I was traveling along Trinity Church Road the other day near Trinity junction. I could not help noticing a bold big advert hoarding. The words read : IF I WANTED SLEAZE, I’D GO ONLINE and it was from Indian Express the well known newspaper in Bengaluru. From a long time, the Times Of India and the Bangalore Mirror, both from the Times Group, have metamorphed from being a good newspaper to read into a rather authoritative paper to the public, government and other organizations too. Not only that, they have slowly expanded the notion of page 3 partying articles to fill their entire newspaper with only news about gay marriages, or teaching young students about condom usage, or lots and lots of pictures of nude actors without any relevance to the article being printed about them. Worse still is the fact that they have begun to be a paper which has started to talk nonsense about every prominent personality and using words such as “public would like to know this”, “public wants answers”, etc, dragging readers and writers like us into the equation.
Though I do want to state here that IE (Indian Express) is not exactly the best newspaper around in town as of now, atleast they have made clear their stand on no nuisance articles only to be printed. Another paper I am getting addicted to of late is Deccan Chronicle, which seems to be the new avatar of what Deccan Herald should have been. I however have noticed that Asian Age is either dead w.r.t competition or just sulked away out of the limelight. The best paper in my opinion today is the Deccan Chronicle. Its even mix of articles and a promise of the whole monthly supply (minus the sleaze) for just Rs.67 makes it worthwhile to read.
The Advert though means more than it reads. It does point to the World Wide Web if people are interested to browse porn. This gesture though perhaps is wrong, but then just them writing does not mean you would be a wrong person unless you are a pervert yourself! I would have written about the debate on whether online sleaze is well worth it or not, but different people have different views. While some think its audacious to view something like that anywhere (either on TV or online), others who are into that industry might think of it as adult entertainment which makes them revenues. It is worth to note that in Western countries, adult entertainment has many dimensions, and its not just about inflicting people with sleazy content alone – its also about revenues for the right set of viewers/listeners and users.
Technorati : bad articles, bangalore, bengaluru, blog, city life, express, indian, newspaper, obscene, parties, sleaze, times of india
