Lack of depth in media 'due to fear of competition'

Abu Dhabi: The media is ignoring too many important stories and everyone is rushing to do the unimportant stuff, said an expert on Friday on the second day of the Indo-Arab fest.

Calling it the 'Press Club Syndrome', Shashi Kumar, Chairman of the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai, India, said the agenda of the news media has been sabotaged by the internet.

"The media goes after the unimportant news because they are afraid of the competition," he said. "When the news media pushes the news set by its own agenda then people tend to get their news off the internet."

He was speaking at a media seminar at the National Theatre as part of the Indo Arab Cultural Festival held by the Kerala Social Centre.

He said newspapers are under threat in the West and the news today lacks depth because of the shift in focus from 'depth' to 'breadth'.

"Such lack of depth influences even politicians and they do not touch deep subjects in debates deliberately as they are afraid of being ignored or go unnoticed."

He said bloggers and citizen journalists have democratised the news media.

"Information on the ground realities in Iraq is given by bloggers. Western journalists cannot move out of their hotels because of the fear of abduction. The first pictures or videos of a major [incident] like the tsunami was not taken by news photographers but amateurs, citizen journalists, on their mobile phones."

Newspapers are therefore giving more importance to the aesthetic factor, he said. K.B. Murali, president of Kerala Social Centre, also addressed the gathering.