How far is far away?

Yesterday night at around 11.30 pm I saw breaking news in Sun news, which said Srilanka’s capital, has a black out because of LTTE bombs on a military base near Colombo and also a bomb in Colombo. I kept seeing other channels and only Makkal TV joined Sun to announce the news. After about an hour breaking news surfaced in CNN-IBN too. NDTV and Timesnow were possibly fast asleep. After around 1.45 am even Sun News stopped displaying the news. Today morning at around eight am I saw detailed news in Sun News and also in Times now. I did not have time to see the details in CNN-IBN but they too were showing it in their scrolls. But surprisingly NDTV was still in dark or probably I missed it in a hurry. But I do see the news in their website now. The incident occurred at 11.oo PM, yesterday in Colombo and mannar army base.

On October 23rd, both NDTV and CNN-IBN were breaking news in the morning, which was alive in their scrolls for more than thirty minutes, which said ‘Heavy Rains in Chennai- schools and colleges closed’. Believe me there was not a drop of rain in most parts of Chennai the whole day. But Schools and colleges were shut because of a government order released the previous night, anticipating heavy rains as per Met advise. see weather history of Chennai on that day

With in next few weeks, Indian tricolor flag is expected to fly in the Moon, which is on an average about 385,000 km away from India. ISRO, India and because of them the world at large will know more about the moon and it should be a proud moment for all of us.

The above three are three different news with no connections at all but prompts us to ask the question How far is far away?

Srilanka is just 24 kms away from India and it takes a night for NDTV and Timesnow to get the news of an air attack there. Even CNN-IBN took more than two hours to flash the news. Why is our news gathering so slow? And all channels stopped relaying this news later in the night and is it because of some Intelligence advise. I always believe that any News about any terror activity should get less mileage in news because it is this mileage they get by news, which is the main cause for their act. But this could not have been in the minds of our newsmen as their past clearly shows that they cherish such moments. So it is nothing but failure in getting the news as and when. It also makes us ask whether do we have any mechanism to know what is happening there?

Now let us discuss the Rains in Chennai. Chennai is part of India and Surely NDTV and CNN-IBN have a fleet of staff stationed here. In spite of this how could they break such false news and even now do not realize they made a mistake? The most possible explanation is they acted on a news agency report, which must have read schools and colleges closed in Tamilnadu anticipating heavy showers. Again why is the news we get not reliable? The recent history shows that on most of the days when the government here announces holidays for schools and colleges the clouds shy away in Chennai. They had kept the schools closed on Tuesday also and even that day there was scant rains in Chennai. There are scores of websites like the one to which we have given a link in one of our previous paragraph which predict weather in India much better than our MET office. Surely the offices of these sites must be miles away from India. Why is that India which has capability of reaching Moon still not able to have a more reliable weather forecasting mechanism? I remember seeing a program in Makkal TV on Thursday night when one news commentator asked the same question and also said that ‘In London they give forecasts like between 2- 4 pm there will be 10 cms of rain and normally they never go wrong except that the cms may be 1 instead of 10’

It is evident that what we get as news is Quantity and mostly similar Quantity with no or very less emphasis on its Quality. Any thing which happens is a happening and only “Interesting’ Happenings’ become news for us. And what is ‘Interesting Happening’ is decided by a small coterie of media men who some how are in unison on deciding it even while competing.

With in the next few weeks Moon may become more familiar to us but when will we get familiar with the ‘real’ happenings in Srilanka? And can we?