A whopping 76 per cent respondents of the IANS-CVoter Media Consumption Tracker found both categories of programming – news channels and soap operas prone to sensationalising and scandalising.
A total of 76.6 per cent respondents said that “TV serials and TV news both sensationalise and scandalise everything”. Though 20 per cent still disagreed, the majority view prevailed across region, and religion.
While 77.9 per cent of the male respondents agreed with the statement, 75.2 per cent female respondents supported it.
Across age groups, all seem to agree to it with the lowest support being 75 per cent. Across all educational background, there was growing unanimity about it, while with rising education levels, the degree of agreement rises.
It was the same case with income levels – while all strongly agree that both TV mediums sensationalize but the intensity of agreement rises with income level – 74.5 per cent from the lower income group, 77.7 per cent from the middle income group and 84.8 per cent from the higher income group agreeing that sensationalisation is a problem.
Among religious levels, Christians agree the most (90.6 per cent), while the lowest level of agreement was among Muslims, but was still 71.1 per cent.
Across regions, the maximum support was from respondents from the North East (93.1 per cent), while only 71 per cent from south India seem to agree. Respondents from both urban and rural India agreed a little above 76 per cent to the issue, while in Delhi-NCR, 81 per cent of the respondents agreed that both TV serials and TV news sensationalise.
The sample size of the survey, conducted in the last week of September and first week of October across India covering all districts in all states and representing the demographic profile according to latest census figures, was 5,000 plus. The MoE (margin of error) is +/- 3 per cent at the national level and +/- 5 per cent at regional levels.