Sensationalism is a curse in journalism. In the rush for sensationalism people often forget the boundaries and venture into the ethically forbidden territory. They will come up with new stories, some times cooked up, some times real one; but neither are in public interest.
If you look in to the pages of newspapers of last one month, more than anything you can see the big and colorful pictures of Tiger Woods. May be in these days Woods acquired more fame!!! through the recent controversies than his ability in golf court. People who are not even interested in Golf - Its not an easy game for the commoner to play due to the huge cost associated to it - now a days reading about Woods. Papers are publishing volumes on the issue. In online too there is a mountain of content about Wood's sexual life.
Newspapers are more interested in who is living in his house and how many women are associated with him. They are coming up with new numbers, often. Thanks to sensational journalism, Wood's may found new facts about his life everyday by reading newspapers.
What is the necessity for these papers to launch a crusade against Woods? or any other famous celebrities if some thing of this sort happened in their life? Often they are spending more and more pages in discussing about the actors and actress love stories and travel plans than their movies.
Are they deprived of other news? Kashmir issue is over? Israel - Palesthein problems over? Turmoil in Afghanistan is over? US, European Economies revived? NASA stopped all her operations? Food problem is Sudan and other sub- Saharan countries are over by single night? Dubai’s economy becomes stable? All of a sudden people all over the world got enough drinking water? Taliban suddenly turned in to a peace group? Japanese economy revived? Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Google, Wall Mart and other companies stopped all their operations? As far as I know nothing of this sort happened up to now. Or these are not worthy of reporting at all?
Tiger Wood is also a human being made up to flesh and blood, in his personal life there may be a lot of problems. Is there any need for these papers to report all those events? Leave it to him, he can sort it out, or if some one wants to go to court, it will be settled there. If these newspapers want to mediate this issue they are free to do so - if Woods permits, but please we readers are interested in his professional life, how he plays golf. We are giving him and his family the freedom to settle these things among themselves, as we solve our personal matters. News papers doesn’t have to do all these sort of things for making publicity.
Some years back there was an ISRO spy case. News papers run thousands of stories related to the case. They found out real!!! and strong evidences against the two scientists and two ladies, everyday there will be new stories on the print. But even after discovering all these stories, Central Beauro of Investigation (CBI) find out nothing about any spy racket. But thanks to the newspapers the victims got more punishments than they could even get from the court. After all the allegation was that they sold Indian space secrets to enemies!!!
Newspapers don’t have to publish - second by second descriptions about actors and actresses personal life, what is the morning food for US presidents dog? How many women are there in Woods life, why some actor married someone? We are not interested in these things. Instead print good articles on sports, movies, politics, business etc we will read it.
Sajeev.
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