MxMIndia

Category: COLUMNS

  • Freaking News | Making sense of gobbedygook

    A week is a long time in politics said one British prime minister or another and as far as news cycles are concerned, a week could be an eternity. Last week’s newsmakers have vanished as the 2G scam took control of television once more. However, most of what was happening was official gobbledygook as everyone, from anchors to honoured guests tried to make sense of it. Even Arnab Goswami, as he demanded answers for things which India wanted to know, got caught up in dates, memos and LOIs, possibly leaving viewers searching for the remote as the evening’s melodrama had been denied them.

    Early on Wednesday, there was plenty of television excitement over the news that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the puppet-master of the Bharatiya Janata Party, had informed LK Advani that he was not a potential prime ministerial candidate for the next general elections. By the evening it became clear that no one really cared and no one doubted that the RSS controlled the BJP.

    In any case, it all became about a letter which the finance ministry under Pranab Mukherjee had written which raised questions about the position on 2G taken by the finance ministry under P Chidambaram. But much as TV channels tried to put to the Union home minister in the dock, the government did not bite. And then it all became about dates, LOIs (which it turned out means letters of intent) and memos.

    Internationally, the focus was on the plea to stop the execution of a man convicted in 1991 for killing a police officer in 1989, in the American state of Georgia. Questions had since been raised about the investigation, witnesses had retracted their statements and there appeared to be no physical evidence linking him to the crime. However the US Supreme Court did not stay Troy Davies’s execution. This led to debates about justice and capital punishment. However Indian channels did not find Davies to be newsworthy – although social networking sites were buzzing with it.

    The changes made to Facebook also got international airtime and certainly, both Twitter and Facebook were filled with angry comments from users. You get the feeling that Indian channels keep a close watch on various popularity measuring mechanisms which also tell them how much drama can be milked from a news event and how much jingoism can be added to it. If it fails on these two counts, the event is now news. Therefore one can conclude that possibly erroneous death penalties in other countries and social networking sites do not make Indian blood boil.

    Is it then surprising that The Times of India issued an ad that said that TV was all hot air and only newspapers can shed light on events?

    **

    Newspapers of course tried to explain what the latest 2G revelations mean but even they struggled between dates and memos. With the prime and finance ministers out of the country, further political explanations became difficult. The Supreme Court stepped in to make it clear that its silence on 2G should not be misinterpreted to mean that it is asleep.

    The Sikkim earthquake and the problems of rescue operations got adequate representation (although TV did not forget, it must be acknowledged).

    Also the Planning Commission’s bizarre figures to determine poverty in India got newspaper space and flak. Advani’s little problem was a single column here and there – this is not a new story after all.

    Salman Rushdie’s introduction to Twitter was found to be newsworthy, two days after he took the literati of the twitterati by surprise by showing up there.

     

    **

    Every time a new film is due, the India media behaves as if a new inhabitable planet has been found. This week, it seems, a new film will be released. One does not know yet whether space suits will be required or it will be one more black hole.

  • We seem to be so wrung out and tired by recent events that even some T20 cricket tournament has not filled us with our normal passionate exuberance.

    Freaking News by Ranjona Banerji: Where’s the fizz gone?

    Life is dull, I have to admit, when television is not having hysterics about some issue or the other. And this week has been particularly short on made-for-television news events. I know I’ve grumbled about the neglect of subjects like the civil war in Libya or the collapse of the world economy but even I know that we cannot whip ourselves into a jingoistic frenzy with such sparse material to work on. No anchors foaming at the mouth, no calls for answers and no heartfelt pleas for justice, mercy or anything at all, nothing in fact that makes television news compete with the top general entertainment channels.

    So yes, the collapse of the world’s economy did make it to Indian television at last but that’s only after the Sensex fell at the end of last week and investors lost a notional amount that ran into lakhs of crores. By now we are so used to inflation and rising interest rates that no one can drum up even one fleck of hysterical foam at the mouth.

    In fact, we seem to be so wrung out and tired by recent events that even some T20 cricket tournament has not filled us with our normal passionate exuberance. We did try to drum up some enthusiasm for that mysterious note that one finance minister wrote to another former finance minister, something to do with the 2G scam, but no one knows enough about it and the people who know aren’t telling.

    Then Headlines Today, which is trying to steal the top patriotic channel slot from Times Now, did get quite excited about the current fight between the US and Pakistan but even that didn’t go far. Shoaib Akhtar, the Pakistani cricketer, said something about Sachin Tendulkar in his new book (yes, apparently he can write). But for all the patriotic fervour which we could have shown, the only people who managed to make something of it were some political parties in Maharashtra.

    CNN IBN remained steadfast in its coverage of the earthquake in Sikkim and its aftermath while by Monday morning, the floods in Orissa and Bihar were all over television.

    Talking about Pakistan, the BBC has a fascinating Hard Talk with Imran Khan, asking some very tough questions as usual and allowing the guest to answer them.

    **

    The newspapers, obviously, were in the same boat. They also realised that the world economy was in trouble. They managed to explain something of it, throwing the collapse of Greece into the mix as well. The unfortunate plane crash in Nepal got the front pages. Patriotism is everywhere so the Hindustan Times headlined the number of Indians who had died. Lesser mortals of other nations not so fortunate to be Indian also died.

    The weekend saw some newspapers telling us that Paris Hilton, general celeb and heiress of the eponymous hotel chain, was in town. The opinion pages were still obsessed with Narendra Modi and his prime ministerial ambitions and whatever else. Am not sure that anyone else still cares, especially since we are currently in this non-news cycle.

    This morning The Times of India came to me bright yellow as if it had been dipped in haldi and this made reading it very difficult.

     

    **

    I can only hope that things pick up as the week moves on.

  • Ranjona Banerji's review nightly news on TV and the fare in the morning papers

    When Arnab’s panelists turned argumentative

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Today is the turn of newspapers, which saved the day. That is, it gave readers a sort of clue about what was going on in the government over the 2G note about the former finance ministry from the current one. Or at least, we have been led to understand that a serious damage control exercise is going on in the government and Pranab Mukherjee has sought to clarify that his note did not target P Chidambaram. It also seemed evident that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had stepped in to stop her ministers from getting into public spats.

    Television made much of the ruckus in the J&K Assembly over a possible clemency plea for Afzal Guru, sentenced to death over the 2001 attack on Parliament. The plea started with a tweet put out by J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah after the Tamil Nadu assembly asked for clemency for some of the people facing a death sentence for their part in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. A recurring problem with TV is that it does put matters into perspective or indeed explain the pernicious nature of using parochial interests to put forward such clemency pleas. Therefore, the debate should have covered all three recent incidents – Sikhs asking for clemency for Devender Pal Singh Bhullar of the Khalistan Liberation Force for a bomb attack in ’83, Tamils asking for clemency for Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan for their role in Gandhi’s death and Kashmiri politicians asking for similar clemency for fellow Kashmiri Afzal Guru. All these people were sentenced on charges of terrorism and either the same standards apply to all or our polity will be in serious trouble.

    However, Times Now could not conduct a proper debate on this mainly because the panellists were unruly and argumentative and all Arnab Goswami’s pleas went unheard. He should have just cut the sound and continued perhaps. Most newspapers meanwhile, chose not to give this incident too much importance which may well be the more intelligent way of dealing with it.

    The Calcutta High Court verdict in favour of the West Bengal government over the Tatas in the Singur land acquisition was given prominence by most newspapers, with The Telegraph. Calcutta and most business papers giving it the front page.

    **

    Even in the dumbing down of newspapers which we are so fond of, it was interesting to read an edit page piece on the neutrinos which travel faster light at the CERN lab in Geneva. Even if not all can understand what is going on, it is important to keep track of such events.

    One would have expected more analysis on the current face-off between the US and Pakistan over the ISI’s terror links and the allegations made by US Joint chief of staff admiral Mike Mullen, since the fall out has direct implications for India. Perhaps our top analysts are sharpening their knives.

    **

    A fascinating TV-print-social media back and forth is going on over the BBC’s interview with an investment trader, Alessio Rastani, over the current economic crisis. Rastani told the BBC that traders like him waited for such moments to make money and that the markets were run by Goldman Sachs and could not be controlled by government actions. The interview went viral on Facebook and Twitter. Newspapers and magazines claimed that Rastani was a hoax and one paper quoted him as saying he was an “attention seeker”. Rastani’s finances, as investigated by the British newspapers, seemed none too healthy. The BBC however stood by its decision to call Rastani as an expert. The general consensus seemed to be that whoever Rastani is and whatever his credentials, he seemed to have spoken some very bold and harsh truths!

  • Freaking News… Ranjona Banerji's near-daily blog reviews the nightly news and the fare in the morningers

    The weekend fare and is our media scared of taking on big business?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The weekend papers…

     

    With the tenth anniversary of the September 11 2001 attack on the United States being top of the mind, Sunday Times carries something of a coup  a special article by US president Barack Obama, where he discusses the loss as well as US strategy to deal with terror, focusing of course on killing of Osama Bin Laden earlier this year and the targeting of the al-Qaeda. Obama reiterates that the US has never been at war with Islam.

     

    Other newspapers also concentrate on 9/11. The Hindustan Times carries a special section on the attacks with comment, analysis and related stories. It also does not carry its local Mumbai comments page, perhaps to accommodate this change, although the regular comments page appears at the end of the section.

     

    The rest of the news is a mixture of local Mumbai news the end of the Ganesh festival is prominent. The Hindustan Times in Mumbai leads with a local story on water contamination while the Delhi leads with 9/11 and the possible terror threat to the US. The opposition to the communal violence bill from the NDA and the Trimamool Congress is second lead in Delhi.

     

    The Times of India goes with party funding for its second lead and also highlights the communal violence bill. Half of page one is an ad, therefore limiting its options. Into this space however filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son Rahul’s need for a gun to protect himself finds space. Curious.

     

    The Ganesh festival is played out on the inside pages of all Mumbai newspapers. Newspaper offices in the financial capital are closed on Sunday so there will be no edition on Monday.

     

    The Hindu leads with the communal violence bill and also gives prominence to Nalini meeting Murugan, both convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

     

    … and the news channels

     

    The weekend saw our television channels returning to covering whatever news they could find while international channels concentrated on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The critical injuries to cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin’s son in a motorcycle accident in Hyderabad, an accident during the Ganesh immersion processions in Mumbai and renowned Sufi singers the Wadala brothers being caught with live bullets at Amritsar airport were the news items which got play on TV channels.

     

    The rest of the space was given to the back and forth between the government, the Congress and Anna Hazare’s advisers, the fight between sports minister Ajay Maken and former sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar the dramatic essence which gives Indian television its raison detre.

     

    The memorial services in New York for 9/11 were sombre and the channels covered it like that, with solemnity and minus high anchor drama. Anderson Cooper of CNN is usually quite good at events like this.

     

    Is our media frightened to take on the rich?

     

    It bears comment that the CAG findings on contract violations by Reliance Industries in the KG basin have been tiptoed around by the media in general as well as by observers, commentators and opposition parties. Does it appear that we are not so concerned about corruption when our biggest industrial houses are involved, or that we are too frightened to take on the rich?

     

  • Ranjona Banerji on how the exploitation of every last drop of drama from a news event is practically an art form

    Paraphrasing Fareed Zakaria

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    It was a joy to watch Time international editor Fareed Zakaria on CNN-IBN being interviewed by Sagarika Ghose. Zakaria talked about both the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US as well as India’s somewhat dismal record when it comes to pre-empting or even solving terror attacks. Zakaria was also candid about the demonisation of Muslims in India and called our policing  pathetic  and indeed, non-existent. Harsh words, but no less significant or true for that. The anchor, who is often loud and combative, only asked questions and then paraphrased Zakaria’s answers, presumably for us viewers who are short on understanding. Or perhaps cannot comprehend what is going on when sundry guests are not shouting at the same time.

     

    And the award goes to Arnab Goswami!

    The exploitation of every last drop of drama from a news event is practically an art form and the award has to go to Arnab Goswami and Times Now. The fact that the Supreme Court sent back a petition by riot victim Zakia Jafri on the culpability of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in the Gujarat riots to a local court was presented as one woman’s lone battle and so on. Indian TV began the story with its distinct sense of speculation a day before the Supreme Court decision. No TV channel has so far taken the time to explain the context of this petition and has behaved  together with the BJP  as if this is the last legal word ever to be spoken on the riots. Nor has anyone called the BJP on its needless victory marches over nothing.

    As ever, I admire and applaud our potential for stupidity.

    RIP, Gautam Rajadhyaksha

    The death of glamour photographer Gautam Rajadhyaksha, who imparted much beauty to our stars, was given fair play. The black money stashed abroad by Indians was in focus again as German and Swiss whistle blowers talked about their findings. It’s not all about politicians though — many rich Indians are involved.

     

    9/11

    The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was commemorated with sombre dignity by the United States and this was reflected in the TV coverage. The anchors and reporters did not behave as if they were part of a travelling jatra troupe re-enacting some tragic melodrama and the focus was on the victims and their families. The politicians did not try to hog the limelight either and nor did TV channels look to them for that.

     

    More newsgazing…

    >> Fareed Zakaria was in the newspapers as well, looking at America after the 9/11 attacks in an edit page piece for Hindustan Times. In The Times of India’s edit page, Union law minister made a reasonable plea for consensus on the Lokpal bill but sadly, the Congress has lost so much ground here is that everything is too little too late.

    >> The Telegraph, Calcutta gives the Supreme Court-Modi story a little twist by pointing out that Modi’s rise is causing maximum fear within the BJP itself and especially amongst other prime ministerial candidates.

    >> The Deccan Chronicle’s Hyderabad edition headlined its Modi story God is great, tweets Modi but then went on to discuss how the Gujarat CM was not in the clear a feat well beyond Indian television. Meanwhile, Modi has decided to go on a fast for national unity, whatever that may mean.

    >> Most newspapers also concentrated on the death at a French nuclear site, Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s observations on Indira Gandhi (prune bitter!), the critical condition of cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin’s son after a motorcycle accident, the blow up by Serena Williams at the US Open final which she then lost.

    >> Websites were full of Novak Djokovic’s US Open win over Rafael Nadal, which finished early on Tuesday morning India time. Undoubtedly, tomorrow will see more on a brewing controversy between the ICC and BCCI and an awards ceremony. Let the drama continue!

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews nightly news and the morning papers in Freaking News

    More Garba-Dandiya in Mumbai papers please

    By Ranjona Banerji

    The more I watch TV news (mainly thanks to this blog, my life was far less complicated before this!!!), the more sorry I feel for TV journalists in India. The constant need to fill up air time with drama, pyrotechnics and hysterics must be overwhelmingly frightening. The news in Indian TV world can never just be about events taking place. It has to be worthy of a Cecil B deMille movie with a thundering Charleton Heston, several horses, a few small divine miracles and for the grand finale at the very least, the parting of the Red Sea.
    Monday night and Tuesday morning were full of the death of a National Conference worker in Jammu & Kashmir and the alleged involvement of chief minister Omar Abdullah somehow or the other, the arrest of Gujarat cop Sanjiv Bhatt for turning against the Narendra Modi government and to some extent, the clarification by Montek Singh Ahluwalia on the Planning Commission’s poverty figures.
    **
    Tuesday morning’s newspapers found merit in Bhatt’s arrest and Ahluwalia’s statement but dismissed the J&K fight to a few paras on the nation pages. TV however continues with the story because it has drama and for many of our uber-nationalist TV journalists, J&K has a special fascination. The Indian Express Delhi edition however led with J&K. The Hindu focused on the ongoing Telengana stir which has been downplayed by Mumbai papers at least.
    In fact, the poverty issue has been given full range in our newspapers. The Times of India however has carried two intriguing opinion pieces. Arvind Panagriya, who teaches at Columbia University decided that our high child malnutrition figures are manipulated. And Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyer, who normally illuminates economic matters for us lesser mortals, mocked the sudden middle class interest in poverty. Contrastingly, on Sunday, The Hindustan Times carried an excellent piece by Kirit Parikh on our poverty measures. TOI on Tuesday has Parikh going further and discussing the failures of our PDS system.
    **
    Strangely, the anti-Wall Street protests going on all over the United States have not picked up traction in India. One would have thought this would be good grist to the drama mill. Also, given how Indian TV went to town when pop star Michael Jackson died, his murder trial is being largely ignored, in spite of all the dramatic revelations on a daily basis.
    **
    This is a particularly Mumbai-related complaint. The Navratri season is almost at the end and most newspapers have concentrated only on Durga Puja pandals all over the city. Where are all the pictures of garba and dandiya? I hear and see the dancing in real life but cannot find it in my newspapers? What is going on? I understand that the media is chockfull of Bengalis and people from East India, but as a hardened Mumbaikar (please ignore my name and its implications in your mind), I do expect to see Navratri represented in my newspapers.

  • Ranjona Banerji's review nightly news on TV and the fare in the morning papers

    Freaking News | When newspapers twisted facts to suit themselves

    By Ranjona Banerji

    This weekend was dedicated to – surprisingly, not Mahatma Gandhi – but to the poor people of India. Of course this was a matter very close to Gandhi’s heart and perhaps more important to a commemoration of his 142th birth anniversary than cursory lip service paid to his legacy, as has become our wont.

    So TV channels and newspapers discussed the Planning Commission and its inexplicably odd expenditure cut-off of Rs 32 a day being above the poverty line in cities and Rs 26 a day in villages. As TV anchors, activists and the general public fretted and fumed, some analysts – in print and on screen — tried to explain it all statistically and economically to us idiots. Little of that was fully comprehensible and regardless of the contempt for a middle class which has only recently woken up to social issues, it goes without saying that the Planning Commission’s figures seem to be absurd.

    The imminent fall of the government continued to be a matter of discussion, especially for the BJP as the UPA scrambled to convince everyone that the dissent within them was normal and all was hunky-dory. But the BJP itself appeared to be a house divided with much speculation over Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s perceived snub to both the party headquarters as well as to party stalwart LK Advani.

    **

    Weekends on TV are usually news-free as news channels fill their space with car, food and Bollywood shows. We also occasionally get interviews with artists and writers. Presumably, this satisfies our need for culture, both popular and otherwise.

    International news channels however manage to slip in a bit of news as well, with the Eurozone crisis, the unrest in Libya, Syria and Yemen, the US economy and the US fight with Pakistan sharing space.

    **

    The fun quotient for the end-of-the-week as far as Indian newspapers were concerned was the release of readership figures for the quarter by the Indian Readership Survey. Every newspaper managed to twist the figures to suit themselves and this means that readers of multiple papers would have been in a state of happy confusion. In Mumbai for instance, both Hindustan Times and DNA claimed the number two spot, while the Times of India claimed number 1 for itself and number 2 for its free tabloid Mumbai Mirror. The figures support Mirror as 2 and Hindustan Times as 3, but then given that Mirror comes free with Times of India which has a huge lead over the others, this leads to a few questions. It also effectively puts DNA at either 3 (if you discount Mirror) or a distant 4. Mid-Day also saw a readership increase, bucking its own trend over the last couple of quarters.

    In Delhi, both Times and Hindustan Times claimed a rise in readership and the number 1 spot – or so it seemed to me. Across the country, this chest-thumping continued. I’m guessing readers know what they read and that advertisers will be suitably impressed – the whole point of this operation.

    **

    Am I the only one tired of every newspaper and news channels calling itself “your paper” and “your channel”? I “own” so many newspapers and channels now that am considering getting an investment consultant to cope!

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews nightly news and the morning papers in Freaking News

    When the media got it right

    By Ranjona Banerji

    The death of Apple founder and innovater extraordinaire Steve Jobs dominated TV headlines on Thursday and front pages of newspapers on Friday morning. Jobs acquired cult status soon after he launched the Mac in 1984 and bucked the giant corporate hold on the world of the computer. At the time, stories about him and his band of doping, way out anti-corporate merry geeks abounded. Soon after, he left Apple to found Pixar animation and also made his mark there. His return to Apple in the late ‘90s however was to a different world and it was here that his old reputation melded with his new creations and made Jobs into a giant icon. It can very safely be said that the media control of world opinion played a massive role here. From a small – if highly respected – cult figure for a few fans and aficionados, Jobs and Apple became highly sought-after bastions of the tech world. Ironically, his co-founder Steve Wozniack can currently be seen on BBC Entertainment, on an old series of Dancing with the Stars, a programme which specialises in making B and C grade celebrities dance.

    GK Chesterton’s aphorism that journalism “largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive” however does not apply here, as it so often does. Sometimes the media does get it right and undoubtedly Jobs was a pioneer and a rebel. His untimely death from pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 may instead prove the other wise saw that those whom the gods love, die young.

     

    **

     

    Dassera being a holiday, the rest of the TV day was dependent on the never-ending fascination with the Omar Abdullah mysterious custodial death case, the bail application of Gujarat cop Sanjiv Bhatt and the latest leg of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement in Hisar, Haryana. Unlike TV, newspapers are now openly telling us about Hazare’s connections to the RSS and BJP, bolstered by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s declaration in his Dasera speech that his organisation did support Hazare’s fast at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi in August. The fact that Hazare and his team – Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi – are on an anti-Congress campaign in Hisar also makes the connection clear. But where TV continues its blind hero worship, newspapers continue to do their job and present all sides and angles.

     

    **

     

    A little spat developed between Infosys mentor Narayanamurthy and India’s most populist writer Chetan Bhagat when the former criticised IIT students. But much as the media tried to go to town on this, it soon became evident that public interest was limited. Narayanamurthy took it no further and it is possible that the rest of India has other things to bother about.

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews nightly news and the morning papers in Freaking News

    So near, but yet so far

    In one of those delightful ironies which make life interesting, Karan Thapar’s The Last Word on CNNIBN featured three newspaper editors to discuss the question of whether the media did enough to get details about Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s illness.

    Here you had four journalists discussing “the media” as if it was some animal in a zoo, with whom they had only spectator contact. N Ram of the Hindu, Kumar Ketkar of Divya Marathi and Chandan Mitra of The Pioneer could not explain to us what their own newspapers had done to inform their readers about Gandhi’s mysterious illness. What is this “the media” they are talking about? The media is them.

    Instead they discussed a colonial hangover, the love or Jawaharlal Nehru, respecting laws of privacy, fear of Sonia Gandhi and a host of reasons for the media’s failure. This would have been okay if the panel was not made up of three working editors of three newspapers.

     

     

    **

    The television media’s insistence that J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah answer questions about the custodial death of a National Conference worker lead to a almost-funny situation where anchor extraordinaire, Arnab Goswami of Times Now, was rendered silent by Abdullah’s belligerence. As Goswami demanded answers (for the sake of India), Abdullah asked some pertinent questions about the way investigations are conducted in India, which left Goswami lost for words, looking down and away from the camera.

    Team Anna representative Kiran Bedi was in a similar situation on Times Now later when she could not answer a simple question from Kumar Ketkar: if Team Anna claimed that the whole country was with them why were they so frightened of getting a two-thirds majority vote in Parliament? Bedi had no answers for Ketkar or indeed for Goswami or the analysis put forward by Crest’s political editor Arati Jerath.

     

    **

    The lack of depth of TV is exposed again and again whenever there are no dramatic events to follow. Print journalists have to come to the rescue every time – whether on TV or in print – to provide perspective and analysis.

    This constant desire for drama and old-fashioned Indian style “jatra” at prime time sadly shows up TV on the slow days.

     

    **

    Newspapers are luckier of course because the front page presents whatever the editorial team considers to be the bog news of the day. It is a boon to decide what to choose when you don’t have to look for the loudest guests and try and save the nation at every given moment.

    The big problem for newspapers – especially in English – is the same one which irks Infosys mentor Narayana Murthy about the standard of students at IIT: bad English and bad grammar. Chetan Bhagat can perhaps get away with it, but newspapers should not.

    Examples of boo-boos big and small are welcome.

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews nightly news and the morning papers in Freaking News

    Time to take the government head on

    Ranjona Banerji

    Much as it was interesting to watch members of Team Anna squirming and dissembling to explain their foray into electoral politics on an anti-Congress campaign or hearing the speculation about whether LK Advani’s yatra is about him trying to become PM again, more attention needs to be paid to the government’s attempts to control the electronic media.
    Much as TV news channels can be annoying, irresponsible, depth-less and sometimes sense-less, they are an integral and important part of the media and have to be protected against government interference. The government would not dare to cancel newspaper registrations for five transgressions of some standards law; there is no reason why TV should be subjected to such harsh and illogical treatment.
    Both the print and broadcast media need to take the government head on. Since so much media dirty linen, soul-searching and hand-wringing is now done in public there is no reason why the public should be left out of this discussion. Do we need the government to control the media and decide on transgressions? Do we need better or more stringent internal control? How far does freedom of expression go (as far, it must be said, as various Indian laws allow)? Why aren’t FM radio channels allowed to carry news broadcasts? Do we want to go back to the days of an exclusive government-controlled broadcast media?  The media may be a pillar of democracy but it is not an organ of the government. It has to be independent and critical.
    It is imperative that these issues be discussed. The Times of India carries an edit on the subject but that is insufficient. There needs to be a larger debate.

    **

    The death of ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh – who had been in a critical state for two weeks – was covered comprehensively by both TV and print. Attempts were made to make the obits objective rather than merely hagiographic, which is amazing when you consider the completely adulatory writings which followed the death of Apple’s Steve Jobs, a man, it appears, who could do no wrong or at least be held accountable.

    **
    The Champions League came and went and almost passed under the radar. This is a new for cricket in India and it is probably down to fan fatigue, overkill and India’s miserable performance in the UK tour. At any rate, it proves that hype can only take you so far and sometimes, somewhere, reality sinks in. And apparently, no one cares.

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews nightly news and the morning papers in Freaking News

    Shock & Amusement

    Ranjona Banerji

    It was a very amusing day yesterday in TV land. First, LK Advani’s luxury bus got stuck under a bridge. By the way it takes a great stretch of imagination to call a luxury bus a “rath”; if they want to evoke Mahabharat-type chariots of fire images they should at least have some accompanying horses (not horsepower) and some of those metallic swan wings you see in Indian small towns on carts that are all-in-one marriage bands.

    But the drama of the day was provided by poor Prashant Bhushan, Supreme Court lawyer, core group member of Team Anna and all-purpose activist. As he was about to give an interview to Times Now, a group of men walked into his chambers at the Supreme Court and proceeded to beat him up, with the cameras rolling.

    The images are shocking and whoever saw it was very distressed. Times Now shared its footage with everyone else so there was universal shock and horror at this sort of uncivilised hooliganism. There was some confusion over who these goons actually were – Bhushan said that one told him he was from the Sri Ram Sena, and then the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena took “credit” for beating him up. Bhushan’s “crime” was to suggest that the army should leave Jammu & Kashmir, the Armed Forces Special Protection Act should be scrapped and if no other solution can be found to the Kashmir question, a plebiscite should be held. These views, according to all these Senas, are distinctly anti-national, thus justifying the attack.

    Different TV channels took different approaches. NDTV decided not to speak to the perpetrators so as not to encourage them, CNNIBN took a similar stand, Headlines Today and NewsX immediately went out and found them and Times Now at first did not make it clear that all these Senas were connected to the Sangh Parivar but pussyfooted around. Then as the night progressed and Arnab Goswami got more into it, he revealed that some of the attackers were former members of the BJP youth wing.

    The subject dominated TV debates and the BJP and RSS spokespersons sputtered their way through the debates. The most amusing of all was Bhim Singh of the Panthers, who had a peculiar faux Brit-solid Punjabi accent who talked to himself through the programme. The upshot was that Bhushan’s views on Kashmir were anathema to them but they were forced – on account of the public outrage – to condemn the violence. It’s a fine line and they were called out on it several times.

    This largely meant that Advani and his bus were given cursory attention.

    The other issue was the very clear links between the RSS and Anna Hazare’s movement with an intriguing debate on why both the RSS and Team Anna were on the defensive about it.

     

    **

     

    By comparison, it must be admitted, the morning newspapers were decidedly dull. In Mumbai, a huge thunderstorm took the front page. One main accused being acquitted by the Delhi high court in the murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar added another twist to a very strange case.

    Even the Bhushan story got short shrift (perhaps there was nothing left to say after TV had milked it). Of course, newspapers did carry editorials bemoaning our uncivilised response to unpleasant opinions. Well, what else can they say?

     

    **

    Vijay Mallya’s sale of a chunk of his Force 1 shares to Subroto Roy and Sahara was the other big story everywhere. After the smiling pictures of all have run their course, perhaps we need to see some stories on why Mallya is selling so much?

     

    **

    Shah Rukh Khan dominated most TV channels after 10 pm – publicity for something or the other – including a long interview with Barkha Dutt. Goswami continued with saving the nation and did not get down to such frippery stuff – doubt if he ever does. He did however end his prime time show with a demand that Anna Hazare come clean on his links if any with the RSS. Interesting.

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews nightly news and the morning papers in Freaking News

    The Empire seems to be wobbling other stuff standard

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This is a mini review, as I look forward to the weekend and all the creativity which newshounds are forced to display. Cooking shows and endless movie stuff is the usual fare on TV, long features and short forays into the unusual are on the menu for newspapers.

    Meanwhile, the Times of India and Economic Times appear to have great glee in the Guardian expose on the Wall Street Journal’s dodgy circulation game – buying back unsold copies in some transatlantic transactions.  You have to feel sorry for Rupert Murdoch; the Empire seems to be wobbling. Perhaps India’s biggest newspaper group is sending a warning to NewsCorp with regards to its India intentions?

    The fact that Blackberry has started working again may end our global hysteria with different telephones and their features and failures. CNN however did put a hilarious clip about one of its staffers having a bit of a hissy fit on the stories they were missing because of the BB collapse at a news meeting.

    **

     

    The fact that members of the Sri Ram Sene or Sena and Bhagat Singh Kranti whatever beat up Anna Hazare supporters in Delhi seems to be a clear indication that they are looking for cheap publicity. But what a way to become famous!

     

    **

     

    The fact the Information and Broadcasting ministry has had to issue a clarification about its licence-cancelling law is only a minor victory. The battle to stop government control of the media has to continue.

     

    **

    There is a cricket match on today. Will the media turn all its attention there or will corruption, law and order, terrorist attacks continue to dominate? Hmmmm…