Tit bits..

The media has come to believe that people do not want to read anything which makes them think. Today, the print media is suffering from a mad disease which has played havoc with our newspapers. It is "the tabloid syndrome." You open any paper in the morning, and the pages are full of pictures of young models and actors in various stages of dishabille. There are pages and pages on these models, supermodels, actors and designers — people you have not even heard the names of — garnished with "information" on what they love to eat, what kind of dress they like best, what they do when they relax, what they think of love and sex and such trivia. The special city pages of the papers look like a cross between a cheap fashion journal and a puerile film magazine, full of gossip and crude colour pictures.

A newspaper is not a dustbin for dumping drivel, film gossip and crime. It must have news. It must have information. It must educate the public about events with background information and editorial comments. One of the reasons why the press has deteriorated is: people who run the newspapers in our country now think that a newspaper is just like any other commodity. It should be nicely packaged, because their idea of "nice packaging" means filling the papers with semi-nude colour pictures of models and actresses and trash.

This shallow, unthinking attitude gets reflected even in the news stories and articles that are printed in the papers. Reporters do not always cross-check the information they get. They often write one-sided versions of events and about people who do not matter — absolute non-entities. Often good stories are not followed up properly. Even factual information given in a newspaper is at times incorrect.

-------Kuldip Nayar on Sify.com