A gladiatorial sport called infotainment

new delhi: these days an epidemic of entertainment is sweeping through the world of television news. recently, we saw an exclusive interview of chhota rajan on star tv, in which he narrated the account of his escape from the hospital room in bangkok. and on the heels of that, a rival television channel had a menacing phone-conversation with chhota shakeel in karachi. the electronic media seems to be getting desperate and is doing everything it can to grab attention. television journalism is simply becoming another commodity whose sole purpose is profit, where news itself is for sale. the electronic media takes raw events and uses techniques of rhetoric, theatre, literature and film to create a sense of drama and excitement for its thrill-seeking consumer. these channels process and filter real events, creating a distorted reflection that condense the drama and pain of life into a form of entertainment or at least a product that is entertaining. to heighten the viewer's experience on television, the headline news of the chhota rajan's exclusive interview was given the required sense of drama by the anchor with the added support of an equally dramatic background score. there is a blurring of the lines between fiction and non-fiction, which is melding journalism and entertainment. it is ironic that journalists, who for years placed so much emphasis on the ethical lapses of the entertainment industry and accused it of glamorising the underworld, are themselves today doing exactly what they once condemned bollywood of. in this channel race where each one is too eager to be the first to get breaking news, one has often seen facts being given a complete backseat and truth being manufactured to suit the needs of the channel, thereby increasing their ratings. for instance, star was so impatient to be the first one to announce the possibility of the imminent arrest of bharat shah, it converted it into headline news without checking or authenticating the facts. news as entertainment is truly worrisome; not because it threatens the concept of journalism but because it threatens society's sense of distinction between fact and fiction - of the real and the unreal. someone once said that the currency of the new economy won't be money, it'll be attention. attention is a precious resource and the electronic media is certainly abusing it and taking it for granted. a media analyst once said, ``in these channel wars for attention, rival channels are turning up their volume, intruding, interrupting, screaming, assaulting and offending their imprisoned viewers.'' the only way the viewer can defend himself from this assault, where entertainment is being peddled off as news, is by taking the remote control and zapping out such news into oblivion. we must have the guts to stand outside this fraudulent world of make-believe, manipulative information which relies on spectacle, simplification and exaggeration. all with an eye to grab the viewers' attention. neil postman writes, ``when population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainment, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at great risk; cultural death is a clear possibility.''