News OF The World? Or FOR the World?

Lets get it straight. We all love reading really good juicy stories. Be it Sarkozy , Berlusconi or Shane Warne. Even princess Diana.  So why was it that when a certain Hugh Grant came out with his 'bugging the bugger' one felt incredibly moved? That when he expressed his concerns all nodded in agreement?
I suppose the immediate answer would be " he is Hugh Grant after all. Mr Notting Hill! He can't be wrong." But when Roy Greenslade's column hit 'The Guardian' questioning the professionalism of Britian's loved one, concluding that " nothing sells like celebrity " we were yet again moved. Especially since it came from 'The Guardian' which played a huge role in bringing the story of Rupert Murdoch and 'NOW' into limelight.
How do we draw a line between constructive journalist investigation and privacy intrusion? Can media abide by the law and bring out these news?

As Indians we have always kept the lives of our celebrities as discreet as possible. From former prime ministers to cricket team captains things haven't been exactly 'saintly'. But when the 'Open' magazine exposed  transcripts of conversations between two iconic journalists and Niira Radia, an age old belief was shattered. Indian media is not as clean as it seems. As if to underline this very fact , Rajdeep Sardesai was spotted admitting " Murdochs were more than inspirational to many of us in India" just after the 'Hacking Story' hit the world by storm.
So how good and reliable is our media?
Deep water horizon (BP) oil spill. Common wealth scam. 2G. Cash for Vote. What all these show is how influential media is in our day to day lives. When Tony Hayward , then CEO of BP, dismissed the spill as "tiny compared to the size of the ocean" it was the media which pressurized and ultimately forced even the likes of President Obama to proclaim "He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements." The Media is more often right unless its focus is on page 3 material where mistakes are seen as a necessity. And to get to the news they might require ‘journalistic process’ as Barkha Dutt would call it. As much as I would have liked to question the methodology and ethics involved I somehow saw the point she was trying to convey. Getting dirty news just ain't easy. Sometimes we had to play dirty too.
That was until the Murdochs came into the picture. Creating news was quite different from covering it. The world was suddenly apprehensive. How safe are we? ' Thank Heavens I'm not a celebrity,' I thought as I lay in my bed one night wooing the Sleep.
The next day morning the first thing I read was a completely misconstrued version of an event that had happened at my college hostel. A bunch of my batchmates, who ironically was at the police station helping a friend who had had a motor accident at the time, were accused of having tried to kill the hostel warden along with other serious charges. The story went on to describe the warden as an honourable man when the truth was at the opposite pole. I've waited  for more than a month now expecting Manorama to come with an apology but nothing remotely close has come up.
Infact that was followed by articles claiming CUSAT to be unsafe. Then they came up with an outrageous column claiming MG university syllabus to be better than Cochin University, especially for placements. And then a farcical and incredibly biased piece on how everyone at a certain self-financing college were getting placed in companies. Troubled by what was going around I did make some inquires only to be told " Manorama has been doing this to us since the college's inception."
When communist leader and Member of Parliament Mr. P.Rajeev claimed, at a CITU conference, Manorama to be "writing for Oommen Chandy" , I was surprised by how almost everyone shared the same views as I did. Even more surprisingly though, nobody actually cared. I do not want to politicize the whole issue. What Manorama does Deshabimani and Kairali TV does better. What bothers me is how media has managed to loose all its credibility. Chances are that if I were to send a text to a news channel claiming to have seen Osama it will get published as headlines before actual research is done on the matter.
Is news these days simply a subset of sensationalism? The truth is news has always been so. If it didn't matter to us it wouldn't exactly be news. But the difference between a 30 minutes news twenty years ago in the DD channel to the non stop 24x7 news is what has led to the degrading standards. The difference being NOTHING. The media has to somehow ensure that the audience is engaged and this has led to more and more sensationalism  ultimately leading to 'News Of The World' being produced rather than being reported.
Media holds a great deal of power and therefore it should neither be a tool for a powerful organization to pull its string NOR should it be the independent dictator that plays with lives in search of extravagance.
Be it what may, as long as its people like Arnab Goswami, whose sole purpose on Earth is to interrupt people before they make their point, running the show, the future does not look good.