Blasting the trend of ‘tabloidisation’ of Indian news channels, NDTV co-founder Dr Prannoy Roy has said that the credibility of TV news channels is at stake and the space for serious news reporting is becoming ‘dangerously narrow’. Roy was speaking at the Mumbai Press Club RedInk Awards for Excellence in Indian Journalism 2015, where he received the RedInk Award for Lifetime Achievement. “The ‘ghastly tsunami’ of tabloid journalism will spell death knell for the electronic medium,” Roy warned. “In most developed markets, the spectrum of news networks varied at one end from the serious and credible like the New York Times and CNN to the tabloid New York Post and Fox News,” he said. These varied formats had their own followers, but in India, the trend was about to turn everything into a sensational, ‘tabloid’ offering, giving no choice to the viewer or reader, he added. He further cited the example of a female news anchor of a Hindi channel who had announced, ‘break ke baad, rape story’. According to Roy, advertisers are equally to blame for encouraging sensationalism. Advertising planners must build an element of ‘quality-with-credibility’ in their spends, he said.

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