I beg to differ...... Review on ABP News

As I go through the reviews written by many of my friends in MS about STAR News, I beg to differ on some counts.

May be, my views are different because I missed the STAR coverage during Afganisthan (as mentioned by many).

However, as I have seen STAR coverage recently I have following observations..

Selective Coverage

STAR, while covering certain incidents to the depth, manages to MISS similar incidents elsewhere in India. For instance, starvation deaths in Rajasthan & Maharashtra, mass exodus from Madhya Pradesh, Law & order in Bihar & Bengal were inadequately covered.

While petrol pump scam, affecting a few influential pump owners and a large corporate got WIDE coverage, Co-operative banks' scam affecting millions of ORDINARY people in Maharashtra was virtually untouched.

Managed Debates

The debates on STAR, often appear to be MANAGED. The choice of participants is, many times not correct. Of the three parties, neutral party is seldom not neutral and the ability and knowledge of two factions does not match.

Fielding second rung BJP functionary against Kapil Sibal or similar one from congress against Arun Jaitly makes the debates lop sided.

The refrees, who are supposed to be like judges, often express their opinions rather than comment on the relative merits of the arguments.

Interruptions, while the speaker is speaking are seldom controlled by anchors. Rather, it is left to the ability of speaker to interrupt or to prevent interruption. So the more vocal speakers MANAGE to get more time.

News as whole

This does not mean than STAR news is not worth watching. It is the only English news channel based in India and hence, occupies a place. But as mentioned by some others in MS, morning reruns of News is too bad. While other news channels transmit fresh news, STAR keeps us abreast with last evening's news.

I hope STAR improves on these counts and proceeds to make it a complete news channel.