Let us paint a picture. It is 3 am in a modest flat in Mumbai’s Byculla. A mother is clutching her phone, staring at a television screen that promises her “Breaking News: World War III Begins!” with pounding music, CGI missiles and a scrolling ticker predicting the complete annihilation of Tehran. Her son works in Dubai. She cannot reach him. The network is jammed. She is weeping.

This is not journalism. This is arson disguised as reportage. And this is precisely why India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s decision to pull the plug on Television Rating Points for four weeks isn’t just a penalty – it is a public service announcement wrapped in a sedative .

We have reached a point where our news channels have confused West Asia with a film set. Suddenly, every anchor is a retired general, every graphic is a fireball and every development is met with the kind of hyperbolic screech usually reserved for a last-ball IPL finish. “Ailaan-e-jung!” declared one channel, as if they were personally declaring war rather than reporting on it .

Switch from Al Jazeera, where a correspondent soberly discusses geopolitics with a map, to a Hindi news channel where the same story is accompanied by a background score that wouldn’t be out of place in a Baahubali climax. The volume doesn't just go up; it assaults your living room. We aren't reporting the news; we are producing a spectacle.

And why? Because TRPs demand it. Sensationalism sells. Calm doesn't.

But here is the rub: news is not a product. It is a public trust. And when you have millions of Indians living in the Gulf – nine million of them, to be imprecise but close enough – you cannot treat their families’ anxiety as fodder for a ratings war . The ministry’s order rightly points out that this “unwarranted sensationalism” creates panic among those with family in conflict zones . That mother in Byculla doesn’t need to know what an AI-generated image of a bomb looks like; she needs to know her son is safe.

This isn't censorship. This is a cold shower for a patient suffering from delirium. The Programme Code under the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act is clear: no false and suggestive innuendos, no half-truths . But what we witnessed was a conveyor belt of speculation. “Will Iran retaliate?” “Is this the end?” “Will India get involved?” – all asked with the same breathless urgency, with zero on-ground reporting and a revolving door of "experts" whose expertise seemed limited to owning a nice blazer.

International networks like the BBC and CNN have verification units. BBC Verify exists specifically to catch the manipulated images that Indian channels ran without a second thought. One channel even consulted astrologers to see if the Blood Moon affected the war.

We have forgotten the first rule of medicine: first, do no harm.

By hitting the pause button on TRPs, the Indian government has essentially told the newsrooms: you are not entertainment. Start behaving like it. The four-week window is a detox period. It is a chance for editors to remember that their primary job isn't to beat the competition, but to inform the citizenry without giving them a heart attack.

Yes, advertising revenue will dip. Yes, the channel heads will cry foul. But let’s be honest – when you strip away the music, the blood-red banners, and the fake urgency, what’s left? Usually, just a person reading a wire copy.

The ministry isn’t killing the messenger. It is simply telling the messenger to stop screaming in the ear of a man who is already hard of hearing from the trauma.

In the end, if you cannot report a war without turning it into a video game, you don’t deserve to know how many people are watching you do it. You deserve silence. And for the next four weeks, that’s exactly what the ratings agency will give you .

Let us use this time to remember that behind every breaking news banner is a real person, with real fear, looking for real information. Not a soundtrack.

Bikram Vohra is a columnist and media consultant in Dubai.