Friday, September 9, 2011

Thanks to the irritation with the commercial channels, I have found that there are very interesting conversations on Lok Sabha television. Today, I was listening, unfortunately, to the tail end of a conversation with an MP talking about how important the question hour used to be and these days, it is the one which is routinely disrupted. I recall in my younger days going through the column on questions in the parliament.

By  a coincidence, I saw a TED talk on media should pay attention to non-violent movements in Palestine. It struck me that may be the loss of question hour is related to the same reason. Disruption of the house is exciting news. The commercial channels cover it in great depth. However, questions and answers are not exciting television - unless it is in Kaun Banega Crorepati format.

So, I now have one more grouse against our commercial media. A very unfortunate side effect of commercialisation - the loss of serious discussion in the parliaments.

No comments:

Post a Comment