NIFT UG 2010 Question Paper with solutions

  This is the era of information explosion in a world that has shrunk to drawing room proportions. In an era of information explosion, everything is as close as you want it to be. The communication revolution has made its effect on the world of sports too. Today the fax machines and computers have made it that if Stefan Edberg suffers a shock at Wimbledon at 1.30 a.m. IST, the news can comfortably make the morning papers in New Delhi. Today the Media, specially TV and Press attention on sports persons has turned the best of them into national heroes international celebrities. There were days when top players walked out of tournament sites to neighbourhood markets for a window shopping after matches or events. Today Ramesh Krishnans, Kapil Dev and Ashwini Nachappas cannot afford such a privilege. The would be mobbed at every turn, whether it is New Delhi, or Lords of Beijing. Inevitably, the information boom triggered by the media obsession with sports persons has been both a blessing and a curse for the superstars of sport. While, on the one hand, the media focus has made them more marketable, and therefore considerably richer with all the endorsements and the lucrative contracts than they would have been otherwise, the constant glare has also put enormous pressures on the best of them. Tennis fan of the 50's or 60's would hardly know the name of Rod Laver’s wife. Now any 12 of 13 years old seems to be able to tell you the name of Stefan Edberg’s girlfriend. This is just one example. There are hundreds of others in the world of sports. In such cases, where the information, if you can call it that has nothing to do with a player’s game or even the player can take the media shelter behind the public’s right to know? Is that right absolute? If one’s right to swing his arms ends where the other’s nose begins, then doesn’t the right of the media to inform and that of the public to be informed and where the sportsperson’s private life begins? Is not there a line between journalisitc licence and licentious journalism in the sports columns? There is, of course, no attempt at pompous sermonising here but merely an effort to see if there is a sense of awareness in a section of the sports press of the responsibilities that go with inalienable freedom to inform.