By Ranjona Banerji
This is probably just me, but a time seems to be approaching when TV journalists in India will need to “reset†their idea of what constitutes “newsâ€. Right now, everything is seen as a pro-wrestling match. The announcer gets the audience all excited and then spokespersons from Indian political parties enter the arena and start bashing each other. It serves no purpose other than gross entertainment and even that has started to pall.
How many people actually watch these “primetime debates†for their news content? And where is the news in them? Each spokesperson defends their top leader and implies, insinuates or openly abuses leaders of other parties. We know all this. Thanks to TV news for exposing the extreme pettiness of our politicians. Lesson absorbed. We’ve got it now. Move on.
On Thursday night, Bhupendra Chaubey on CNN-News18 had a one-on-one interview with Muzaffar Baig of the PDP, in coalition with the BJP in Jammu & Kashmir. It was a good interview in that Baig was actually allowed to speak and made some interesting points. Chaubey did not try to show off that he knew more than Baig. And, at least you could understand what he was saying without getting distracted by 9000 people yelling, putting their hands up and/or sneering around him. It is almost impossible to concentrate on what the main feature is, if the screen is constantly twitching with extraneous matter.
On NDTV, an inordinate amount of time was spent on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s run-in with some women of the BJP’s Mahila Wing in Punjab. We understand that most news channels are based in Delhi and that both India Against Corruption and the Aam Aadmi Party were carefully nurtured by TV journalists until they turned against them, but is it necessary to follow every move of Kejriwal’s so assiduously? Nothing that extraordinary happened in this so-called “attack†by an opposing party.
What was really annoying was while this “single column†news was getting airtime, the news scrolling below was that BJP president Amit Shah’s meeting in Gujarat was disrupted by members of the Patidar movement and supporters of Patel leader, Hardik Patel. Chairs were chucked around from what we could see (I would have thought that would have been a good fit for the pro-wrestling idea of news). However, we could not understand a word of what the reporter at the site was saying, so we were left with half a story if that. (Does TV not have editors?)
Back then to the obsession with Kejriwal. Sometimes you have to agree with accusations that Delhi-based journalists are, well, obsessed with Delhi. Notice how much coverage we get of V Narayanasamy or K Chandrashekhar Rao or Laxmikant Parsekar or Okram Ibobi Singh, to name just a few. Some of these are chief ministers of full states, not just trumped up Union Territories.
Increasingly, news television is starting to resemble those old Films Division news bulletins we were forced to watch at the movies in the 1970s. And then this minister said this and that minister did that. Where is the science news? The health news? The environment news? The business news (business news channels mainly discuss the stock markets and finance so no luck there)? Is there nothing else in life except BJP versus Congress versus AAP?
Okay, end of diatribe. I write this in hope that some journalist somewhere in TV’s LaLaland will start looking up the meaning of “newsâ€.