The earthquake and the tsunami in Japan have thrown up heart retching images and videos of folks caught in the disaster suffering, loosing property, life and hope.
The coverage of the disaster re-enforced two things;
1. Traditional news media is dead. The traditional field reporters are now completely replaced by the common men and women who are the real eyes and ears. In fact almost all the feed that runs on networks like CNN and BBC is from the social networks. And the newsprint – they are really of no use – they are just a dying habit.
2. Commercial interests seems to have taken over the new media as much as the old media owners. It is an unfortunate though everyday practice to have the TV coverage of a disaster like the above interrupted by TVCs. I always found the positioning of these TVCs strange from a “brand positioning” perspective (I have just seen someone’s home being washed away, now let me view a shampoo TVC). While I had come to expect this from the traditional media vehicles, I am very surprised that the new media owners, who otherwise follow all the virtues of social media, are unfortunately following the same strategy.
High on that list is Youtube (read Google) CBS Channel, which is putting up adverts at the start of all uploaded videos – making the viewing experience quite pathetic.
And the viewer reaction has to be noted and of course respected. Following were some of the reactions and you would notice that the highest rated comments are NEGATIVE;
