MxMIndia

Category: RANJONA BANERJI

Ranjona Banerji’s hard-and-soft look at nightly news and the fare in the morningers

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on News TV and the morning paper… and various websites and the social media

    Ranjona Banerji: Must-watch Network

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    RP Singh, former director general of the telecom department and the auditor for the Comptroller and Auditor General who prepared the 2G spectrum analysis report for CAG, has led the media on a very merry dance. Suddenly, he was the man in news for being a “whistle-blower” – that Parliament Accounts Committee chairman Murli Manohar Joshi had influenced the CAG report on 2G, that he (Singh) had not allotted that mind-boggling number of Rs 1.76 lakh crore, that he had objected but the CAG had not listened and other such juicy stuff. Then he came on TV and waved lots of papers and booklets about but since we couldn’t really see what they were, they could really have been dhobi lists and household accounts.

     

    Two days later, all the newspapers – except the Indian Express – told us that Singh had retracted his statements on BJP leader Joshi. Promptly Singh appeared on TV and said he had never retracted his statement about Joshi and waved more pieces of paper about.

     

    By now, everyone was so confused that newspapers got bored of running around in circles and all we know is that Singh was not happy. Surprisingly, it is TV who has stuck with this story and done some hard work (produced some papers of its own to wave about) while newspapers have just left us without our usual trusted interpreter of TV hysteria.

     

    **

     

    It is something of a massive coup for Arvind Kejriwal that he actually made it to a Times of India editorial on Tuesday. In the last month, every new revelation from this self-conscious crusader had got less and less media attention. The launch of his new party, its name and method of functioning has not produced the sort of high octane excitement he must have become accustomed to. Tuesday saw this front page staple on the inside pages of most newspapers. And while CNN-IBN did have a debate on the Aam Aadmi Party, other news channels were less impressed or more likely just bored. The funniest bit on the show was when Mani Shankar Aiyar accused Rajdeep Sardesai of being a cynical promoter of economic reforms with no cares for the unfortunate. Sardesai’s face set like a jelly and he could barely contain his annoyance.

     

    As for Kejriwal, he better do something quick because his fledgling party cannot possible survive with breathless 24 hour TV coverage.

     

    Last week, I watched Sidney Lumet’s brilliant 1976 film Network again. A major TV station decides to go with a deranged news anchor’s ramblings on prime time to raise TRPs. What unfolds is an “amorality” tale about the dehumanisation of TV that still contains lessons for today’s world of TV. It should be made compulsory viewing for today’s journalists. I have to come clean here: there is no singing and dancing in the film.

     

    **

     

    India lost to England at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on Monday. You might be happy that cricket is back to centrestage. Or you might have thought that the Mayan predictions of the end of the world in 2012 had come a few weeks early. It is now congenitally impossible for Indian cricket fans – and this includes the media – to have any balanced perspective about cricket and India. CNN-IBN (Sardesai again) did a show on whether Sachin Tendulkar’s time was up and then answered its own question by saying one should not blame Tendulkar when the whole team failed. In newspaper terms, that’s like contradicting yourself in your own editorial. Why bother, no?

     

  • The arrest of Sudhir Chaudhury and Samir Ahluwalia of Zee and the publishing of the Leveson Inquiry report offer fresh reason to worry about ethics in the media

    Ranjona Banerji: Media ethics questioned in India and the UK

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Just as the Indian media is grappling with the arrest of two editors of the Zee News network, the Leveson Inquiry looking into media ethics in the UK is published. Sudhir Chaudhury and Samir Ahluwalia, business head and editor of Zee News and editor of Zee Business, were arrested by the Delhi Police after investigations into whether they had attempted to extort money from industrialist and Congress MP Naveen Jindal offering to bury stories about his group’s involvement in what is known as the “Coalgate” scam.

     

    Jindal had filed a complaint against Zee after they carried a sting operation about Coalgate, claiming that Jindal got undue favours in allocations and also offered to bribe the journalists involved in the story. Jindal countered this with his own tapes where Chaudhury and Ahluwalia are heard offered an ad deal which would effectively kill the story.
    The rest of the media carried the story, with television going to the extent of carrying live a long and rambling press conference with Zee News CEO Alok Agarwal. But comment on the issue has been subdued. This is not because Zee is a rival media house so much as questions have been raised – and have not been answered – about questionable journalistic and business practices by Zee. There cannot, therefore, be complete support for the Zee editors on the basis of freedom of speech alone.

     

    It has to be remembered that the allegations against the Zee’s editors must be seen separately from any possible wrongdoing on Jindal’s part. Zee being in the dock does not exonerate Jindal. But it should force the media to look again at the trend of using journalists to strike business deals and using journalistic investigations to blackmail people, as media insiders know does happen across the board. Both of these have regrettably become common practice. The Delhi police have decided to investigate Zee all the way up to owner Subhash Chandra. Zee may claim that it is being targeted by the Delhi police because of the UPA being accused in the Coalgate scam but the journalism practised by its editors remains questionable.

     

    In a fine example of irony, the tapes – disclosed earlier – had the Zee editors accusing the Times of India for its policies like Medianet, which led to the Bennett Coleman group sending Zee a legal notice threatening a Rs 100 crore defamation suit.

     

    Media ethics in India at the moment is at a very low point and managements have journalists well under control. It is a situation from which rescue is imperative but under current circumstances it is unlikely that the Zee case will offer that. A more sensational and dramatic fall is perhaps necessary before the climb upwards begins.

     

    **

     

    The Lord Justice Leveson Inquiry, ordered after the revelations that News of the World and the Murdoch group was using phone-hacking and other questionable practices as a way of getting stories. The Inquiry revealed its report yesterday in which it made strong recommendations for a new independent body to regulate the press. The prime minister has already said such a body is unlikely and newspapers are bound to fight any attempt to muzzle them.

     

    But it is also true that the existing self-regulatory Press Complaints Council was unable to deal with complaints against News of the World for its phone-hacking and other methods of invading privacy, influencing policy and what can also be interpreted as blackmail.

     

    David Cameron’s very close relationship with former News of the World editor and head of News Corp Rebekkah Brookes had led to questions about the BSkyB deal with Murdoch being influenced. There were also fears of government policy being manipulated by Murdoch as he and his editors promised electoral support to political parties – changing allegiance from Labour to Conservative as well.

     

    The Leveson Inquiry found no “widespread” police corruption but did set down some guideless for press-police relations.

     

    The big problem was a lack of redressal systems for people who felt harassed or targeted by the press. Many celebrities were also victims of phone-hacking and film stars like Hugh Grant deposed before the Inquiry. There is some attempt by the final report to address those issues.

     

    The full report can be found here: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/

     

    **

     

    The issues addressed here are not in fact restricted to the UK. The manipulation of journalists and journalistic practices and the influence wielded by managements both mean that the freedom of the press is under threat all over and to a great extent in India as well.

     

    Media houses have to be profitable. But they do not produce tubes of toothpaste, even if managements prefer to call newspapers “products”. Can managements work out business models which do not pollute the freedom of the press? Can there be some system where readers and viewers are honestly informed which part of the “news” is actually an advertisement? Can people targeted in “sting” operations and blackmail complain to any regulatory agency that can provide effective redressal?

    These are questions which have to be answered, preferably sooner and not later.

     

    The Telegraph has an interesting article on different UK newspapers have been indicted/praised by Leveson: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9713061/Leveson-Report-the-verdict-on-individual-newspapers.html

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own.

     

  • Warning: this MxM Journalism Review column is going to be Bennett Coleman-centric

    Ranjona Banerji: The journalist as the newsmaker

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    To start with, we have the Caravan profile on Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief of Times Now. This very long and detailed investigation by Rahul Bhatia into what inspires Goswami to save the nation every night on primetime television might answers many questions for Goswami’s legion of fans and his detractors as well.

     

    Some of the answers are known in journalistic circles: his ambition, his desire to get escape from under the shadows of Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt and his strategy to create a different character for Times Now. But there are the little details here from the way the Times Now newsroom functions to Goswami’s childhood and background that delineate the saviour’s character.

     

    However, it might be said that you can be smothered by too much writing and too much detail. It’s interesting to learn that Times Now doesn’t bother with having too many journalists checking the news updates that come in before sending them out on screen. Actually, it’s evident given the factual and grammatical errors in the on-screen scrolls. Caravan does not put this down to journalistic error but to some complicated bureaucratic television procedures which perhaps amount to the same thing in old-fashioned terms.

     

    The Caravan article suffers from being far too long. People may watch Goswami with shock and awe or they may watch in appalled wonder. But whether he deserves a one million-word profile (yes, I’m exaggerating) is another matter. It may be years from now that Goswami will go down in history as the Walter Cronkite of Indian journalism. It could be that he will (not that one would wish that fate on anyone) become like the Peter Finch character on Network, whipping people into a patriotic frenzy to take their nation back from government. It is as yet too early to tell.

     

    But we are seeing an interesting trend here where journalists themselves become newsmakers. Watching people night after night on television has made them part of our lives and so we want to know more about them and how and why they tick. Television makes them feel closer but in pure print journalism terms, it is another country.

     

    For those who want to know all about Goswami:

    http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/fast-and-furious?page=0,10

     

    **

     

    Also in the news in the Times of India is celebrated journalist Katherine Boo. She will be attending the Times Literary Carnival to be held in Mumbai over the weekend. Boo is author of Beyond the Beautiful Forevers, an investigation into poverty in India through a Mumbai slum.

     

    Boo is a rare journalist who decided to give up source journalism for the right to information process. At a meeting a few years ago, she explained to me why source journalism made a journalist dependent and challenged independence. She decided to use the US’s freedom of information act to get the details she needed into her investigations into poverty. The process is long and cumbersome, as one would expect. Her editors at the time did not appreciate her arguments and she had to do these poverty stories through right to information on her own time.

     

    This is an intriguing method of gathering facts, even if it is far truer as far as information goes. In an everyday newsroom situation, patience is usually in short supply. But there can be little doubt that using RTI provides very solid evidence which is useful and inarguable.

     

    Boo’s interview in the TOI makes some meaningful points about the importance of poverty journalism.

     

    **

     

    The two Zee editors are still being denied bail and are still getting more or less bog standard coverage from the media. Pointing fingers is perhaps too dangerous?

     

    Meanwhile, celebrities in the UK who have been the victims of phone-hacking and privacy infiltration are furious with the David Cameron government for rejecting the Leveson report’s recommendations for more stringent press regulation.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own

     

  • Television may be annoyingly intrusive and terribly unprofessional at times, but the cold distance of print cannot bring an issue like treatment of women to life as television can, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: When News TV brought an issue to life

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The 20th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the deaths of a young man in Mumbai and a policeman in Amritsar for fighting on behalf of women being sexually harassed and the defeating of the vote against FDI in multi-brand retail in the Lok Sabha were the big stories of the day. The Times of India’s nation pages seemed to be against the idea of FDI in multi-brand retail and quite disappointed that the BJP and other opponents had lost. On the edit and business pages, it was quite another story. One gets the feeling that the stories on the nation pages slipped past a newspaper which long been in favour of economic reforms. Someone sleeping on the job in the Times of India newsroom?

     

    **

     

    Karan Thapar’s Last Word on CNN-IBN had an interesting discussion on the demolition and how India had changed in 20 years. However, there was no one representing the demolishers so the discussion was distinctly one-sided. Erudite, informed, intelligent and thoughtful perhaps but one-sided. We have got used, have we not, to super battles between anyone and everyone? Instead, we had Dileep Padgaonkar, Ashis Nandy, Mushir-ul-Hasan and Paul Beckett.

     

    **

     

    The big question for both Times Now and CNN-IBN on Thursday night was sexual harassment, the law, men and death. In Mumbai a year ago, two young men were killed by a mob for trying to protect the women with them from being harassed. This week, a man in the Dombivili suburb of Mumbai was killed by four men, three of them minors, for intervening while they were harassing a young woman. In Amritsar, a police officer was shot dead while trying to protect his own daughter from a group of men harassing her.

     

    Television has many failings but it wins every time it debates these issues. The more we talk about the way women are treated in India the more chance women have of improved surroundings. The cold distance of print cannot create the emotional immediacy of television and this is a plus in TV’s favour. It is annoyingly intrusive and terribly unprofessional at times but it can bring issue to life. On Arnab Goswami’s show, the politicians of Punjab were shown up as uncaring as they either tried to score points of each other or mouthed meaningless platitudes. Goswami in fact called one out for saying he was “sad”. “I don’t believe in expressions of sadness,” said an imperious Goswami.

     

    Rajdeep Sardesai had a more reasoned approach but he also had to stop Punjab’s politicians from their politicking and trying to milk the Amritsar situation to their advantage.

     

    **

     

    On Headlines Today in a debate between Arvind Kejriwal, Mani Shankar Aiyar and Ravi Shankar Prasad, moderated by Rahul Kanwal, Kejriwal looked extremely grumpy while Aiyar and Prasad behaved like consummate politicians.

     

    **

     

    And that’s the saddest news story of the week: Arvind Kejriwal has been forgotten and abandoned by the media which made him. He is just one more news story in a packed news cycle. He gets shifted from Page 1 to Page 15 and even more painful, he moves from being a 24-hour story to a scrolling line at the bottom of the TV screen.

     

    Sniff!

     

  • That Zee chairman Subhash Chandra has apparently been questioned for between seven and nine hours by the Delhi police, is surely not a common occurrence for high profile owners of media houses, notes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Our ‘News of the World’ moment?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Zee-Jindal case is certainly a watershed moment for the Indian media. Subhash Chandra, chairman of Zee, has apparently been questioned for between seven and nine hours by the Delhi police, surely not a common occurrence for high profile owners of media houses.

     

    The Zee group, apart from its packaging and entertainment interests, has the Zee news channels and newspaper DNA and rumoured to be in the market for Hindi daily Amar Ujala. During this questioning, Chandra was brought face to face with his jailed editors Sudhir Chaudhary and Samir Ahluwalia, both of whom have supposedly told the police that the management knew what they were up to. Chandra’s son Puneet Goenka however left after 20 minutes of questioning. Chandra walked out saying he was ready to sue Naveen Jindal.

     

    Most newspapers and news channels in India have not gone further than bland reporting of the case, except perhaps Tehelka, with managing editor Shoma Chaudhury writing an opinion piece calling this our “News of the World” moment: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main54.asp?filename=Op081212Editer_cut.asp

     

    Everyone in the media knows that something of the sort that Zee News has been alleged to be up to happens more frequently than the general public might imagine. Usually, however, in the English media at least, the deals are struck by marketing departments and not by editors themselves. The Hindi language media has been much maligned, not least in the documentary Brokering News. But it has to be clear that no one is really innocent.

     

    How the Indian media deals with the Zee case will be an indicator of how serious we are about ending the reign of practices like Medianet and paid news and whether journalists are happy just being management puppets. The temptations are many, no question about that but sooner or later, better sense has to prevail. The Indian media has been safe or maybe cocksure in the knowledge that India is a few decades aware from the challenges being faced by the counterparts in the West because of low literacy levels and low economic growth. But a complete loss of credibility will strip away that little security blanket. Do we want it to come to that pass?

     

    I cannot see that most media managements will be easy to convince. They have found a way to easy money and may use words like “credibility”, but one suspects that it’s just blah blah to most of them. Journalists will have to fight this one on their own.

     

    **

     

    It seems that something intriguing is happening in the coverage of the Gujarat elections. Suddenly, both commentators and reports from the ground no longer see a clean sweep for the incumbent Narendra Modi government. Stories about anger over electricity and water, particularly in the Kutch and Saurashtra areas, are now frequent. Well-known and respected commentator Urvish Kothari also questions in rediff.com whether Modi’s Gujarat-centric campaign will really help on the national stage – a transition he certainly aspires to. http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-gujarat-election-m-for-modi-is-m-for-mr-moneybag/20121207.htm

     

    When it comes to Modi however it is clear that whether the electorate is divided or not, the media certainly is. There are some journalists on social media who work as Modi’s PR people and some who most certainly do not!

     

    **

     

    A trip to Delhi brings up this observation: Delhi newspapers seem to be paying a lot more attention to city issues these days than they did in the past. Shades of Mumbai journalism rubbing off on our superior worthies in the national capital?

     

    All right, I retract my claws… for now.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own

     

  • Whether it's a rape or a robbery, the first instinct in India is to jump to whodunit before even figuring out what was done, notes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: TV journos must get info first, blame later

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    One more terrible school shooting in the US last Friday and the nation must have wanted answers but rather than hysterical screaming – on CNN at least – there was first only reporting on the incident. Somewhere TV journalists in India have to master the art of getting information first and apportioning blame later. Unfortunately, whether it’s a rape or a robbery, the first instinct in India is to jump to whodunit before even figuring out what was done. To be fair, when the Norway blast and killings happened, the venerable BBC made the same mistake. Soon after the incidents were first reported, the channel had experts on air telling us which Islamic terrorist group was responsible. Although it was smeared all over, the channel did not really admit that it had egg on its face when far right extremist Anders Breivik was caught.

     

    The difficulties for TV in reporting a live event are obvious. It was clear even from CNN’s reporting that it was making a conscious effort not to intrude on to people’s private grief – lessons learnt presumably after years of being frowned on by an angry audience. What was also evident is the important role played by local cable networks in providing initial reporting inputs. We still operate on a national scale in India although some language channels fulfill the local role.

     

    As far as the rest of the world was and is concerned, the America’s reluctance to submit itself to any gun control remains a topic of astonishment and debate in every forum.

     

    **

     

    In spite of all the predictions gone wrong as far as election opinion polls are concerned in India over the last decade, every TV channel and pollster jumped into the act as voting in the Gujarat assembly elections drew to a close. So depending on who you believe, incumbent chief minister Narendra Modi is going to win by a massive majority to a middling majority to a tiny majority. Talk about covering your bases.

     

    **

     

    The arrival and subsequent pronouncements of Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik sent Indian television into a tizzy. Why is he here, what is he saying, why is he saying what he’s saying, does he mean what he’s saying, do we know why he’s saying what he’s saying, do we believe what he’s saying, do we want him here at all, what would we eat for breakfast if he wasn’t here and so on.

     

    It’s a little early for yearender awards, but the understatement of the year has to go to academic Radha Kumar on I forget which TV channel for informing us that India and Pakistan have had a turbulent relationship for years. What can one say but thank you for enlightening us?

     

    **

     

    Newspapers come late in Dehra Dun so am looking forward to reading the obituaries of Indian cricket after India lost its first series at home to England after 4000 years. Assuming the world doesn’t end on December 21, I predict that after the One Day series with Pakistan and England, we may be singing a song less like a funeral dirge.

     

  • The formula of "one BJP, one Congress, two lawyers" for every single subject of discussion is getting tedious, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Tedious TV discussions

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    I usually dislike Piers Morgan on CNN. He seems Uriah Heepish in his manner as he sucks up to Americans and doubly so if his guests happen to be celebrities. He also has a tendency to try and be American and during elections will say “us” and “we” to his guests. But after the Oregon mall shooting and then the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Morgan found that “us” and “we” didn’t quite work for him any more and his discourse became about “you” and “me’. He even went to the extent of telling one gun-happy guest that this was his show and the guest had better stop speaking!

     

    He has fought bitterly with gun lobbies and berated America for its need to bear arms as well as trotted out stats about how the rest of the world – including his native Britain – managed without nine guns in every household. If Morgan was tough after Oregon, he was absolutely furious after Connecticut.

     

    Of course, one can understand Morgan’s disgust and it is quite incredible how the American media has also sidestepped around this gun control issue in spite of the heart-breaking regularity of gun-related violence in that country.

     

    **

     

    The terrible incident this week in Delhi where a girl was gang-raped on a bus and she and her boyfriend beaten up, stripped and thrown off the bus, has filled the whole nation with despair. However it is difficult to see how TV debates on this subject are necessary. What can anyone possibly say that it is not anodyne, platitudinous, outraged or has not been said before? Little fruitful is gained from these discussions and if guests shout over each other – which is common – it trivialises the incident.

     

    It perhaps makes more sense for TV anchors to interview those in charge and those who can shed some further light on the issue. For instance, talk to the police over slow and shoddy investigations, lawyers over the slow legal system and sociologists on how to improve gender relations and activists on their experiences.

     

    Also, the formula of “one BJP, one Congress, two lawyers” for every single subject of discussion is getting tedious. One understands that India is short of experts – and years of working on edit pages of newspapers has hardened this viewpoint – but all that means is that a little more hard work is required to dig up fresh, informed voices.

     

    **

     

    The prank call by two radio jockeys in Australia which led to the suicide of an Indian nurse in the UK raises several questions for the media. Yes, pranks are fun and yes, a sense of humour is an excellent way to get through life without taking it too seriously. But this prank – the two RJs mimicked Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles to get information on Kate nee Middleton now Duchess of Cornwall’s condition after she was admitted to hospital after complaining of morning sickness.

     

    The nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, took the first call and passed it on to the nurse on duty who gave out the details. In her suicide notes, Saldanha blamed both the RJs and the hospital authorities.

     

    The trouble is that pranks usually work when they target someone famous and when they do not divulge too deep into personal details. This prank failed on both counts. The RJs could not have foreseen Saldanha’s suicide but the radio station could have foreseen that such a call would put the jobs of those who spoke to them at risk. Had they called Queen Elizabeth and made fun of her that would have been another matter. But it should have been clear that the only victims here would be the nurses.

     

    One can only advise senior editors to frown upon schoolboy pranks masquerading as journalism. The BBC incident springs to mind here.  Comedian Russell Brand and TV host Jonathan Ross called character actor Andrew Sachs (best known for playing Manuel in the comedy series Fawlty Towers) and told him how Brand had slept with his granddaughter. Needless, insulting and not really that funny at all and certainly Ross paid the price for it.

     

    eom

     

     

  • As elections results unfurled through the day on TV, we had political naivete, manufactured outrage, pink and green shirts and surprisingly, even some insight

    Ranjona Banerji: Headlines Today tops Modi discussions while Arnab Goswami tires us

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    To my absolute surprise (I can be charged with “misunderestimating” here), the better discussions on the assembly election results on Thursday evening happened on Headlines Today – barring of course Rajya Sabha TV which lives up to its reputation of being above the rest. Between Shiv Vishwanathan, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Seshadri Chari, Ashok Malik and Vir Sanghvi, moderated by Rahul Shiv Shankar, you had a lively and sometimes funny discussion on Narendra Modi’s third term, with some insights as well.

     

    Arnab Goswami’s excitement and his various poses of offence and defence are starting to get very tired now. His ruse of taking a position and then manipulating or browbeating everyone else around him is so transparent as to be ineffective. His political sense is not as finely honed as his finger on the pulse of how to save the nation and this means Times Now suffers when the subject is politics. Put Goswami at the helm of a discussion about gang-rape and he is bound to win because you feel his pain and feel that he articulates your anger. If the subject is politics itself however and the lack of depth is evident – much as understanding politics requires any depth at all, perhaps all you need is a feel for the iniquity of human character!

     

    On NDTV, there was Barkha Dutt in a pink top in the morning and Barkha Dutt in a green top in the evening. Prannoy Roy, who invented election results broadcasting as far as India is concerned (introduced us to the word ‘psephology’) was nowhere to be seen. Why a channel should hide its trump card is inexplicable.

     

    CNNIBN was its solid self – neither terrible nor extraordinary. This may be all right in normal conditions but election results require a little more fire perhaps.

     

    Hardly anyone, it must be admitted, focused much on how the exit polls went a bit wonky – as they always do. (Although on Friday morning, Hindustan Times had a story on that.)

     

    **

     

    Together with Narendra Modi’s hat-trick in Gujarat, TV channels did not forget the gang-rape victims and gave us occasional updates. However the fracas in the Lok Sabha over the quota promotions bill with the House being adjourned many times seemed to be forgotten.

     

    TV’s recurring problem is lack of depth. Every time some BJP leader said that Modi’s hat-trick was historic as being the first ever in human history, no anchor or reporter managed to correct them. Even Rajdeep Sardesai of CNNIBN almost made the same mistake but then quickly changed his sentence. His channel through the day told us that Modi first came to power in Gujarat in 1998, when it was in fact in October 2001 (sent to replace Keshubhai Patel after debacle over earthquake rehab), won a by-poll in February 2002 and the assembly elections in 2002. One has to thank The Times of India for giving us a box on all the chief ministers who have managed more than three terms throughout human history. It’s a long list as it happens and Jyoti Basu of West Bengal tops it with five terms!

     

    What did get forgotten more or less was Himachal Pradesh as Modi towered over the news and the discussions all day and night on TV. Perhaps there was nothing to say?

     

    **

     

    In their editorials, The Times of India, Hindu and Hindustan Times all dealt with Modi’s victory. TOI pointed out that his Hindutva image would be a problem for his all India ambitions even if his achievements in Gujarat are formidable. The Hindu did not focus on Hindutva so much as on how Modi’s authoritarianism alienates many within his party and its larger family and polarises his voters. Hindustan Times focused on how the Congress did not put up a leader to combat Modi’s enormous presence.

     

    **

     

    Since I have managed to write this, I can only assume the world has not ended yet or that December 21 2012 was not so much the end of the world for the Mayans but one more Mayajal!

     

  • It's hardly the government's problem that TV channels sometimes display signs of immaturity or that coverage can get skewed or events magnified, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Big Brother I&B

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Information and Broadcasting ministry has started behaving like the Ministry of Magic under the influence of Voldemort. In a note to TV channels, the ministry has said that some channels have not been showing “due responsibility and maturity” in covering the post gang-rape protests in New Delhi and that “this telecast is likely to cause deterioration in the law & order situation, hindering the efforts of the law enforcing authorities”.

     

    We all know that TV channels sometimes display signs of immaturity or that coverage can get skewed or events magnified. But that is hardly the government’s problem. Of course, all that happened in the non-stop coverage of the Delhi protests for five days was that the ruling government’s ineptitude was exposed. Sheila Dixit, chief minister of Delhi, may belong to the Congress but she was quick to shift the blame for the police’s behaviour to the lieutenant-governor of Delhi and by implication to the Centre.

     

    The Delhi protests and the excessive force used by the police have turned out to be a public relations disaster for the UPA. It is telling that one of its responses has been to issue a warning to TV channels to behave better. How TV channels behave and do not behave is a subject for the viewer to deal with and for any transgressions of perceived behaviour, there is the National Broadcasters’ Association and other such bodies. The government does itself no favours by behaving like Big Brother. It is interesting that this note comes after Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar blamed the way the media had handled the protests to Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN-IBN.

     

    This is not the first time that the UPA government has tried to muzzle dissent or disagreement. It is a testament to the power of television that the government finds its criticism so unpalatable. What seems incredible is that once more it has succumbed to knee-jerk tactics which can only come back to bite it in the posterior. Revealing its insecurities in this manner only make it easy fodder for the media as the ruling coalition approaches the next general elections.

     

    And as for the media, how did it indeed cover these protests? Did it go overboard? Possibly. Did it forget all about news in general as it concentrated on one event? Yes. Did studio discussions descend into incomprehensible chatter as they progressed? So what’s new about that?

     

    Those problems remain with TV coverage. Headlines Today this time decided to be with the “people” and display all the immaturity available to it. “Where is Rahul Gandhi” and “Why is the moon waxing” were questions which were a diversion from the very serious issue of rape, male attitudes and policing. NDTV tried to be balanced but Barkha Dutt as usual used the emotional route. Arnab Goswami seemed to be missing in action so Times Now did not thunder and declaim as usual. CNN-IBN was sometimes balanced, sometimes carried away by the crowd dynamics.

     

    It is also true however that so many things were happening at the protests and around the riots that what to focus on would have been a very tough choice. Was it rape itself, was the public anger, was it the government’s bizarre responses, was it the Delhi police’s self-congratulatory stance, was it about punishment or the judicial system? In all these questions, by reacting as events progressed rather than working out a strategy, TV channels did seem a little confused. But TV in India is not a medium which makes for meaningful discussion and we all know that. Little that happened seemed to justify a finger-wagging note from the Information and Broadcasting minister.

     

    **

     

    The funniest tweet going around was that Sachin Tendulkar announced his retirement from ODIs to deflect attention from the Delhi protests. As conspiracy theories go this was out there and if true, it didn’t work!

     

    **

     

    Some newspaper articles stood out. Anup Surendranath wrote in the Hindu on how castration as a punishment for rape will not work: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/castration-is-not-the-right-legal-response/article4232547.ece?homepage=true

    Salil Tripathi had a very moving piece in Mint on men and rape: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/zuZTj0Tz2F02tFsRznUn4H/Delhi-outrage-We-are-the-enemy.html

    Flavia Agnes looked at how the police and judicial system deal with rape in Asian Age: http://www.asianage.com/columnists/rape-death-349

    And Ayaz Memon put the Delhi rape and the government response succinctly and insightfully in the Mumbai context for his weekly column in the Mumbai edition of Hindustan Times: http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Women-unsafe-We-are-all-to-blame/Article1-979988.aspx

     

    Ranjona Banerji is Contributing Editor, MxMIndia and a senior journalist and commentator. The views expressed here are her own

     

  • Ranjona Banerji salutes Times Now's Arnab Goswami as the most vocal defender of women's rights

    Ranjona Banerji: All Hail Arnab Goswami, the Dragon Slayer!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The media behaves like a doggie when it gets a subject that it can really get its little teeth into. You know (or perhaps you don’t) the routine: dog finds scrap of paper, a sock, your homework, the dining table and decides it belongs to him or her. It then throws it about, growls at it, drools all over it, picks it up again, rips it a bit and then hides it in a secret place. Sometimes, if the object is a bone, the doggie will gnaw at for days and woebetide anyone who tries to take it away.

     

    That is how the media behaved with Abhijit Mukherjee, Congress MP and son of the President of India Pranab Mukherjee for his astonishingly sexist remarks about the female protestors that gathered in Delhi after that terrible gang rape of December 16. Once the clip of Mukherjee’s “highly dented and painted” phrase went viral on Youtube and social media on Thursday morning, could the TV channels be far behind? Here it is, in Bengali however: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmw0XBvTW78

     

    Mukherjee initially put up some resistance but that only made it worse and it was quite funny listening to him trying to answer Arnab Goswami’s question about whether beautiful women should not be allowed to protest or students should not wear make-up.

     

    By the evening however, Headlines Today told us that Mukherjee had got a rap on the knuckles from daddy and his sister was breathing fire at her brother’s foolishness anyway. So now Mukherjee was all contrite and woebegone as all he would say is that he was very sorry and he withdrew his remarks. Nidhi Razdan’s face as she tried to figure out what “dented and painted” meant was a scream. For the record, it is an expression commonly used by car workshops to advertise their services: They repair dents in cars and paint them. I have never, I confess, used it to describe women before.

     

    But it was on the Newshour that male chauvinism got its finest vanquisher. I have seen Goswami on women’s rights before and he is intractable and brooks no opposition. A finer champion of women’s rights I have rarely seen and I am not being snarky here. That strange man who is so popular on TV channels for some reason, Rahul Eshwar, stuck his foot in his mouth soon after the programme started. Goswami promptly stopped his chauvinistic regressive rubbish, told him he didn’t know what he was talking about and ignored him after that. He once more castigated Mukherjee for his denigration of women who by this time wouldn’t even look at the camera and soon ran away.

     

    Rahul Navrekar and he got into a side-splitting spat in which Goswami was at his sarcastic best. He made short shrift of Vani Tripathi of the BJP who would not answer his question about Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s sexist comments made four years ago about lipsticked and powdered women protesting on the streets after the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. The only people who got a sympathetic hearing from Goswami were Brinda Grover (who demolished all male superiority and political arguments with refreshingly old-style feminism), Umang Sabharwal (who started the Slutwalk which so upset Eshwar’s male sensibilities) and Roshan Abbas who said all the right things about gender equality.

     

    The Abhijit Mukherjee episode once again demonstrates to our politicians and other worthies that the technological revolution means that little is secret or hidden any more. You can’t run, you can’t hide and you have to be clear that sooner or later, that doggie is going to get you!

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the coverage of the Delhi gangrape on news television and newspapers and gives her verdict on what worked and what didn't

    Ranjona Banerji: Arnab – the mascot for the new feminist movement?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The protests and the aftermath of the Delhi gangrape continued to be top focus for television news and for some extent, newspapers as well. This included some amount of “soul-searching” on the media’s responses to the events as they unfolded, especially on Rajdeep Sardesai’s CNN-IBN. I found it most intriguing that on Sunday night, he included TV news in the category of “creative media”. Is that a Freudian slip or perhaps just an honest appraisal of the way TV news channels see themselves? Even if print journalists are sometimes accused of embroidering stories I cannot imagine a senior newspaper person admitted to “creativity”. Something of a bad word in my day but then that was a while ago.

     

    However, Sardesai did try to have a meaningful discussion on his channel’s “agenda for change” theme. Since there were no representatives from political parties, the discussion did not turn into a melee. CNN-IBN is sometimes more professional in the way it covers news than its competitors but it also seems afraid to take on a subject head on.

     

    Headlines Today continued with its somewhat breathless coverage, looking to create excitement and manufacture rage. Sometimes it is spot on and sometimes it remembers that is started as “smart news for smart people”. It can however be commended for the exposure it gave to the Shambhavi Saxena story – how Twitter was used to expose police arrogance.

     

    NDTV is a sort of schizophrenic channel trying to be sober and grown up sometimes and emotionally charged at others – especially when Barkha Dutt shows up. She was not on ‘We the People’ for some reason although she appeared to have been on Twitter in the weekend, judging from the number of retweets.

     

    Arnab Goswami wins hands down again for his reading of the pulse of the people and his championing of women’s rights. On Saturday – he had to make up for being absent on some key days – he once again took down the men on the channel who seemed to be sexist or who tried to obfuscate the issue with some political waffle. At this rate, he could be made the mascot of the new feminist movement which is emerging.

     

    **

     

    The Hindu took on the government and patriarchy in a front page edit on Sunday. Newspapers have taken this post-rape protest far more seriously than they took the Anna Hazare-Arvind Kejriwal led anti-corruption movement and with good reason. This protest may be smaller in numbers on the ground but it is about the repression of and violence to half of India’s population.

     

    All the columns in the Sunday Times – Swapan Dasgupta, Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, MJ Akbar – took different looks at the protests but all had very telling insights. Sidharth Bhatia in Outlook examines at the year of protests and how and why they fell apart. Ayaz Memon in the Mumbai edition of Monday’s Hindustan Times reflected on how this was not a year to be proud of. Indeed.

     

    **

     

    Two things I could not understand. One is the need to give the Delhi gangrape victim a series of invented names, monickers, tags: Amanat, Damini, Nirbhaya and Braveheart, India’s Daughter and so on. It all sounds contrived, like an attempt to draw maximum tear value out of her death. The profusion of names and labels also confuses people and will lead to the victim herself being forgotten.

     

    The other is the self-congratulation by TV new channels on not showing the girl’s funeral. Please.

     

  • The patriotic hysteria drummed up every night borders on irresponsibility. The world is not yet, I reckon, run from TV studios, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Much ado about cross-border skirmishes

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Back in Mumbai after six weeks, I suddenly have to get used to reading newspapers early in the morning. On the outskirts of Dehra Dun where I have been, the newspapers don’t arrive till around noon. Often they are “dak” editions and this means that some of the news is more than a day old. In the days of 24-hour television news and the internet, it is difficult to justify this kind of arrogance for “mufussil” areas on the part of newspapers any more. One understands the difficulties of printing and travel but some thinking and perhaps use of technology needs to be done.

     

    Meanwhile, I find myself missing the appropriately named Garhwal Post and the somewhat strangely named Himachal Times for a local Uttarakhand newspaper. The Post is a tabloid and it takes the business of newspapering very seriously. In its 18 to 20 pages, it manages to fit in serious national news, editorials, columns, local news, international news, entertainment, features and sports. In fact, it is a potted version of a larger newspaper and you really don’t feel like you’re missing out on much. The editorials are not always local either but present an excellent world view. The columns also deal with local and larger issues and very popular is the “tips” section where you learn that soaked nigella seeds help with indigestion and stuff like that.

     

    The Himachal Times on the other hand prides itself on the small stories – “Car parked on Rajpur Road for three hours creates panic”. English is often conspicuous in its absence, making sometimes for a very enjoyable read.

     

    The Times of India and Hindustan Times also have Doon supplements which are soft-feature driven and the TOI supplement at least comes from the Response editorial department. Production qualities are better but I would read the Garhwal Post over either of them anyday! The Hindu sends the Jaipur edition to Dehra Dun so you learn all about Jaipur.

     

    Amar Ujala used to be the top Hindi newspaper but with the arrival of Dainik Jagran, everyone else seems to have been shaken up a bit. Hindustan has some mentions, especially for its entertainment section which one supposes is the power of Bollywood.

     

    **

     

    Here in Mumbai, it is business as usual. The Times of India goes blanket, the Hindustan Times gives you focus, Mid-Day looks at the city and Indian Express has its own spin. I have still not felt the need to exchange The Economic Times for Mumbai Mirror so all I know is that Pooja Bhatt is very angry with Mirror, via Twitter!

     

    **

     

    But the difference between Times Now and The Times of India over the current border tension is intriguing. It has been commented on before but it remains a subject of discussion. There’s the “Aman ki Asha” Times of India campaign running for a couple of years now and there’s the extremely provocative stance taken by Times Now and Arnab Goswami. The cynic tells us that this is part of some Bennett Coleman conspiracy to cover every angle, but I wonder.

     

    It would be interesting to know however whether our news channels really think it is necessary for India and Pakistan to go to war over cross-border skirmishes. The sort of patriotic hysteria being drummed up every night itself borders on irresponsibility. You read the newspapers and you get news. But you watch television and you get a constant barrage of petulant questions seeking some sort of public apologies and declarations from both sides. The world is not yet, I reckon, run from TV studios.

     

    **

     

    Without taking away from the pain of a brutal death, I am slightly squeamish about calling every soldier who has been killed a “martyr”. The horror of having an army with soldiers is that death is written into the employment contract. A martyr has a very specific definition of someone who has sacrificed himself for a greater cause. Harsh as it may sound, we pay members of the armed forces money to die on our behalf. There is a difference and sentimentality cannot change that.

     

    Conversely however, it is heartening that the death of a jawan is causing so much pain since foot soldiers are usually forgotten in the battles of fat cat generals and the use of such unsightly terms like “friendly fire” and “collateral damage”.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are her own