Over the weekend all news channels were full of an amazing story of rescuing a kid, Prince, in Haryana who had fell in a ditch (or bore or whatever). It took 48 hours (or maybe as some new channel would put it 49 hours and some minutes) to finally rescue this kid and bring him to safety. Haryana CM, Hooda, personally supervised this rescue operation which was managed by the Indian Army. The PM and Sonia offered their prayers for the kid’s well being (nowadays in India for all things both names are taken together making you wonder sometimes whether the preposition is invisible, let us park it for now as that is not what I intend to rake up). I saw the same footage being shown live across 7 news channels simultaneously!! There might have been others and I might have missed to account for them.

After see all the above I began wondering and the following basic questions crossed my mind –
Who is this Prince? Is he a real-life prince, scion of some erstwhile royal family, or just another normal kid?
What is so special here that the CM himself went to supervise the rescue operation and announce 2 lakhs as compensation?
What was here that the channels beamed incessantly the going ons?
What made the PM sit up and take notice?

This is what I could gather as the answers –
Prince is the kid’s name and he is as normal a village kid is as can be. He fell in a ditch/well while playing. I completely agree that any human life is precious and we have to be concerned about it but this was not prime time stuff! The CM showed he has no other work (or maybe he just went due to channel pressure, so that his ratings might not come down).

A compensation beats everything… why was it given? On the same yard stick, every kid who falls in wells in Mangalore or any other place should also get a compensation. A bigger disaster is terrorists killing innocent people and kids being orphaned. Not a day passes when a terrorist/naxalite does not strike in some part of our country. This leaves a bigger mark on the psyche of a kid. This is more important to be compensated than a kid falling in a well. Why this step-motherly treatment towards other kids?
Similarly if, say there was a coal mine disaster with 100 people stuck, I guess that wouldn’t have made such a spectacle. I remember the last disaster and the coverage then was minimal. But I guess, a kid stuck makes more hearts reach out than 100 mine workers and that is what these guys want to capitalize on. Nothing wrong with that as they would exploit anything to have more TRP’s but it us who have to decide whether to encourage this crap or not. The channels nowadays tend to sensationalize all things and especially so if there is nothing great to report or there is some suffering. Sufferring is not spectacle let us be very clear on this. They will just go after anything and everything. They wont go after terrorism as they know it is now passe, nothing unique in it to make it a spectacle!

When this drama was being played out, ironically one channel was beaming the movie “Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani” which talked exactly of this menace. What an interpretation the movie had made. It made me see the movie in a totally new light and applaud Aziz Mirza, Shahrukh and Juhi for making this movie long before this kind of journalism grew from a nuisance to a menace (the movie released in 2000 and was a box office failure).

In the end not only did most of my questions still remain unanswered but a lot more were raised. All channels have now lost a lot of respect in my eyes and made me more skeptical of them being real “NEWS” channels but more of tabloids! It leaves a bad taste. Like sometime ago when there was a suicide attack one day in Israel but that news came in the middle pages and a farmer cultivating a barren land occupied front page. In India there would be photos of mangled bodies when you pick up the paper. What a difference in mentality! When will we grow up?

PS: Well I might be wrong with the above but this is my personal opinion and feeling after watching this “show” on TV.