Aamir Khan starts off by saying he’s an average newspaper reader. ‘‘I like to read sports news.’’ But it is Page 1 that bothers him most. ‘‘Front pages these days have as the main photograph Indian cricketers holidaying in Goa.’’ There was a time, Khan says, when even if cricketers holidaying did merit news desks’ attention, the photo would have been on the sports page.

‘‘What the front page reports has changed drastically in a lot of newspapers. Frivolous, sensational news gets prominence over socially relevant news. Government policies that can change our lives are not getting that much prominence.’’ This, Khan argues, makes readers like him, who depend on newspapers, poorly informed about what is ‘‘important’’.

So, whose fault is it? Khan seems pretty sure where to look: 24x7, private television news. ‘‘Absurd’’ and ‘‘sensational’’ are the two adjectives he uses to describe television news that, he says, is driven by increasing viewership via settling for the lowest common denominator in public taste. And how do they (TV news channels) report news, Khan asks. ‘‘By creating excitement when there’s no such thing...What the media reports has changed, how it reports has changed as well.’’

What would he do though were he to set up a TV news channel or a newspaper? How would he sustain it? How would he buck what he says is the trend? ‘‘I would first of all not take any ads,’’ Khan says, adding he is perhaps sounding too ‘‘idealistic’’. ‘‘But I would only report news and not take any ads.’’

... contd.