News Bangalore

Indian news media is very complicated. To start, the television news networks are split between government run and privately run networks. The government networks are rather boring and are a dying breed. On the other hand privately owned and run news stations are extremely entertaining and are a rapidly growing industry. However, many if not all are owned under one major conglomerate headed by a man that owns businesses across many sectors of the Indian economy. This has largely impacted the topics covered by the most accessible news sources in the country. It is often engineered to reflect the interests of oil companies and other big business industries. Another interesting aspect of private sector news networks is the amount of activity that happens on the screen. The watcher is assaulted with an unending flow of flashing updates, video clips, scrolling headlines and constantly changing numbers not to mention the shouting matches that almost never fail to occur.

The other major news source used in India, like most places, is the newspaper. There are well over 80,000 newspapers in India, in comparison the United States has only 1,300. There are a number of reputable newspapers that are circulated but many are not very good at communicating informative, or even factually true, stories. About two years ago The Daily Show’s Jason Jones went to India to look at their news media. During the segment he buys a news story, fills it entirely with untrue information and then gets it published in a printed news source. This is a common practice because journalists are notoriously underpaid here and thus take payments from people who want a story about them whether it is true or not.

Currently, the largest story in India is of mast student protests across the country after the arrest of the president of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar. He was arrested under the charge of sedition after giving a speech heavily criticizing the BJP, the current ruling party, which has been criticized for being overbearing and corrupt. The situation has continued to break down as students continue to carry out mass protests and BJP party officials and lawyers have been caught carrying attacks out on Kumar’s supporters.
While there are many news sources that are questionable at best big, and sensitive, stories, such as the one above can be found in reputable, middle of the road and privately owned news sources such as the Hindu.