Dear Friends,
Back on MS after some while...the recent times have been hectic for me. Mention times and
The Times of India (TOI) comes to your mind but who knows for how long? Confused... are you ? Well read on ! TOI has always been a premier Indian newspaper for more than 100 years, but its recent editions have been totally disappointing to say the least.
Just imagine that you’ve got up on a nice morning and with a cup of hot tea in your hand, you eagerly catch hold of TOI but then the bombshell drops and you are caught reading headlines like ’’MOBILE PHONES REDUCE MALE FERTILITY BY ONE THIRD’’ or on another day the headlines screams in big bold Times New Roman font ’’SEX DRIVE IN FEMALES INCREASES AFTER THEY CROSS 40’’.
For all those loyal TOI fans reading this, let me tell you that such headlines have indeed appeared in the editions of TOI. And the unfortunate thing is that headlines llike these are becoming more and more frequent day by day. It is really disgusting to see TOI resorting to such headlines and compromising so much on the content.
There was a time when they were supposed to be the most unbiased reporters of facts but these days they only print more and more of such stuff. Affairs of leading personalities seem to be their favourite investigation topic. It seems like content has taken a backseat now and such cheap articles now occupy the newspaper more.
The editorial page has also taken a severe blow. It seems like they have commercialised this section also and the result is that it has anybody who says he is proud to be a Hindu is painted saffron and labelled a communalist. After the shoot-out of LeT terrorists at Ahmedabad, one cannot imagine to the extent that they went to bash the police and term them words like ’fanatics’. The articles of sympathy that they wrote for the female terrorist far outnumbered any other articles. If such a respectable newspaper takes such (secular !!!) stands, it is really unfortunate.
Anyway, I dont want to get into the politics part too much. But the manner in which they’ve been depicting the picture, it seems like that there has been a marked change in their priorities. What they are one cannot say with certainty but then this definitely is NOT reporting facts. It is probably DISTORTION.
TOI also prints a city-specific supplement usually of 4-8 pages usually titled ’Mumbai Times’ in Mumbai, ’Pune Times’ in Pune...so on. Say if you live in Pune and open the ’Pune Times’ to have a flavour of local news, you’d be totally disappointed to say the least. News of the local city are very less. Then what’s there? No prizes for guessing this one...the news are not local they are mostly global...its all about Hollywood & Bollywood...huh ! Glamorous pictures of semi-nude (semi is an understatement) models dot the entire supplement in various colours and sizes.
Now read this...during the recent Euro Cup 2004, there were very few articles on the star players of various nations BUT there were some sexy pictures of the girlfriends of some of the star players. Now if this is way the things are going...then its HOT !!! (Thats the punchline of yet another Times group radio station - Radio Mirchi )
However, I try to look at the positive side of things and now after reading TOI & its supplements I can certainly take part in Siddharth Basu’s quiz on BBC titled Master Mind. Guess what my Specialized subject would be...it would be: ’’Less known Hollywood bikini models’’ or ’’Bikinis in Hollywood’’ or ’’Affairs of Hollywood personalities’’. If this sounds rude, I’m sorry, but this is the truth and the way TOI is going I’m sure that I can be a champ in BBC’s Master Mind Show.
I’ve been a loyal reader of TOI for quite a number of years, but such content quality and instigated stands that they are taking have forced me to break this loyalty. It seems like the Times Group is hell bent on torturing me wherever I go. After staying in Pune for 22 months, I moved to Mumbai for 5 months. Now I’m in Indore. The common thread is the Times Group by the presence of their HOT radio stations all over these cities. Earlier it was only the HOT thing (Radio Mirchi) that burned my ears. And now that the pages of TOI are also HOT they have burnt my fingers badly.
On a serious note, if this is the emerging picture of trends and such articles & content quality are what give TOI profits, then something is definitely wrong with most of us.
Dear friends, I thank you a lot for sparing your valuable time to read about the changing times in the Times of India. The global warming may be still a few years away but India (courtesy TOI & Radio Mirchi) is already saying & becoming HOT !!!
Till then let the good ’Times’ rock !
Thanks and regards,