I am in total agreement with that observation on all media. I rarely see television and my main exposure to media is the newspapers.
A news item shared on WhatsApp by a fellow 6 on 1 Friday blogger Padmum, gave me the idea for this week’s topic.
This story as it comes during the time when our state government has banned distribution of printed news papers by hand during the lockdown in our city, almost made me cry. I am addicted to a dose of five newspapers and the seven crossword puzzles that they contain every day for my forenoon occupation and only I know how I have been managing without them since the lockdown. And, in all fairness my despair is more for the loss of the crossword puzzles than the news in those papers.
Unlike the West, where the print media is losing ground to Television and internet, in India, it is flourishing or should I say was flourishing thanks to a very news hungry populace deeply involved in our politics and sports. Unfortunately however, while the headlines may contain the news, most content is opinion and the op-ed pages just reflect the philosophy of the news paper, and for the English press in India, it is left wing and anti just about everything.
One therefore tries to see what the foreign press has to say and sadly, they are no better. Here is a classic example of what a leading news paper from the land of two of my fellow bloggers here reports and why we are not particularly enamoured with them either.
The Militant Monk shown in the clip is Yogi Adityanath, the democratically elected Chief Minister of our largest state with a population ~25 million. He is an ascetic forced into politics thanks to years of misrule in his state of residence and very highly thought of by his constituency. Contrast that with Baghdadi about whom I hardly need to explain.
The Washington Post is hardly alone and if I start to list the other news papers, my readers will get bored and leave the rest of the post unread. I am sure that they know exactly what I mean.
This is my take on this week’s Friday 6 On 1 blog post topic. The other five bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Sanjana, Padmum, Raju, Shackman and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Padmum. Please do go over to their respective blogs to see what they have to say on the topic. Thank you.
News papers these days do not bring news of what is happening in our country but they thrust their philosophy be it pro Government or anti government and hence not worth getting but for their time passing features like crosswords, Suodoku. Man relax and don’t think of anything be it good or bad
I am delighted and flattered to see you comment on my blog post KNS. Thank you. From your comments it is indeed obvious that we are on the same page as far as content in today’s papers is concerned.
Print media – particularly the Post and he NY Times have been given a huge jolt in readership thanks to our duly elected liar in chief and his all consuming hatred of those newspapers. Print media here is one of the banes of 45s existence.Nearly every paper here leans left or right so to get a clear view of an issue it must be multi0sourced,
Multisouring is all very well Shackman but, who has got the time?
We stopped subscribing to print newspapers long ago. They just didn’t meet our interests.
Our local paper, The Courier, got thinner and thinner over the years even before the recent rise in online content and decline in print media. It had very little content that was relevant to us. I think it has been 20 years since we subscribed.
In an interesting development, an Arkansas paper that covers the whole state, the Democrat-Gazette, has gone to digital only, providing free iPads to those subscribers who want them as long as they remain subscribed. I can only imagine loyal non-tech-savvy elder readers first trying to use a tablet when they were used to reading the print paper over breakfast.
Now that both “papers” are online, they seem to have more content that interests me. I don’t know how they lean politically as that doesn’t seem to be apparent in the material I read from them which tends to be related to more local or state-wide topics.
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The same applies to our local language papers Mike. The content there is more interesting and relevant to the residents of the state concerned.
Print has gone way off the cliff here. And opinion pieces are more on offer rather than good well researched journalism. There are no longer the funds for it with advertising on the decline and governments certainly aren’t going to fund those papers that are making them accountable. All foretold in 1984.
Daily, I play 12 games (with 5 people) of scrabble online which handles my former crossword puzzle addiction quite well. Our games have been continuous for about 10 years now. We are all similar in ability which is high. Years of crossword puzzles serve me well. 🙂
XO
WWW
Ah, Scrabble. Perhaps I should now investigate online Scrabble and Bridge too. Fortunately, as I write this on June 1, 2020, our dailies have reappeared as easing of restrictions has started and so I had a grand morning solving five crossword puzzles!
Wisewebwoman, I agree, it is 1984 all over again. Confusing times, to be sure.
Print media like other media have their own undeclared business agenda. Their stance is dictated by their strategy for profitability. News being just a record facts is common to all news gatherers. Hence they try to attract readership by promoting their own views disguised as news with little regard for facts. (Your WP example proves this point.)Fortunately or unfortunately their future is bleak thanks to technology. Only the older generation still needs the print media. For both, the days are numbered.
The Jains of the Times group made it very clear some years ago that they were in business to make money and their purpose was advertisement revenue driven.
I agree, it would be sad if print media vanish completely in favour of online news. I find it much easier to thumb my way through a printed newspaper than the constant scrolling up and down and clicking new pages that online reading requires. Not to mention the constant pop-ups inviting me to subscribe to something or buy something or accept cookies.
But of course the real problem is not the decline of the printed media but the decline of serious investigative reporting, squeezed out by tight budgets and the public obsession with celebrities and scurrilous gossip.
Nothing quite like reading the morning dailies while having one’s tea and / or breakfast. I enjoy the experience.
For Crossword Puzzle you should move to mobile app or online Crossword puzzles.
I stopped reading newspapers just because of this. So much of bias… On Twitter some people call them #Presstitutes no prizes for guessing what combination have birth to the coined word
I am reducing my usage of my mobile set and am uncomfortable with doing things on the computer other than, blog, read blogs and catch up with the daily mail. I am glad that you do not waste time on reading the newspapers. You have better things to do unlike retired old codgers like me.