Reporters or actors?

We have changed and the icon of change is none other than the Times Group. They are now recruiting actors under the disguise of reporters. With huge salary cuts already announced in the group, they may have to engage such tactics to pay salaries, it now seems to reveal.

Investigative journalism is long gone, enter theater journalism. With the advent of television, we saw many under cover stories. Some of them very professionally done and in true public interest to bring out the corruption and nepotism, while some just for TRP ratings.

Rajat Sharma is India’s number one actor who marauds as a journalist. His Aap Ki Adalat was nothing more than a drama and he ventured out with his own entertainment channel which he calls as news channel. Except him, nobody else – not even his own reporters – considers it as a news channel.

Now comes the drama of making reporters as beggars and to see how much they collect each day. Ahmedabad Mirror did this trick and managed a little below Rs 100 from three beggars, I mean reporters.

A much better idea would have been to follow a real life beggar and see how much do they collect. That would have been more genuine and authentic by all standards. But with television impact on the background some newspapers are stooping to any levels.

For the reporters, it is a great change as Times is on a retrenchment drive. If these reporters are asked to go, they can get some solace that Times have trained them in another profession for survival.

And read into the story and you will find that it is done with no penchant for local culture or international trends of begging. We really don’t know whether Amdavadis bestow the beggars with alms compared to other cities.

Having done such a vast exercise, if you are doing no research into the story, it goes down the gutter which this one did so easily.