Dead President and the Brain dead media

I understand that the Indian media is dumbing down news items in order to be palatable to its readers and garner higher subscriptions or Ad revenues as is the case for the online editions. I am not against it since media is a business too - and every business yearns for a healthy balance sheet. But every business has a charter too, whether you like it or not, that of the fourth estate is to present news to the public. While at the topic they also have to give sufficient weightage to more important news, and that is my problem with the media outlets today, they are more concerned with balance sheets rather than their charter. I am no business man nor am I trained in business, but I sure believe that for a business, while profits are necessary for survival, a charter is equally important. Because a charter is what defines you to your customers.

Today, when we have lost one of our Ex-Presidents, Mr. K R Narayanan, what is that I see on the front page of TOI and Indian Express ?? "Yuvraj and Kaif lead India to victory" screams both news portals. Links to the demise of Mr. Narayanan are hardly visible if at all they are present. Western media for all its trashy content, will at least honor the demised public figure by giving top placement and a good length article chronicling the person's life. I think that the ethos of Indian media is long dead, I will no longer visit either of the two mentioned sites unless they have something substantial to offer. Meanwhile, I will rather go to Google India News for my daily dose of news, than to read about not so important issues on the so called premier Indian news sites, something tells me that I am not alone.

So today, while we mourn the demise of the former President, we should also observe a moment of silence for the now dead journalistic ethics.