The Indian Media and yellow journalism

There is a code of integrity followed by the media. Unfortunately, in this era, the correct use of journalism has receded drastically. And thus the regular presentation of fake news in this era has given rise to the term “yellow journalism”.

What is yellow journalism?

The media of our generation have started focusing on what people want to hear rather than what people need to hear. And this is what yellow journalism does. The term “yellow journalism” was coined in the 1890s in New York City. when two renowned journalists William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World, were competing with each other on the ground of circulation of papers. Yellow Journalism includes sensationalism, gossip, and scandals along with a great amount of misinformation or fake news.

Media as the fourth pillar of democracy

Media is told to be the fourth pillar of democracy. The other three pillars are the legislative, Executive and Judiciary systems. It is known to be a platform that conveys factual information about the current topics going on at that time. But do you think media is doing its right work?

Mahatma Gandhi while addressing the Indian media said” Journalism should never be prostituted for selfish ends or for the sake of merely earning a livelihood or, worse still, for amassing money”. Today, We can recall many incidents where false information and news that may trigger the public have become a cause for violence and disruption in the country.

There is a lot of content on every type of media which turned out to be fake. And thus, this is the work of yellow journalism- to gain public attention with a lot of exaggeration and making any news out of proportion. Generally, the news channels do practice yellow journalism for grabbing the attention of audiences so that their channel gains popularity. Media is no longer the authentic platform that had the aim to educate the public. It has now turned into a business where news is shown according to the profit of media channels.

Many political parties and corporate houses create their own media houses or secretly pay the existing media channels for their political popularity. You can recall a piece of news that went viral when some cows went missing. Instead of showing the factual information behind the story, the media channels portrayed the story as ” Kya Aliens Bhi Gaay ka Duudh Peete Hain”. This type of fake reporting which usually remains far away from reality is generally practised for money. The media should more focus on educating people rather than exaggerating topics for grabbing the attention of viewers.

Conclusion

As the media organizations are seeing harsh competition, newspapers and news channels can be caught doing anything which can fetch high TRPs for their organization. News channels are more focusing on entertainment news because the news containing real and serious issues are not able to gain the interest of audiences, thus leading to less profit to their channel.

Competition is also one of the reasons which media channels and newspapers choose to become Infotainment channels, the channels which tend to inform people as well as show entertaining content. The news channels spice up any piece of news whether for the sake of TRP and their profit. Not just this, our media channels and newspapers can show the paid news of institutions, product services for additional profit.

The news channels have transformed from serious reporting to a dramatic and sensational format that relies on attention-grabbing news rather than news of serious issues. The news channels more focus on the debates among the political party representatives and thus this lead to providing biased information to the viewers. These are the major issues that are being caused due to the major yellow journalism going around the country. It is high time that media organizations should stop practising such kinds of journalism and should more focus on the social and moral responsibility towards society.

The work of a media organization demands revealing the truth and facts of the society so it must not compromise with anything to reveal the truth.