In present-day India, the viewerships of the categories of news are not according to their effects and impacts on the lives of the people but by what people, in general, prefer to view. This also has more to do with the behavior of a larger chunk of the population searching for news in online platforms.

Most of the people will not stress themselves to go the extra length in the mobile phone or laptop-based search to find such news which matters. They will just open and read what comes in their google or bing news feed. People are generally oblivious to what goes on behind the scene in news suggestions on their smartphones. Most are unaware that there are numerous AI algorithms that guide the news flow into the phones of the people based on their segmentation- geographic, political, religious and others. It will be hard for most to grasp that data regarding the tastes, preferences, and whatever people type in their phones are being generated on a per-second basis and that forms a source of funneling of information of all kinds. People often termed in Hindi as halwa humam jantaa more often than not follow what best suits their convenience and fragile moral structure without bothering to try to look beyond the obvious.

This is evinced in the way a case of suicide which was supposed to have relegated in the priority of news on the national level has somehow managed to hold on to the national media limelight for a much longer duration. It is primarily because people are mainly interested in issues of subnational importance. A large number of Indians, specifically the largest chunk of vote bank, the middle class do not stress themselves into thinking the complicated issues of gigantic proportions like the scale of the economic failure, the implications of the mismanaged timing and logistics of the lockdown which left millions of migrant workers in penury or the twin balance sheet issues hankering the Indian banks. Hence, the media which was supposed to be the fourth pillar of democracy is functioning like a magic wand at the hands of the regime keeping the large number of gullible people hypnotized with a simple non-issue blown up to the size of a national ethical drama of Bihar vs Bollywood. This is exactly the political utility of having a huge number of such useful idiots (a Leninist description). Though in the sociology parlance, the phrase useful idiots was used in the cold war era to denote the non-communists who may fall for the communist agenda, it rightly describes the category of people who are so enamored with news items which have no larger implications. It may be that, here lies the mantra for success for a regime that is so busy avoiding real issue-based questions. People have happily taken the bait thrown in front of them which will keep them away from real issues as long as possible.

In media rooms of other countries, leaders are grilled and questioned on behalf of the public. In countries like New Zealand, which have responsible leaders like Jacinda Ardern, they are not scared to face the media, especially in current turbulent times. Ardern has always spoken about proper ‘kaam ki baat’, unlike our national leaders who are scared to face the media and only garble ‘man ki baat’ conjuring up a false phantasmagorical image about the dispensation.

Nothing can be more morally shambolic when Rahul Shivshankar in a live TV interview shuts out opinions and statements about the contracting GDP. Discussing real issues scares the souls out of such journos and anchors who have their own vested interests to feed. This is the core idea behind using the media as a propaganda churning machinery. The success of such machinery playing the propaganda lies on two main factors. First is to peddle such a story that would be easily accepted by the target population based on their social history. Second is to repeat the series of false information that reinforce the ideas behind the sold narrative. In World War-II Germany, the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels had stated that the success of propaganda is to be able to make the people believe that they are not being manipulated. Successful propaganda enters public life without anybody noticing it and a large chunk of people accept it as the sole truth. Goebbels had also stated that the target population never ever suspects the propagandist and they truly believe in the peddled half baked truth.

When important news gets sidelined and nonissue news takes the central stage, a phenomenon known as the Bandwagon effect comes into play. This effect describes that the majority of people do things like prefer certain types of work, search and read or listen to certain kinds of news just because the majority of people in their surroundings do so. This kind of public psychology forms another reason for the super success of news channels which shout out the non-issue news in high pitched voices and intonations which can potentially result in a cardiac arrest (pun intended).

Let us now briefly visit a story from the region of Lower Saxony in Germany in the town of Hamelin almost a century prior to the outbreak of the deadliest pandemic- the Black death spread by rats and fleas. It was said that just like in the case of Black Death, rats were a problem in Hamelin, causing diseases. A piper in a colorful dress arrived in the town promising to take the rats away with him. On being promised a handsome pay, he drew out the rats playing his pipe. The darker part of the tale comes after he was denied his payment. As per folklore, he came back and this time he drew away from the children from the town. Some say that the children never returned. So a person arrived promising to provide a solution for their problems and essentially took away their children. What are the learnings from this story? The first learning is from the point of view of the rats. When you follow someone just because others like you are following him,(by virtue of bandwagon effect) the end might not be so pleasant. The second learning is that from the perspective of the citizens of the town of Hamelin. The people of the town perceived themselves as smart when they denied the piper his payment. Their children had to pay for it when they were lured out of the town.  Penalty for someone’s fault might be paid by his/her next generation while falling prey to wrong news and information.