Thursday, May 1, 2008

Power of Media and Indian Premier League:


Indian Premier League (IPL), the greatest T20 cricket extravaganza recently started in India. It has created a hype never seen before, with the two biggest fantasies of Indian population coming together, Cricket and Bollywood.


But sometimes I wonder, the Indian media had a very big role to play for the kind of hype that has been created. There is a parallel league that runs (which started before IPL) called the Indian Cricket League (ICL). There are equally good players, both domestic and foreign, playing in that league. But there is hardly any media attention to it, and most common Indians do not know about it. Its not being recognized by BCCI (the body governing Indian cricket), and this might be a reason for this step-motherly treatment. But not even the winner of the ICL finals getting published in the premier Indian newspapers was a disappointment.


But the IPL created hype even before it got started, with the newspapers and the television news channels flooding their space with IPL news.


The media power also came into light when they made BCCI kneel down and take back the restrictive clauses put down for the media. Indian media has become quite powerful recently with news reaching peoples within seconds and people responding emotionally to what is been published or shown in TV.


Though this media uprising is a good sign, the power has to be used responsibly. May be I can quote the Spider-Man dialogue “with power comes responsibility”. They should be neutral in performing their responsibility.


I am not sure why ICL news was not seen anywhere, not even on a small newspaper column, and IPL is driving full-page reports (and in some case 2 pages). ICL has the equal right for the news space as do IPL.

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