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 primetime news and in the papers the morning after

    Freaking News: Enough of Team Anna’s high-handed ways

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    There is no greater joy for the newsperson than when you can successfully create a controversy out of very little. So first you have a demand for India’s highest civilian award to be given to India’s great cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. This continues for some years and every time the awards are about to announced, we have breathless speculation on TV about whether Tendulkar is going to get it this year or not. Where TV goes, can the rest of the media be far behind? Experts and fans all have their say. I have no idea what Tendulkar himself thinks; I don’t even know if anyone bothered to ask him or if he deigned to answer. Tendulkar’s views are insignificant here. It’s all about we the people.

     

    Now it turns out that sportspersons were never eligible anyway. So the law is changed to allow sportspersons and entertainers. And immediately, we are in the middle of another controversy. Whether sportspersons and entertainers are deserving or not, whether Sachin is deserving or not, should Dhyanchand get it before Sachin… here we go again.

     

    **

     

    MxmIndia is going into yearender mode, the results of which will be up soon. I am surprised to see that newspapers and magazines are waiting so long though – I would have expected precursors by now. The world has become so fast that usually we celebrate Diwali at Ganpati and Christmas at Diwali! Newsx is doing a countdown of the biggest news stories of the year, so look like someone somewhere has been looking at the calendar.

     

    **

     

    The situation in Egypt seems to be getting worse, as protestors continue expressing their outrage against the military establishment. Indian news however does not see the conflict in the Middle East as more than a story on the international pages and TV is hard-pressed to fit it in between Anna Hazare and Katrina Kaif’s childhood diet. I heard all about it this morning, I kid you not!

     

    **

     

    The fight over a version of the Gita being banned in Siberia gave TV a wonderful opportunity to pull out its ultra-nationalistic flag. But all interested parties have been foiled in fascinating ways. The Russian ambassador promptly damned the banning. The Yadav-run parties created a bigger ruckus over the issue than the Hindutva-based parties. And the Government of India stated that it had been on the case from Day One. Talk about destroying one more round of nation-wide hysteria.

     

    **

     

    We will know later today the latest on the Lokpal-Anna Hazare soap opera, so I’m leaving that till tomorrow. But here’s from an Indian Express edit on the anti-corruption campaign, “The point is, given what we know of them, Team Anna must not be allowed to set the terms any more. They do not own the cause of the Lokpal or that of integrity in public life. The upcoming debate must consider the bill on its own terms, without heeding the chants from Hazare’s crowds.”

     

    I have a request to add to that sentiment: can the TVwallahs please not exaggerate the crowds and pretend that a gathering of 50,000 people is the same as 50 million?

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and in the papers the morning after

    How HC took the wind out of our channels’ sails

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Bombay High Court sort of took the wind out of the sails of not just the Anna Hazare movement, but also our excitable TV channels. Suddenly, their high-pitched pro-Hazare campaigns had to deal with a court questioning the motives of this save-India hysteria.

     

    The best way out was to just sidestep the issue, so Times Now went further into the reservation issue, plus an interview with Justice JS Verma who supports it, Headlines Today dwelt on the court a bit but concentrated on the now-tedious arguments between India Against Corruption activists and others, NDTV interviewed Arvind Kejriwal and so on.

     

    The newspapers, however, did not restrain themselves, except perhaps The Times of India, whose headline on Saturday was a staid: “Allowing agitation may be akin to meddling with House affairs: HC”. Compare this with Hindustan Times: “After HC snub, Anna blames team” or The Telegraph,Calcutta: “Team Anna gets a lesson in democracy” or Deccan Chronicle,Hyderabad: “Team Anna earns sharp rebuke from Bombay High Court”. Mid-Day, surprisingly, did not have it on the front page. It was, after all, a Mumbai story.

     

    The Bombay High Court indeed pointed out that it could not grant concessions to the movement as it was not convinced that this was a people’s movement and an endorsement by the court would be tantamount to the judiciary interfering with Parliamentary procedure.

     

    The judges said, “How is country’s interest involved? We are a democratic set up. We have elected a government. Wouldn’t your agitation interfere in the functioning of Parliament? The bill will be debated in Parliament where our elected representatives will plead our case.”

     

    Mani Shankar Aiyar was quick to point out that the point made by the court was too sophisticated for Anna Hazare’s followers to understand! Interestingly, Anna Hazare and his followers were sensible enough to refrain from attacking the court for being anti-people or anti-democracy.

     

    The flip-flop on accepting donations by Anna Hazare (first no and now that they need the money, yes) was also downplayed by The Times of India but not by others.

     

    Hindustan Times also carries a story about how an anti-Jan Lokpal agitation is now going on at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan, with activists, celebrities and journalists taking part. Perhaps this is democracy at work? Agitations against agitations?

     

    * * *

    Three edit pages pieces were well worth reading on Saturday morning. Jay Panda, MP, argued cogently for small “tweaks” in our current Parliamentary system to make it more up-to-date, while dismissing arguments for a change to the presidential system in The Times of India.

     

    Ramchandra Guha, historian, talked about how exasperated he has been in 2011 by Anna Hazare and his followers, the BJP and the government in Hindustan Times.

     

    And the piece de resistance was by Shekhar Gupta, editor of Indian Express, on the caste dynamics in corruption cases inIndia. He makes a compelling argument for the way in which the system is loaded against lower castes and religious minorities, in corruption and criminal cases – with examples. He also points out that our upper castes and classes are the most prejudiced section of society.

     

    Thought-provoking and definitely a must-read.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and in the papers the morning after

    Anna’s RSS links and TV’s outrage

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    As was expected, the India-Australia Boxing Day Test match has started dominating TV news bulletins. This is not to suggest that Anna Hazare and the anti-corruption movement will be replaced by cricket – shame on me for even hinting at that – but it does mean that TV producers will have to do some juggling.

     

    However there is a chance that if anything controversial happens on the field, well… This is after all an India-Australia series and judging from a quick peek that I had this morning, the crowds are in…

     

    Newspapers, of course, do not have the same problems. They have the space and the wisdom gained through reflection and time to pick and choose. Cricket will find its place, as will Hazare and a whole lot of other stuff.

     

    * * *

     

    I was fascinated to see that NewsX chose to broadcast Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve live, from various services across India. Equally, to watch the Queen of England’s Christmas message on Al-Jazeera. This could be addressing niche audiences or a refusal to patronise viewers by segmenting them into tight demographic categories as determined by a marketing department.

     

    * * *

     

    Nai Duniya carried a story this weekend about Anna Hazare’s links to the RSS with proof of his association with Nanaji Deshmukh and a joint collaboration they did on village affairs. This, naturally enough, outraged TV anchors. Even the NewsX anchor – the channel is affiliated to the newspaper – found that he had to practically interrogate the editor of Nai Duniya on this ‘sacrilegious’ story. Like so many print journalists, the editor was unrepentant and unfazed. His story was not based on allegation but on fact.

     

    Very oddly, after that – and including in Monday’s papers – the story was presented as a Congress allegation on Hazare and was sourced to a tweet by Hazare-baiter Digvijay Singh.

     

    Is this journalistic laziness or a reluctance to credit Nai Duniya? After all, whoever looked for Singh’s tweet could just have easily have Googled Nai Duniya!

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and the papers, the morning after

    Print exposes Anna’s ‘barren’ truth

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    “Mumbai slow to Anna’s fast” said a front page headline in Mid-Day and that puts it succinctly. Hindustan Times, in its Mumbai edition, went with “Team Anna finds Mumbai cold, too” on page 2, nodding to both the fact that Tuesday was Mumbai’s coldest December day in 19 years as well as the reason for shifting the agitation from Delhi to Mumbai.

     

    But that wasn’t the news of the day, as it happened. First it seemed it might be Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th 100, but then he got out at 73. After that, it was all about the debate in the Lok Sabha over the passing of the Lokpal Bill. Of course, bolstered by the knowledge that the whole country was with the India Against Corruption agitation at the MMRDA grounds in Mumbai, the Ramlila grounds inDelhiand all over the country, TV channels promised us non-stop coverage.

     

    Unfortunately for all the time and money spent, not enough people showed up, either in Mumbai orDelhi. Unlike earlier times where TV cameras would concentrate on a small group and reporters would tell us that thousands had come, this time cameras ruthlessly panned empty grounds.

     

    So how many people showed up? The Times of India gave it a generous 10,000 to 15,000. Times Now and Newsx said about 10,000 at its peak, 4,000 through the day and 1,000 by the evening. The Hindustan Times quoted the police figures of about 5,000 as well as India Against Corruption figures of 30,000. The last is possibly wishful thinking and by the evening on TV, crestfallen youth were telling us that this agitation isn’t about numbers at all. This is somewhat at odds with Arvind Kejriwal’s earlier statement that the whole country was with them and if Aruna Roy could gather a group of 50,000, then she could push the government for her bill.

     

    * * *

     

    Of course, it is left to newspaper commentators to call Anna Hazare’s core team for their somewhat offensive language, since the cacophony on TV makes criticism very difficult. Hindustan Times has to be commended, for calling out Anna Hazare himself on his remark that “barren women cannot know the pain of childbirth”. The word “banjh” is a derogatory in most Indian languages and characterises the sort of insensitive language that is common usage in societies where sensitivity for the less unfortunate is unheard of.

     

    In an aside, it was amusing to observe the absolute silence of the Mumbaikars present when Hazare held forth on the importance of village politics in his speech. One can imagine the youth scratching their heads wondering what on earth he could mean.

     

    * * *

     

    The Lok Sabha debates and the confusion of whether the Constitutional amendment had been passed kept our TV anchors and studio guests busy till midnight. Luckily the Rajya Sabha was adjourned on Wednesday morning so the further passage of the bill is now delayed till tomorrow. The shortage of Constitutional experts available for TV consumption was felt very strongly on Tuesday.

     

    * * *

     

    Cricket was back in the spotlight and there is now also space for the apparent reconciliation between the two Ambani brothers.

     

    * * *

     

    For a change, the Rendezvous interviews conducted by Zainab Badawi on BBC News are quite refreshing. Guests range from Annie Lennox to Richard Dawkins to Michelle Yeoh, so the conversation is varied.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the content on news television and the morning papers

    2011 ends with a whimper

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    After all the drama of 2011, it ended with a bit of a whimper, news-wise. It was like a news hangover, where the first day of the year doesn’t quite live up to the excitement built up the day before. So after the fall of Hosni Mobarak, the death of Osama Bin Laden, the end of Muammar Ghadafi, the rise and dip in the fortunes of Anna Hazare, the suspended animation of the Lokpal Bill, the winning of the cricket World Cup, the Indian Test collapse in England, the 100th 100 that never happened, 2011 went away quietly. And 2012 just about crept it.

     

    TV channels took a well deserved weekend holiday. After all, the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha arguments – oops, sorry, debates – over the Lokpal Bill kept everyone up through the night for several nights in the last week of the year. Our star anchors were saving and serving the nation long beyond their normal working hours as they assessed the situation for their viewers or repeated whatever their reporters said, whichever was applicable at the time.

     

    Weekend news TV therefore was a medley of old film songs and some the-year-that- was programming, which also included plenty of songs though not necessarily old. The news that the prime minister was greeted by black flags in Amritsar ran a full 24 hour news cycle. Monday morning’s newspapers just nodded at this information.

     

    **

     

    Weekend newspapers took us through the year with images and reminder and trends for the future but it was a bit lacklustre, a been-there-done-that nod to print traditions.
    By Monday morning, it was back to news as usual and the economy was back in business. Mumbai celebrated New Year’s Eve quietly and with better behaviour than before. A mob molested a girl in Gurgaon, says the Hindustan Times, and the police had to do a lathi-charge to get matters under control. There were also deaths in the national capital, unlike Mumbai which also saw a drop in drunk-driving cases.

     

    **

     

    Cricket is also back in the headlines as the second Test match in Australia is ready to get underway and hopes and dreams start rising again.

     

    **

     

    In a sense, the wishy-washy end to the Lokpal bill has sort of dampened enthusiasm. The movement itself petered out, Anna Hazare has been hospitalised and the future of the bill seems shaky. This has left a huge void which is yet to be filled.

     

    In 2012, will the media find a new cause or will it be back to the boring task of making do with the news as it happens?

    Hmmmmm.

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the content on news television and the morning papers

    No discretionary quotas for journalists please

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The story of the day, on Tuesday, January 3, as far as the media is concerned is the front page expose by The Indian Express, headlined: “Meant for ‘distressed’, Orissa plot quota goes to babus, judges, journalists”. The strap below reads: “Row leads to CM scrapping discretionary land or house allotments last month”.

     

    The upshot is that a system of patronage was established in 1985 by the JB Patnaik government to allot houses or land for “the dependent of a person who has made a supreme sacrifice for the nation, but has not been properly rehabilitated so far; member of a family who has been a victim of unforeseen circumstances (terrorist attack, earthquake, flood etc); physically handicapped person…” The categories go on to include police, military, paramilitary and government employees permanently disabled on duty, the families of those who lost their lives in abnormal circumstances as well as eminent professionals, sportspeople, artists, literary figures and women of “high achievement in distress’ and individual cases of extreme hardship.

     

    After this, the beneficiaries appear to have been ministers, bureaucrats, judges and journalists. A scandal where a minister okayed the allotment of two houses to the family of another led Naveen Patnaik to abolish this discretionary quota.

     

    The story, does not tell us how many distressed, disabled people in extreme hardship actually got any land or houses, but it does list the journalists who benefited.

    http://www.indianexpress.com/news/meant-for-distressed-orissa-plot-quota-goes-to-babus-judges-journalists/895060/

     

    This raises a very serious question for journalists everywhere, many of whom have profited under similar schemes elsewhere in the country. The Express story, while naming benefiting politicians and so on has broken the covenant of silence on journalistic transgressions by printing the names of the lucky journalists and the minister under whose discretion they got so lucky. The names belong to several media houses and some are familiar.

     

    One journalist has defended his allotment, pointing out that when he got his plot in 1997, the scheme was legal. He also said that other journalists had lied that they had no other properties – a requirement of this lucky dip system.

     

    The question here is of something else. To what extent can journalists be objective in their reporting/covering/editing/commenting on government affairs if they benefit from government schemes and awards? Does acceptance of such largesse come under the tag of corruption or just luck? Is objecting to such acceptance an expression of self-righteousness or sour grapes?

     

    The profession of journalism has been under the scanner recently for a number of not very salubrious reasons. This is one more criticism which ought to stick. Paid news campaigns as orchestrated by media houses is totally reprehensible. But so is the custom of individual journalists accepting what cannot be called gifts but will have to be seen as bribes which compromise not only their integrity but that of all their fellows.

     

    The Indian Express has done the profession a great service by printing the names of journalists who are beneficiaries. If we are to fight both media corruption and paid news, then the only way is for us to become each other’s watchdogs. We cannot be sanctimonious about everyone else but ignore our own transgressions.

     

    The way The Hindu exposed the Hindustan Times on its story on infant gender changes in Indore or The Guardian has been relentlessly attacking News of the World and others on phone-hacking, is it time for Indian journalists to stop applying the discretionary quota to each other?

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the content on news television and the morning papers

    Electoral politics or keeping people happy

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The poor BJP must be quaking in its shoes. There it was, happily chugging along on its collision course with the Congress over corruption and the government’s inept handling of the Lokpal Bill. And then, wham! India’s star TV anchors have turned against the party for a little transgression – nothing more the usual games played in electoral politics.

     

    But were Arnab Goswami and Rahul Shivshankar of Times Now and Newsx, to name just two, willing on Wednesday night to accept that election compulsions made strange bedfellows? Of course not – by admitting Babu Singh Kushwaha, recently chucked out of the Bahujan Samaj Party by Mayawati on corruption charges, the BJP had walked into indefensible territory. In television land, at least, where no person is too unlikely to be made into a saint if an anchor desires it and what goes up can also come down.

     

    On Times Now Meenakshi Lekhi screamed in defence of the BJP and though Goswami gave her time enough, he did not accept her explanation that the Congress was more corrupt or that Kushwaha was admitted into the BJP to help with the elections and not because there were corruption charges against him and that the Congress was also to blame for the CBI filing charges against Kushwaha.

     

    On Newsx Dr CP Thakur was far more subtle and distinctly un-hysterical as he provided the cynical explanation for the BJP – this was the way things were done during elections. You looked for the caste and community politicians to push your party’s case forward. Like Goswami, Shivshankar was also unsympathetic.

     

    They both refused to accept that politics was a dirty game, in spite of what everyone else said. The BJP, they said, had sworn to fight corruption. LK Advani, they said, had gone on a rath yatra against corruption. The BJP had supported Anna Hazare and the anti-corruption movement. And now the BJP had taken into its fold a man sacked by Mayawati on corruption charges and they were supposed to accept it as part of electoral politics? Never!

     

    If I were the BJP, which depends a lot on TV to keep its middle class supporters happy, I would be scared. Is winning UP more important that losing the hearts and minds of middle India which watches TV news? I wonder.

     

    **

     

    Newsx and Shivshankar went a step further than Times Now and put Anna Hazare’s committee in the dock as well. Mayank Gandhi tried to explain how Team Anna (which is what it calls itself now) was not looking at individual cases but systemic change, although it condemned the BJP. This was not good enough for Shivshankar and definitely not for Team Anna supporter and former bureaucrat Arun Bhatia who slammed Gandhi for being mealy-mouthed in his condemnation and his explanation.

     

    To make matters worse, on Thursday morning, Headlines Today carried a detailed report on the rifts within Team Anna over the Mumbai fiasco and support to the BJP.

     

    **

     

    One small sliver of hope for the BJP and Team Anna is newspapers are still slightly more balanced. And the only thing that can save them is if the eagle eye of our anchors shifts to India’s remarkable performance on the playing fields of Australia.

     

    Otherwise, hell hath no fury…

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the content on news television and the morning papers

    Kejriwal’s TOI article: same old same old

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Arvind Kejriwal has reached out to fellow Indians in a plea in The Times of India today. The front page of The Times of India says ‘Team Anna confused, does not know the way forward’. It quotes from an article which Kejriwal has written for the paper. But while the front page report talks about the “apparent” confusion in Team Anna, especially after it has been attacked for going after the Congress while being soft on other parties, Kejriwal’s article is, in fact, the same old same old. He does not talk about the Mumbai debacle; he adds a throwaway line about the BJP and corruption but concentrates the article on the perfidy of the Congress.

     

    Anna Hazare’s ill-health, he conjectures, had more to do with the bad Lokpal bill presented by the government than anything else. If one can venture an opinion, it is this single-minded insistence on attacking only the Congress which has worked against Team Anna. If it loses media sponsorship, it might find the way forward a tad tough. Kejriwal has asked concerned citizens for ideas on how the movement should proceed. It will be interesting to see those suggestions.

     

    Meanwhile, Hazare’s health remains a matter of concern, with most newspapers and channels focusing on it. TV continues to target members of the anti-corruption movement. The BJP is not the flavour of the week at the moment and if you do not come out strongly against it, then TV will not forgive you – this week at least. This leaves the leaders of the anti-corruption movement floundering a bit since they have not had their core committee meeting to decide on what to do yet! Till the triumvirate speaks, all are lost!

     

    * * *

     

    The Indian traders who were detained/ tortured/ attacked in China got so much play on TV that newspapers have started giving the incident more attention. Of course, newspapers have the advantage of setting aside nationalistic outrage and looking at the larger picture. Which includes: other traders not wanting to stop going to that part of China since stuff there is cheap and China requesting Indian traders to follow their laws! This makes for a much larger and more complicated story.

     

    * * *

     

    Inflation is down the newspapers tell us and interest rates may be cut as well. Presumably, this is good news.

     

    * * *

     

    Will Friday night and Saturday morning be all about slamming the Indian cricket team for its dismal performance so far in Australia? I’m not a fortune teller but my crystal ball says that heavy weather is approaching for MS Dhoni and company!

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the content on news television and the morning papers

    Can we pay attention to what’s put out?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    There was an intriguing contradiction in the way Indians abroad were carried in the news in the last week or so. While the murder of Anup Bidve of Pune in Manchester and the ill-treatment of Indian traders in China got an enormous amount of coverage, the annual government mela for our brothers and sisters who no longer live in India was not treated with the usual fanfare. Does that mean that Indians who suffer when in foreign lands are newsworthy but non-resident Indians who return to visit us are no longer so valuable? Since the India story is now located in India, is the media now yawning about NRIs? I have no answers, but I find this trend interesting.

     

    Meanwhile, our TV channels have taken their outrage about suffering Indians to new levels. US Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman has been subjected to some racial abuse in the US for his adopted children, who are apparently Chinese and Indian. This had our morning anchors foaming at the mouth. Also, according to the on-screen updates, US Hindus were also very angry. Is this a new category of people, US Hindus? Does it include people of non-Indian origins who might be Hindus? So why would Indonesians or Nepalis (for instance) be so angry about the anti-Huntsman ads? What about followers of the Iskcon movement in the United States? Are they US Hindus? Are US Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and Sikhs (who might be of Indian origin) not bothered? What about the Chinese (regardless of religion or regionality)? Or all people concerned about racism?

     

    It is a futile wish, but one still does occasionally hope that Indian TV channels paid a little more attention to what they put out.

     

    **

     

    As expected, Indian cricket has been under the scanner with all the accompanying hysteria. I understand that journalists have short memory spans but still, don’t they get bored of jumping from one extreme to the other whenever things go right or wrong. Sack the team, sack the board, worship the team (to be fair, almost no one says worship the board!), are the predictable mantras depending on performance. Then it’s an inevitable battle between oldies and youngies – strangely, whenever the selectors lean towards one or the other based on media and expert advice, there’s usually a disaster on the cricket field.

     

    Partly of course, the new belief (most prevalent in the new media) that India has to excel at everything it touches is to blame.

     

    **

     

    The travails of Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption continue. The Times of India on Saturday had a front page story about Shanti Bhushan’s duty evasions and on the edit page, there was Shanti Bhushan lecturing us about corruption! The Indian Express on Monday tells us that Anna Hazare’s followers and friends (of the pre-Jan Lokpal variety) have been redoubling their efforts to point out that India Against Corruption is “100 per cent pro-RSS”.

     

    **

     

    Mid-Day’ Mumbai edition carries a story about how the son of a former Mumbai police commissioner (RD Tyagi) has been accused of beating up customers to his beer bar and the Mumbai police have been slow in taking action. This misuse of power by the Mumbai police needs more exposure.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the content on news television and the morning papers

    Mumbai papers go aggro on civic issues

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The municipal elections due in Mumbai next month are being treated almost like assembly elections. For weeks now, Mumbai newspapers have been giving readers details of the projects undertaken, completed, unfinished, citizens’ grouses, movements and expectations. apart from a ward by ward breakdown of performance by the incumbent Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance, details about new political formations and many citizens’ groups have also been provided, analysed and assessed.

     

    There can be no doubt that this election to the biggest and richest municipal corporation in the country is been seen as a litmus test for the state and general elections. The Congress and Nationalist Congress Party, after some hissing and spitting, have decided on their seat-sharing and are apparently well-prepared to take on the incumbents.

     

    Is there anything to choose between the papers? as is its wont and reach, The Times of India has gone for a carpet-bombing strategy. The Hindustan Times has gone for the focused approach, concentrating on particular issues. Mid-Day has also looked issues as well as the political twists and turns. Saamna, the Shiv Sena mouthpiece, has looked to attack Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which has certainly eaten into its own constituency.

     

    This is the sort of coverage that Mumbai newspapers are very good at and indeed have taught a lesson or two to other city editions about how to go in-depth into local issues.

     

    Interestingly, the anti-corruption movement led by anna Hazare has not jumped into the fray. Yet, most problems which people have with government non-performance and bribery are at the local and municipal levels. Your Member of Parliament cannot get you constant water supply or smooth roads or garbage disposal.

     

    **

     

    The last six or eight months saw the media looking at internal issues, most specifically the anti-corruption movement and its fallout. But with the suspension of the Lokpal Bill, geopolitics and the neighbourhood have both resurfaced. India’s military capabilities and strategy vis-a-vis China are back on the edit pages and the turmoil in Pakistan is also getting attention. TV channels, predisposed to sensationalism, have concentrated more on former military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s decision to return to Pakistan. The run-up to the US presidential election, however, is yet to find much space in the Indian media.

     

    **

     

    another Test series is due to begin and it will be a good test to see how much hysteria can be generated from a good or bad performance by India.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and in the papers the morning after

    Outrage unlimited

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    So, as expected, the turmoil inPakistanstarted consuming our TV channels. The day started with a video of the exploitation of the Jarawa tribals of the Andamans, put up by an Observer reporter on the Guardian website. There was shock and horror all round, as you could hear someone egging the tribal women to dance. One of the benefits of TV is that you can easily generate outrage at such events and what was earlier acceptable is now seen as taboo. A growth of sorts, perhaps, through exposure because all too often our middle classes are least bothered about the plight of the underprivileged (o dear, do I sound like Katju?).

     

    Unfortunately, though, there seems to be some confusion as to when this Jarawa video was shot and the reporter who got it has claimed protection of sources privilege. This may mean that the horror will die out as officials will do little as they don’t have enough to go on. Follow ups are the only answer, but one wonders.

     

    The disgraceful episode of a Dalit woman being beaten and paraded naked in Maharashtra because her son ran off with an upper caste girl also got some TV time as did rats nibbling on a patient’s face in a Jaipur hospital. The more the “otherIndia” gets noticed, the smaller the divide will become, perhaps.

     

    By the late evening, it wasPakistanwhich was top of the news, as one more military coup seemed imminent. Some channels ran direct feeds fromPakistanand it was fascinating to see that in spite of the difficult times, studio guests did not yell, scream, talk over each other and generally create a massive drama. How would we react under similar circumstances? Sigh.

     

    The international channels did not on Wednesday evening concentrate onPakistan. Other things were happening like the Republican battle to choose a presidential candidate and, as usual,Europe’s economic woes.

     

    * * *

     

    The Darul demand for a visa ban on Salman Rushdie has got far more play on TV than in newspapers. Today’s Times of India has some Muslim scholars and activists asking for more tolerance from fellow Muslims. Meanwhile, Uma Bharti of the BJP was calling the proposed quota for Muslims within OBC reservations another “Partition”. Again newspapers paid her far less attention.

     

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and in the papers.

    Journalists’ covenants on cricket and more

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Aging batsmen, an arrogant captain making bad choices, indifferent performances, the Indian Premier League and the Board for Control of Cricket in India- all or some of these are to blame for the Indian cricket team’s unfortunate performance in Australia.

     

    Television, which was building itself up, started in a slow frenzy at the start of the weekend but it was all out there – foam, fits – by Sunday evening. Arnab Goswami of Times Now, amply helped by his alter ego Boria Majumdar inAustralia, was extremely saddened as only he can be by Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni in particular. Had Dhoni denigrated Test cricket by suggesting that he might retire from that version of the game? Was this the end of civilisation as we know it and so on? He was supported by Bishen Singh Bedi who was sputtering at the mouth with anger and by the cynical observations of another guest who got Goswami and Bedi even more enraged.

     

    Newspapers are still more circumspect but try ‘Shame Old Story’ and ‘Disgrace’ from The Times of India, ‘Perth Pangs’ and ‘India blunder, Oz plunder’ from Hindustan Times. Sunday Mid-Day tried to put a spin on it with ‘Bright Spark’, referring to bowler Umesh Yadav getting five wickets but the strap line below the headline emphasisedIndia’s batting collapse.

     

    Luckily forIndia’s beleaguered cricketers, a week is a very short time in journalism. Just before the India-Australia series started, I seem to rememberAustraliabeing hammered for losing toNew ZealandandIndiafeeling all pumped up because of its enormous talent and at-home victories. A couple of days atMelbourneand all that moaning and hype was completely reversed.

     

    My journalist friends and colleagues tell me that I should not be so hard on my fellow journalists and that it is the job of journalists to get hysterical and to have no memories at all, especially when it comes to sport. There is apparently some mysterious covenant signed by sports journalists (us general purpose journos are not privy to this procedure) by which they have to swear that they will make every effort not to remember what they had said or written the week before. Also that every loss by a sports team or person has to be portrayed as the end of the world and every victory had to be the best ever. I know this to be true from my experiences as a tennis fan (empirical evidence!).

     

    We already know that TV people have their own covenant which makes them swear to try and “save” Indiaat every opportunity and know as little as possible about any subject which gets them all excited.

     

    The cocktail of these two covenants makes for some very dramatic viewing and for those with longer attention spans, there are newspaper articles. Some sober commentators in print will try to look at the larger picture and to extrapolate future courses of action from past experiences. They may be chucked out of the Lodge for breaking the covenant unless they are long term offenders. But in these times, the hysteria will win. Except of course tillIndiawins something!