Re: 2nd ODI - India vs Sri Lanka @ Rajkot. Feb 11, 2007.
First of all I totally agree with you. Look at the American media's obsession with Ana Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton. But NYT/Washington Times/LA Times/etc have not become tabloids the way TOI/HT have.
Also consider the fact that India has far more problems than US, far more bad news to report than the US. Yet you will see cricketers and bollywood stars (or some barely dressed model walking down the ramp) on the front pages of our "mainstream" media on a daily basis. I know there is a commercial element to it but the Indian mainstream media is now beginning to clearly go overboard with populist journalism. Its amazing how many "sex" related Q&A and related columns appear on TOI/HT/etc. You would think that in a country of 1 billion people , that would be the least of our problems. If that wasn't bad, now the friggin TOI in Mumbai also comes with a Bombay Times Supplement and Mumbai Mirror that has more of the same crap ("Urmila caught talking for hours on cellphone").
Are cricketers and Bollywood stars , the only heroes we got in India. Most importantly, in my opinion, the talents of majority of Indian Cricketers is not consistent with the coverage they get.
When I was in India last year, a bus fell over the bridge in Thane and more than 40 people got killed. Amazingly, it was reported on the 2nd page of TOI behind news of India-England match news on the first page. This is what I am talking about.
I agree with you completely on this. I hate reading TOI and HT. These papers are distroying journalism in our country. I come from the south. I read "The hindu", "the new indian express" and the regional dailies, which has still lesser sensationalism associated with it. I think this sensationalism was required to boost their sales because of the many news channels that sprang up in India in last 5 years. In order to sell their papers they have to bank on sensationalism. Think about it. In kerala there was only one to two channels 6 years ago. But now there is more than 10 channels, and half of them news based.
I dont know the owner of HT is but I think TOI has a gora guy heading it. I think TOI has become so useless that I stopped visiting those pages like 2 years ago. Many times I have written to them about their stupidity in promoting cricket over national issues. I have no idea about their print media. But I gather that they have enough admirs in India and their sales are not looking down anyway, so why bother.If some people are stupid and want to get entertained then let them get entertained. There are other options for your right then why dont you use them. I think the best cricketing evaluations are done in "the hindu" with good language and very good analaysis.