By Ranjona Banerji
Last night (Thursday) on English television news, between 7.30 and 9 pm, was all fun and games as usual. That is, both Times Now and India Today TV had exclusive sting operations on how MLAs can be bought and sold, with a focus on Karnataka. It’s deeply embarrassing when two news channels have done “exposes†on the same subject and when they are placed next to each other by the cable operator or satellite dish service. O dear.
But perhaps what is more interesting is what was not covered in this time frame by most channels – the allegations of a corrupt land deal against senior BJP leader from Maharashtra, Eknath Khadse and the verdict in the Gulbarg Society case. This was one of the more vicious attacks during the Gujarat riots of 2002, when 69 people were killed by rampaging mobs.
Barring Karan Thapar on India Today, who hosted a sharp and no-holds-barred discussion on Khadse, what did we have?
There was lawyer Indira Jaising and the BJP’s GVL Narasimha Rao – who has evidently been told by someone he should smile more – on Barkha Dutt’s show, discussing how Jaising’s NGO has had its licence cancelled.
Times Now was very angry about corruption in politics over its exclusive but shared with India Today expose on the MLA market. Ads scrolling at the bottom of the screen promised us that Arnab Goswami was going to be even angrier. Rajdeep Sardesai appeared on screen with sombre gravitas – unlike Times Now’s shrill invective – to discuss political corruption and greedy MLAs.
CNN-News18 was on another tangent with people complaining about how they haven’t got their flats on time. A most welcome show of helpfulness perhaps better suited to the daytime. NewsX had star anchor Rahul Shivshankar screaming at some panellist to take a stand – it looked so absurd that I did not bother to wait to find what he was supposed to take a stand on. Probably never to appear on NewsX again.
CNN-News18 did however take on Khadse and Gulbarg in its 9 pm show.
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As usual though, some TV journalists were obsessed with allegations about Khadse’s purported calls to gangster Dawood Ibrahim rather than the political outfall of his land deals – which are likely to be extremely significant for Maharashtra.
It is intriguing though that while corruption consumes our self-righteous TV colleagues they stop suddenly when it comes to going further. They have some pet subjects. Like MLAs and horse-trading. But accusations of financial irregularities by Maharashtra minister Pankaja Munde are easily forgotten. It was The Indian Express and my former colleague Sandeep Asher who investigated Khadse’s land deal, so once again, hard work requires more than waving a few papers in viewers’ faces and showing us grainy videos with garbled voices.
I am not drawing the obvious inference of fear of government anger but…
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Meanwhile I’m starting to feel really sorry for government spokespersons. How long can they keep saying what amounts to: “I know nothing but I am sure the government/party will do somethingâ€. Also interesting is the trend of having a “BJP supporter/Modi fan†as part of a television panel. (Do they do this with other parties?) Either these supporters know more than the government spokesperson also on the panel or they are there as ballast to prove that no one knows anything.