Tag Archives: Journalism

No News Day

Nothing happened today. No news. Zilch. Of course, usual life carried on. People went for work. Unemployed people didn’t but they don’t anyways. No big event occurred. No hate speech happened. There was sudden dearth of stupid remarks. Some people did speak their mind but nobody heard them so it was alright. There were no weddings. There were some divorces and they were settled peacefully. People obviously cried but that was just a stress reliever. No protests happened, no cease fire violation happened. Nobody died in any accident. None. There was usual traffic at most places and occasional jams at deadlocks. People took them for granted and didn’t show their anger anywhere, neither on the road, nor on Twitter. Some cars got into accidental-y situation and almost collided too but both the drivers were so busy in their own affairs, they thought shouting at the other won’t improve the driving skills, so there wasn’t any point. No celebrity of importance died. Some people did die though. Those who died, died of natural causes, so nobody gave much whimper except their families and close friends, some of whom were, sort of, relieved. No loot happened so security guards spent their day mostly snoring, but acting as if they are fully awake and active. No rape happened. It was indeed surprising but may be it was the arrangement of planets that made sure nobody got insane. No killing happened. Neither in the name of God or language or money or anything. May be the perpetrators’ alarm got into some mess thanks to some seismic activity which geologists failed to capture and they now must be wondering what day it is. Cartoonists took the day off and spent the day by watching at blank TV screens.

Most of the people didn’t pay any heed to the lack of happenings around, but it was a very dull and long day for news channels, newspapers and news websites. They were restless for most of the afternoon but eventually someone had a brilliant spark, which spreaded from one agency to the other and they all published their news of no news. The newspapers published 28 blank pages, with ads of course. The news channels made way for news about TV shows of last weeks and the news websites listed 20 point lists without any content. It was as if they were just hitting enter after every bullet points and eventually got bored after 20 points, randomly.

So today, nothing happened.

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

– John Lennon, Imagine (1971)

Hope is a good thing, in fact the best thing ever

On 27th February when India tied with England, @VenkatAnanath tweeted that he was about to write an article on “Why India is not going to win this World Cup!”. As a knee jerk reaction, I unfollowed him instantly. Although following and unfollowing is not a big deal in Twitdays world but what I didn’t like was the pessimistic journalism. No doubt, these journos/authors/writers are meant to present the truth to the people in the most crude way possible but I have a philosophy that they have a big role to play when it comes to uplift or degrade people’s morale and mood.

It is not only about Cricket, lets talk about optimism in general. As Indians, we people are very optimistic. Since birth, we have been taught to be optimistic. If there is no water from the tap, we assume that one day will come where our Municipality Department will fix everything. If there are more potholes on the road than road, we believe that one day in future we are going to get roads as smooth as Hema Malini’s cheeks or Deepika Padokone’s leg, if you prefer that. A kid when dreams of becoming a Civil servant, try telling him that he cannot be unless he is some reserved category.

These journos need to understand one thing. India as a nation which is held with the adhesive of ‘Hope’. Their job is to find out the flaws in the current system or point of the flaws in the plans laid out for future. When they start giving their opinions, they put into their bias with emotions which result in something demoralizing.

There was a dialogue in the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ where Red (Morgan Freeman) says, “Hope is a good thing, in fact the best thing ever. And no good thing ever dies.”