Column

If it bleeds, it leads” was the mantra handed down to generations of young journalists by their seniors. Bleeding in whatever form — and this included violence, accidents, wars — was news and if it was on a large scale, it made bigger news.

This has led to the common perception that newspapers love blood and gore, mainly because it helps sell more copies.

The reporter and photographer pushing their way to a crime scene to get quotes and pictures is a much-caricatured image.

Journos are seen as no less than ghouls, blood-loving vampires who cannot survive in the daylight and cannot see ‘good news’.

“Why are you guys so obsessed with bad news,” is a question I have been asked as long as I have been a journalist. It’s useless to answer and explain that news is something that is unusual and which informs people of an out of ordinary event.

People are convinced that no hack is interested in anything but crimes and misdemeanors.

It’s also pointless to say that people like reading about such things, because that raises the issue of pandering to the lowest common denominator, the dumbing down of news etc. Best to keep one’s mouth shut.

Now someone, equally fed up of the purveyors of ‘bad’ news no doubt, has done something about it.

Our ex-President APJ Abdul Kalam has launched an e-paper, called Billion Beats — the pulse of India which will focus on success stories to inspire people, especially youngsters under 25 who, the first issue tells us, are the “most powerful resources on the earth, under the earth and above the earth”.

Kalam writes in his introduction, “We have the islands of success in every activity; we should connect them to make a garland.”

The genesis of the paper came about after a discussion with Kalam during which he bemoaned the fact that the media did not write enough about unsung heroes and only gave an “overdose of politics, murder, caste war.”

Before some wag suggests that all the three are basically the same nowadays, the point he is making is clear — there is just too much negativity in the news and not enough of the things that would inspire and elevate.

People see what they want to see. So while Kalam and others will say the papers are full of violence, another criticism about the media has been that it does not write about harsh reality and focuses only on glamour and glitz.

“There is too much of the Page 3 stuff and not enough about the real issues before this country, such as farmers’ suicides,” some people say.

Open a paper today and chances are that it will have stories about successes — of tycoons becoming super rich, of stock markets creating millionaires, of Indians conquering the world and of the much-maligned cricket team winning matches.

The mood is euphoric and triumphant. India is a ‘happening’ country and rushing to occupy its place in the world, if it has not already arrived.

Why, even the British Prime Minister has changed his name to Govardhan Brown. The middle-class apparently loves all this.

The Indian intelligentsia, such as it is, has long talked about the Indian Middle Class. This is an omnibus term for a new generation of arrivistes who have a lot of money but suffer from a deficit of good taste.

They are supposed to be leading the consumerist revolution which is fuelling the economy (and they buy a lot of newspapers too.) Their values, based on somewhat unresearched and possibly unfair assumptions drive the thought process of opinion-makers.

So while someone out there thinks that the readers want only good news about successes and gives them a lot of pabulum, others think that they should be preached to. Journalists fall into this trap all the time.

They often strategise and think up new ideas to please the ‘market’, dishing out formulaic confections which are neither too challenging and nor offensive to anyone.

The powerful are revered, the rest are ‘non-people’ and don’t matter. There is the opposing view that thinks that any celebration of success and joy de-focusses us from the ‘real’ issues about the ‘real’ India.

The truth is, to use a journalism cliché, somewhere in between. A newspaper is like a department store that offers something for everyone.

But it must reflect the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. India is at a moment which it has not seen for decades. There are problems galore, but so are successes.

The much-maligned Page 3 is part of the Indian story too. The reader is an intelligent person who can see through any attempt to sell him (and increasingly, her) an agenda.

Readers admire good, old-fashioned journalism, but not necessarily old, outdated ideas. They want to be entertained, but also be taken seriously and be challenged.

They don’t think of news as good or bad. And while they may like to read about rich tycoons, even today, if it bleeds, it leads.

Email: sidharth01@dnaindia.net