How Newslive channel tried to use Guwahati Molestation to raise its TRPs

Media shamefully in India goes after the TRPs.  News is broadcast as if it is some drama.  The protagonists in the news also are treated with the same frivolousness.  Remember Barkha Dutt asking a man outside of the Oberoi Hotel during the 26/11 attacks, whose wife was caught inside the hotel – “How are you feeling”??  She went onto announce the room where his wife was holed up in – to the benefit of the terrorists.

But that incident is not an exception – either with Barkha or with the media.  They keep doing this often.  Sometimes, the insensitivity goes beyond belief.

Newslive – the TV news channel in Assam made a mess of it all during the Guwahati Molestation case.  The channel reporter saw the girl being mistreated.  Instead of calling the police and intervening, he called his camera man, and to add to her insult, he turned vigilante and started interviewing her on the spot!

The reporter then proceeds to ask personal questions to reveal the identity of the girl.  Ostensibly, he was acting as the local vigilante and moral police in one.  What he proceeds to do is deplorable.

The footage in possession of Firstpost shows he asked the girl about her college and class too. If Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) leader Akhil Gogoi’s video footage is to be believed, the reporter was clearly heard shouting to someone to bring the girl towards the light so that the video quality gets better. And the camera angles? They bordered between soft and hard core porn, sources said.

He not only did that but the Editor-in-Chief of the News Channel then goes online and tweets this:

Prostitutes form a major chunk of girls who visit bars and night clubs

Not satisfied, he goes on to post the videos his team – cameraman and reporter took on Youtube and then promote it all over via social media.  To make matters reach a crescendo, he also blamed the rival news channel  DY365 for good measure while trying to show that channel was involved in the incident.

Why would this channel do this kinda thing?

Because it is the norm!  Have you checked out the website for Hindustan Times and Times of India lately?  What do you see?

Pictures of Sunny Leone, Poonam Pandey, and other starlets are very common.  Most of the stories are on sex and relationships – which are more to do with sex again in various ways.  I am not against sex, or even porn.  But these things have their place.  And it is not on the front page of news daily or the billboards of the city.

The cocktail of TRPs and lack of professional ethics have led the entire news media to be an utter farce.