THIS is apropos a news item (March 24) which informs us that the government is contemplating law to regulate TV channels and the very next day you have editorially commented on the subject, ‘Blocking channels?’

Irrespective of the merits of the government’s contemplated action and your adverse comment thereon, the fact remains that our TV channels are inexperienced and immature. They try to copy the BBC and CNN and, in the process, end up in what a glaring example of the proverb says: “Kawwa chala hans ki chaal toh apni chaal bhi bhool gaya.”

They have heard that there is something known as ‘breaking news’ but without understanding what it is, they label any trivial incident as ‘breaking news’ and broadcast it for half an hour, without realising that even if the incident was qualified to be telecast as ‘breaking news’ in the first instance, it ceases to be so

after a couple of minutes of its first telecasting. But the newscasters monotonously keep on repeating it to the utter disgust of the viewers.

They never speak in a sober tone. Their tone suggests that the sky is going to fall the next moment. Even serious news is read in agitated tones which are repulsive. Their tone is spoiling the taste of our new generation.

Quite often crime stories are given prime time and priority, and crimes are described in lurid details which give a very bad impression on immature minds.

In the old PTV days, the duration of the news bulletin was, so far as my memory serves, 15 minutes (or maybe half an hour) and the first one-third part of the news bulletin covered the federal or national news, the second one-third time was devoted to provincial news and the remaining one-third time was devoted to sports news.

Now we switch on our TV to hear news and they often begin by sport news. Sometimes we just cannot bring ourselves to believe that we are viewing a news bulletin. Quite often we switch off the TV in disgust.

While viewing our news bulletins and other programmes telecast by our TV channels, one cannot help recalling Soda’s hijo and its ‘teep ka bund’ with a slight change ‘Ghoray ko do na do lagaam, TV channels ko lagaam do’.

Justice (r) Salahuddin Mirza

Karachi

Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2015

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