What Kasab's Biryani In Jail Says About News TV

Likitha Lovely 4711 12 Aug, 2016

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The most formidable challenge to sanity and scepticism, so essential to our trade, has come from this dangerous undermining of news at prime time. The old-fashioned evening news bulletin has gone extinct. What you have, on the other hand, is debate after debate on each channel after 8 p.m. And because that debate must be polarizing, vicious, loud and therefore fun, it has to be provocative, anchors have to look stern, disgusted, preachy and so holier-than-cow. Further, since all competing channels look at the same list of stories that broke latest by 6 p.m., there is no time to fact-check, to hold a story up for verification. If the public prosecutor claims Kasab demanded biryani in jail, who can afford to wait until it is checked out with jail authorities. Somebody has said it, everybody has heard it, so let's go with it, only challenge being how to look more outraged than the rest