Television News Is Deteriorating: Vikram Chandra

Vikram Chandra, ex-NDTV and founder of Editorji Technologies, shared his views on the current media scenario and how the television news has deteriorated from the golden age of journalism.

“The current media scenario is really messed up, a large amount of television news’ quality has deteriorated”, he said.

He further pointed out the structural reasons of ‘why the television news quality is messed up so badly?

Chandra said, “In television news, you do not get the subscription revenue in India, you are paying the carriage fees. You are totally dependent on the advertising companies and TRPs.”

“You get TRP by not doing the good quality news but instead bad quality news and that is not the way the media industry should be”, he added.

Chandra also said that one needs to have the ability to distinguish between an opinion and news.

“Social media is a good platform of information distribution but the sources of content are not authenticated, they could be wrong and fake”, he said

He further explained that the crux of the problem is the ‘source of information’, social media platforms like Whatsapp and Facebook, people are getting their news through social media and they believe what they see which rather is not true.

He also stressed out on the need to change the model in order to have a bigger and brighter future of journalism and media.

“The future is here, we need to find a way to shake up the entire industry and to embrace technology. We just have to find a new and right way of doing things and then the golden age of journalism will be here”, Chandra said.― BW Businessworld