Imagine this. You are sitting at the dinner table, and its ____ for dinner. You can fill the blank with anything you absolutely hate eating, and you ask your kitchen authorities for something else to eat. Now, instead of serving you something else, your hands are tied and you are force fed against your wishes. Would you like that?
This example applied to news industry is what is called Yellow Journalism. Lets look at Anna Hazare's movement as an example. Now, I do believe that Anna Hazare's movement is a momentous occasion in our lives, but I don't think all the news on TV and internet should primarily be only about that. If you visited the websites of the major news media houses in the past two weeks, you'd have seen that their news columns, videos, talk shows and everything else was just flooded with news primarily about this single event in India.
That's the problem. Most of the news available for mass consumption is just that. For mass consumption. So what sells, will be published. Because people will consume it, and then move on to the next controversy. For instance, If I asked you, how long have the Kashmir interlocutors been in the Valley, chances are that you might not remember when did that controversy start. P. Sainath in an interview session stressed on the need for citizen journalism, which enables people to know more about their surroundings. Far more than and before what the media houses might be able to provide. I think of this as democratization of news. And since news is information, it has the power to transform India from a corruption-ridden society to a robust society.
itsnotyellow.com is a new initiative which tries to address this issue. It allows common people like us to create news for people, removing the middle-men (the media houses) from the picture. Its "About Us" page says: "“It’s Not Yellow” (INY) is a citizen driven platform that invites people to raise “real” issues in the Indian mainstream media. ". So you signup with them, and upload news that matters to you, and the cycle continues. There is a strict moderation of the news done by an internet based set of moderators, which follow a pre-decided set of rules to separate Yellow articles from the better ones. Think of it like a tightly knit Wikipedia for news.
The site is in very initial stages of its launch, and is definitely just about ramping up. But what I really like is their attempt at solving the force-feeding of news to us. As more and more people start posting news important to them, everyone will begin to benefit from it.
One of its founders shared this experience with me: His home town had a curfew clamped for 4 days, and being in the US, he couldn't get to know anything about it! No major news house covered it since they were busy covering other news, significance of which might not always be impressive.
Good luck to them!
This example applied to news industry is what is called Yellow Journalism. Lets look at Anna Hazare's movement as an example. Now, I do believe that Anna Hazare's movement is a momentous occasion in our lives, but I don't think all the news on TV and internet should primarily be only about that. If you visited the websites of the major news media houses in the past two weeks, you'd have seen that their news columns, videos, talk shows and everything else was just flooded with news primarily about this single event in India.
That's the problem. Most of the news available for mass consumption is just that. For mass consumption. So what sells, will be published. Because people will consume it, and then move on to the next controversy. For instance, If I asked you, how long have the Kashmir interlocutors been in the Valley, chances are that you might not remember when did that controversy start. P. Sainath in an interview session stressed on the need for citizen journalism, which enables people to know more about their surroundings. Far more than and before what the media houses might be able to provide. I think of this as democratization of news. And since news is information, it has the power to transform India from a corruption-ridden society to a robust society.
itsnotyellow.com is a new initiative which tries to address this issue. It allows common people like us to create news for people, removing the middle-men (the media houses) from the picture. Its "About Us" page says: "“It’s Not Yellow” (INY) is a citizen driven platform that invites people to raise “real” issues in the Indian mainstream media. ". So you signup with them, and upload news that matters to you, and the cycle continues. There is a strict moderation of the news done by an internet based set of moderators, which follow a pre-decided set of rules to separate Yellow articles from the better ones. Think of it like a tightly knit Wikipedia for news.
The site is in very initial stages of its launch, and is definitely just about ramping up. But what I really like is their attempt at solving the force-feeding of news to us. As more and more people start posting news important to them, everyone will begin to benefit from it.
One of its founders shared this experience with me: His home town had a curfew clamped for 4 days, and being in the US, he couldn't get to know anything about it! No major news house covered it since they were busy covering other news, significance of which might not always be impressive.
Good luck to them!
1 comment:
Can you write something more so that i can understand further your concepts.
Regards
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