Are we letting the media terrorise us?

Poor Aamir. He's a superstar. And he has every right to behave like one. He is also a patriotic Indian and he has every right to behave like a disgruntled one. I wish he hadn't issued a statement clarifying his disgust at what we are becoming as people: Hugely over-reactive, deeply biased and phenomenally careless. Or is this just a creation of the media?

Who knows? Perhaps those of us who sit in nice climate controlled offices and spew out everything at will - from repeated footage that can brainwash anyone about a speech that turned into a "spooch", to the creation of the political mirage, after the tenth take, that a certain incident was motivated by religion are to blame. We pay for "trends" on Twitter to appease our own egos and perhaps even hang onto our jobs (What? He beat you today in ratings again?). The media has one agenda and one agenda alone. To be relevant to the perception it sets out to create so your eyeballs pop out with the news you don't forget and tune in again for another eye-popping dose of engaging entertainment.

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We have seen how even measured methods that predict votes and political trends can go horrendously wrong. If eminent people who have built their careers on fortunate accurate predictions on political leanings of the masses are today having to apologise for being way off the mark, it's a sign that India knows more than the media does. I would like to ask: Who has decided that we Indians want to be divided by religion? Then what accurate method is used to determine what is and what isn't news? An editorial news decision today makes a Hindi film actor who happens to be of Muslim origin influence the minds of every Indian, Hindi speaking or not, just because he revealed a domestic conversation in a televised forum? The sentence makes it to the social media and therefore seeps into every community and gets more and more warped and dangerous as it turns from a rabid media debate into a feeling of alienation from your neighbour. Who gains from this venom? Let's do a "poll" and see if anyone is really enjoying it.

What if we as media had decided not to play out the clip for fear of creating a new fear psychosis? If a common man had said this on a village stage, would it have made the headlines, baselines and trendlines? I suspect not.

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The media has decided that "intolerance" is a good buzzword to create an addictive interest for audiences and ensure ratings and debate. Politicians don't think twice about turning every "interaction" with the public at large into a negative diatribe. Even if "achhe din" are somewhere over the horizon, we are ensuring that we will never see them. We'll be too depressed, terrorised by an invisible force and polarised to even recognise them.

In the coverage of the Paris attacks, not one image of gore, not one looped tape to incite more phobias was used to gain audience share. I am reminded of the irresponsible coverage of 26/11. And speaking of social media, I am convinced that every hashtag we create alters our perception of who we think we are as a society. It's like giving bait to a hungry mouth who will be hooked to it and purge the poison we as media and politicians love to feed on. That frustration and anger exist is a given, but creating a "trend" in the media is irresponsible when done without considering the psychological consequences.

We live in an age of visible self-expression and whilst we must never curb that liberty, we must restrain ourselves from creating news that will give us the thrill of but one more prime time victory, but leave fellow Indians terrorised by our own professional agendas.

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