Last night I sat down to watch CNN News 18’s hard news show, Epicentre @ 7. A show which has opening credits with images of droughts, starving people, the military, ammunition, journalists – and the words, “We go where the news is. Between the fault lines. Beyond the headlines. Epicentre @ 7” in a voiceover and written on screen to drive home the point. What would they discuss? The ban on condom ads? The murder of Paresh Mesta? The aftermath of Cyclone Ochki?

How utterly blah.

What they discussed instead was what is definitely symptomatic of the fault lines beneath the bedrock of journalism. The – wait for it – Virushka wedding. No harder news than this after all. To be precise, the hour-long programme was on @VirushkakiShaadhi and “The Full Virushka Wedding Video”. To be very clear, this is the 7 pm hard news bulletin. Not the entertainment news programme.

Now if you don’t follow cricket or Bollywood, you would not be incorrect in thinking that Virushka is a plague or skin disease, much like Psoriasis. It is actually the name given to the newly married Indian cricket captain, Virat Kohli and Bollywood actor, Anushka Sharma. It is sweet that a cricketer decided not to follow the traditional path of marrying a “good” girl and wallflower and actually married an actress, and that a superstar actress didn’t wait till she was at the end of her career (which in Bollywood is by the time they turn 30) and married the first rich businessman she found. But is it hard news? One would think not. But then, one wouldn’t be the editor of a news channel if one held such ridiculously myopic views on what makes for news.

As a result, from Monday, there’ve been investigative stories on the Virat-Anushka impending nuptials. Finally, Monday night and Tuesday climaxed in multitudinous news reports and news bulletins on this great news event.

While Epicentre @ 7 got us all the news from “the mehendi to the shadi to the vidai” and “the stuff fairytales are made of”, they were just one of many.  Epicentre told us “that over the next one hour they were taking us through the entire wedding ceremony, getting you never seen before pictures of the wedding” and so on. The programme began with the words, “warning, the following story is not for the emotional or those with weak hearts or those who are single”. Sanjay Suri, the reporter on site narrated with great pathos in his voice, how “we waved out to them, but they just went past”, making my single heart break a little. Shreya Dhoundiyal, senior editor, then proceeded to question Suri. This was on-location reportage which would make seasoned embedded journalists envious.

At the same time on News X, deputy executive editor Latha Srinivasan was interviewing a woman who had grown up with Anushka. The same woman and Latha were simultaneously being interviewed by an unnamed reporter from the NewsX HD Live studio, while the ticker read – “#Virushka NAIL THEIR PRIVACY”? What does this question mean? No one knows. Or cares, I imagine.

But CNN News 18 and News X were actually late to the party. Because the day before, the other news channels had shown us how not to practice journalism. Since no channel had managed to get a hold of either Sharma and Kohli, channels like India Today TV claimed that they had an “exclusive” supposedly with cricket commentator, Gaurav Kapur. Sadly, Kapur ruined it for the channel when he claimed that he’d never spoken with them. It’s really such a bummer when people let facts get in the way of a good story.

On the other side, NDTV was running with a news story like no other. It was on the amount of “likes” pictures from the wedding had got. I kid you not.

I don’t know about the picture heading for a record, but NDTV was definitely headed for a record for one of the lamest moves in the name of journalism. But they still had tough competition from Aaj Tak who actually “broke” the news at 7.30 am on a show titled, “Viraat Dulhania Le Jayenge”.

They then had another bulletin at 7.30 pm congratulating themselves for breaking the news.

BBC Hindi in the meantime, asked its readers if they wanted to give Virat and Anushka tips on how to have a happy marriage!

What was heartwarming to see was that contrary to popular belief, broadcast news is swimming in money, going by the fact that all these channels had sent reporters to Tuscany to report on this international development. Sadly, we don’t see such dedication when bombs burst in foreign locations. But reporting on a bomb blast is so déclassé in comparison to standing outside a Tuscan castle.

Now don’t get me wrong. I understand and actually feel that this is national news in a sense. It is the cricket captain marrying a very successful Bollywood actress. It is both of them beating the trend of marrying “right”. But when “news” like this has an entire programme or bulletin devoted to it, where “senior editors” and on-location reporters seriously discuss and analyse the wedding video and the Sabyasachi outfits, it’s cause for worry. The state of journalism is already in such shambles, that such shoddy gatekeeping makes one wonder whether there is any difference between a tabloid and a serious news outlet.

To put things in perspective, on the same day that Kohli and Sharma got married, the anointment of our very own Peter Pan, Rahul Gandhi, took place. Current prime minister Narendra Modi kept hurling slurs at former PM Manmohan Singh, then Modi introduced India to the wonder of a rented seaplane. But all these events paled in comparison to the phenomenon which sounds a little like the name of a virulent plague. Which now that I think of it, may have been a blessing in disguise.

It’s bad enough that current affairs are farcical in themselves without the media wanting to make a joke out of what passes as serious journalism. Is it really so much to ask that church and state remain separate and entertainment news be relegated to entertainment programmes and current affairs to hard news programmes? The coverage does explain why Virat and Anushka fled the continent to get married. But if they hadn’t, how would we have got on location news reports on how beautiful Italy is? The things we learn from hard news nowadays –  wedding video analysis techniques and the ability to make news out of nothing at all.

Long live journalism, journalism is dead!