A lot of debate is being done these days about ethics in news reporting. The press drew a lot of flak for its lack of reposibility during the stand-off in Mumbai. Everything is dressed as breaking news and run a million time till the crux of the issue loses its dignity and becomes a boring by-line. On-site reporting sounds ridiculous and often assumes farcial proportions similar to the scene in the movie " A Wednesday" where a news item is recorded to showcase potholes on roads. Every telecast has experts and laymen presenting their analysis and opinions about anything and everything. All news items theses days use superfluous language to describe the most insignificant piece of news. Where news is supposed to be objective presentation of facts and well researched figures , it is now becoming an assault on ones emotions. Interviews and debates on TV have become fencing matches where the participants try to show their one- upmanship. Such a trend has resulted in a skew in the media space that each news item gets. Insignificant issues receive exponentially high screen space and some news pieces of import get shunted for lack of glamor.
Such a trend in the indian new channels has created a new paradigm in BTL publicity. The basic concepts underlying are what they always used to be but the impact it has over the audience has increased tremendously. As always, what is needed is a scandal, controversy or a standoff. Small modifications and tweaking in the right direction and Voila, you have a mega publicity campaign on your hands. Lets check out this story. An american company launches a new social networking site. They do not have a media campaign at all. A minister makes a comment on the website which is seemingly controversial. Ab-ra-ca-dab-ra and Twitter becomes a household name in the nation and still the company has not spent a dime on publicity.
A super star makes a comment about cricket players of our neighbour which offends the group who are always ready to take offense on anything which really does not concern them. And bingo the new movie of the super star gets so much of publicity that even the biggest of corporates cannot afford such a budget. The "idiot" who had a planned media campaign for his new movie spent a ton and the star who was at the right place at the right time harvested rich wind fall. I guess from now on people should get into agreement with all these self righteous moral , spiritual and theological groups who are waiting to take stand against anyone who even sneezes inappropriately to get publicity. As the cliche goes " There is nothing called bad publicity".
These examples show that those who have gained have done so by default and not by design. So that brings to us the big question " Can such a circumstance be created?
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