The title of this post is a very disappointing attempt at expanding the acronym NEWS but then I guess it is better than what is being delivered to us in the name of NEWS. As me and a lot many have seen it from their very own eyes, heard it using their very own ears, news items like "Commisioner Sahab ka kutta khoya/mila" or the "Chajje pe billo rani", we very well understand and often ridicule the horrendous use of a medium (TV Channels) to showcase ridicule! Maybe, it makes commercial sense, maybe a large set of people love such items for the entertainment quotient or anything else, but weren't you supposed to be a NEWS Channel, a channel that I assumed will give in important happenings around the world or was it that I made baseless assumptions.
Anyhow, as if the 'Vishesh's and the 'Breaking News's and more such unintentional humor wasn't enough we enter another era. As we all very well know the virus like spreading infection of joining Twitter, especially amongst the celebrities and well-known public figures. No, I have no qualms against this, absolutely not and I myself follow quite a few of them including Shahrukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Pritish Nandy, Gul Panag, Shashi Tharoor, Barkha Dutt, Riteish Deshmukh and some more. Now they are here for whatever reasons, its there business, I can choose to follow them or not.
Now a point here. Undoubtedly the small list of the much larger pool I gave above have huge fan following, love, respect from people on or not on Twitter. Of them, those who actually are on Twitter are likely to follow them so they are expected to have a large following. And as it was, it perhaps is a very big thing (a dream come true for many of us) if a celeb actually replies you and addresses you with your twitter alias in his tweet. It was big even for someone like Barkha Dutt who re tweeted (forwarded) someone else's tweet mentioning that she was the first one whom Shah Rukh Khan himself replied on twitter.
It is Barkha Dutt's personal account, she felt like and she did it. Fair Enough. But there are news channels on Twitter as well including CNN IBN, which I duly respect and liked. A recent update on CNN IBN has the headline "SRK tweets in support of 'unpaid' hockey player".
Now this is just too much, these channels are now following whatever celebrities write on twitter and are making news items out of them. There just doesn't exist any other news or what? Is it the most interesting and most important thing. An opinion by SRK, though well respected, but should it become a NEWS ITEM? And its not for the first time, I remember news items about celebrities joining Twitter, one update after the other.
Even if I try to justify the news story on Shashi Tharoor's 'cattle-class' tweet or the Chetan Bhagat's FPS-3Idiots opinions, which in itself was lame, I don't think I can justify this SRK one. How can you just make news stories out of ANYTHING, EVERYTHING or rather NOTHING!
I just don't understand where we are heading. As if the Kutta Billi stories weren't enough that now a less than 140 character tweet from a celebrity is molded into a full fledged news story. Ridiculous.
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