Thanks and No, Thanks Media

"Julia Roberts is spotted in a village in Haryana" was the hot news in a national TV news channel today. I was able to quickly recollect a couple of other FlashNews of the past - "Sanjay Dutt goes to VaishnoDevi, his girlfriend accompanies him" and "Aishwarya Rai falls ill"; and then hot debates on "Is the T20 victory bigger than the 1983 world cup victory" and "Is Sharukh a bigger star than Amitabh". The funniest part of these debates is the SMS question. I'm sure this will be the SMS question on some channel tomorrow - "Do you think India can make it to the semis in the Champions Trophy?"

I attended a talk by the CEO of redbus.in who was grateful to the media which made the company popular in matter of just a few weeks. He felt that the biggest reason for that is the huge number of news channels who need "some" news. Yes, that way the news channels are helping even in their "irrationale". But the rest of the times, they waste so much of the viewer's time that I personally feel could be dealt better.

I'm sorry, I made the media unethical last week and I'm making it irrational this week, but I've a huge respect for the media. I owe a big chunk of what I know today to the media and the country owes a special thanks to the media for its efforts to bring injustice and malpractice to the floor apart from doing its routine job of spreading the news wonderfully well. The very reason for me to still continue watching these channels is the quality of information discoursed.

But I feel a little more thought away from capitalistic ideologies can shape the country and its people in a big positive way. May be the media is already doing it, perhaps people look to media mostly for entertainment or I might just be watching at the wrong time. But if Jack Welsh says "shareholder value is the dumbest idea in this world", I think it's time for us to think more about stakeholders than just about shareholders.