News and current affairs broadcasting on television can hardly be said to have covered itself with glory, although it has been some two decades since private channels made their entry. While production values have been less than ordinary in most cases, it is the content purveyed which often fails to clear the mark of professionalism. Sensational, insignificant and, at times, uncorroborated datum is known to be paraded as news or information. Regrettably, there are occasions when it is hard to tell the difference between some established news channels and those that flaunt their yellow journalism. This was, for instance, the case with the reporting on the Aarushi murder. Both shocked the country — the brutal and senseless killing of a 14-year-old girl and the breathless news reports on television with an eye for little more than lasciviousness. Sensing an opportunity, the government hinted at measures to restrict content. Fortunately, it didn’t go that far. In a democracy, it will be hard to stomach any intervention by government in the matter of regulation of media content.

Now the News Broadcasters Association — which represents 30 channels run by 14 broadcasters — has on its own come forward to create a News Broadcasting Standards (Disputes Redressal) Authority for the purposes of self-regulation. Ungainly as the name sounds, this is a welcome step. It speaks of a sense of responsibility to the viewers on the part of the broadcasters. It is commonly thought that television channels show a propensity to be sensationalist in a competition for eyeballs. With ad-spends shooting up since the liberalisation of the economy and globalisation, leading media players — not just in television — have courted the dramatic, the lurid, and the loud with a view to grabbing readers and viewers. But this appears to be a jaded trick. There are signs of the audience being put off. Many who were in the forefront of the trend now give the impression of mixing the sensible old norms of good journalism with only a dash of the sensational. The establishing of the NBSA last Thursday appears to be a step in the same broad direction. TV broadcasters just need to remember that it might be best for them to tone down a shade in order to remain credible. Given the visual nature of their medium, the sensational often appears to be a purposeful distortion to attract attention.