results of the opinion poll started by Faking News have finally come out – 65% of the respondents (100 people voted) favored government regulation of television news channels. The government is happy with the result and has announced that Faking News would not need to pay any taxes this financial year. Sigh! Only if we were making any money at first place…
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1 Comments:
it's true, i'm working with a television news channel as a producer and i feel working in an entertainment channel
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