Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Journalists don't have a heart.



Today, I witnessed one of the many accidents that take place on highways. (I didn't have the heart to take snaps) There was this mentally retarded person, who was trying to cross the Western Express highway. I saw him trip over and collapse right in the middle of the highway lane. At this point, I just HOPED that he would come out safe. (There was nothing that could be done, as there were many speeding vehicles)

Hardly 2-3 seconds after the man collapsed, a bike ran over him. :(
This came as a big blow to my head. The guy on the bike also crashed. But he wasn't hurt. (He was wearing a helmet). He was thrown off by some distance, but came out unhurt.

I felt a cold chill when I noticed that the person who was run over, the mentally retarded person, wasn't moving. I know things like these happen all the time, but witnessing THAT started me thinking.

I had a camera in my bag. I could have taken it out and snapped a few photographs, maybe take a video of the entire scene. But something told me NOT to. It was a devastating sight. Something horrible had happened, and the poor victim needed help. Many cars stopped, people ran towards the person, grabbed and lifted him to the side of the road. He couldn't walk, or do ANYTHING. They set him on the side pavement, made him sit. But as soon as they let go of the support, he collapsed onto the pavement, rolling and curling within himself. Then two people put him in an auto rickshaw, and took him to the hospital for medical aid.

Two things strike out here...

1. If there's one thing that I have learned from this incident is that Mumbai is a city where religion, caste or the mother tongue of an individual doesn't matter. If a person injures himself badly, or if an old lady trips over a footpath, everybody comes running up to help them. They don't come up to you and ask whether you are a Hindu, a Muslim, or even Gujarati or Marathi for that matter.. (Heads Up MNS, Shiv Sena)

2. If there was a journalist there at the scene, what would he/she have done? "Take out the goddamn camera, we gotta shoot this! I've got some juicy content!"
Most of the people reporting DON'T have a heart. Sometimes I feel they're just plain dumb.


An example of Heartless journalism goes like this:

Take for example the Sarabjit case. This Indian guy is in jail in Pakistan, and is most probably gonna be hanged. A journalist goes to his residence in Punjab, India. What is the first question he asks his mother?

"Aapko kaisa lag raha hai?" ("How do you feel that your son is being executed?")
I mean, what do you f**king say to that?

An example of dumb journalism goes like this:

They covered the 26/11 at the Taj Hotel.
A very famous English news channel reporter just got hold of a Chinese chef, who had just escaped/been rescued from the hotel. What did he ask him?

"How do you feel? Are you scared?"
What answer did the guy expect? NO?
The chef is trying to go as far from the place as possible, and the "reporter" holds him up, and asks him THAT.

Why I'm saying this is that, again, Indian journalism has hit its utmost low point. I don't think it can sink ANY lower.

When I switch on the TV to ANY Hindi news channel, all I see is crappy news. I have posted several blogs on this, with pictures. Now when I see these sad "News stories" being reported, I don't even feel like taking snaps. At first it was real fun taking snaps of the awesome crap they showed us on news. I have a thousand images still to be posted.

News NOW comprises of:

1. "Television Serial" news - 15-20 minutes dedicated to each TV show. Starting from Balika Vadhu, to many others.

2. "Food Scam" news - Are YOU drinking bad MILK?, eating bad JAGGERY?

3. "Mythical" news - ALL myths WILL be projected as reality in this section. This section dominates all other sections. This type of news can be anything..from "Hell on Earth" and "River of the living dead" to "End of the earth in 2012" and even "Mysterious Waterfall".. I even have pics of ALL these to prove all of this, AND MORE!

4. "Sports" news - If India wins, they are hardworking, awesome gods. If India lose, they're f**king worse than the US cricket team, and they spend more time making Ads.

5. "Breaking" news - The four points mentioned above are a part of this section.

Man, I could go on. But I don't want to bore you :) (I know I already have :P)