MxMIndia

Category: RANJONA BANERJI

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

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] Crime & transport are issues of national importance

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Newspapers in Mumbai this week have been pre-occupied – and quite rightly – with two major issues: transport and crime. A fire at a signalling cabin crippled the Central Railway’s Main and Harbour lines, affecting some 40 lakh commuters. The problems are not likely to vanish fast either.

     

    The coverage has been comprehensive and detailed – and it is difficult to fault any paper here.

     

    In fact, even with the other more sensational case of murders and the underbelly of the glamour industry, newspapers have shown remarkable restraint while still providing blanket coverage.

     

    Both stories in a sense are not Mumbai-centric. The collapse of a commuter system in the country’s financial capital means that millions cannot get to work on time, if at all. This affects productivity and, ultimately, profits for everyone. Also, for other large and growing metros there is a lesson here about the importance of infrastructure and alternative public transport systems.

     

    The case of the murders may be murky but also affect the nation. Thousands still flock to Mumbai as the mecca of the film and television world. Many of these are innocent or naïve in the ways of the world and get easily conned by the criminal elements that hang around the fringes of the industry. The three murders being investigated – an old gentleman whose son was fooled by the suspects, a young man who was trying to cut business deals with them and a young model – are cases in point and all the victims came from outside the city.

     

    The larger point is that these are issues – logistic and sociological – which affect the whole country. Newspapers elsewhere should take them up. And not just for the salacious context of the murders.

     

    * * *

     

    The successful launch of Agni V got its space on TV and in newspapers but perhaps nowhere so much as on Twitter and in cyberspace. People were breathless with excitement over this great achievement by India and there was little or any objective or even critical comment. It is quite difficult to be critical about “nationalistic” issue on the Internet because of the waves of patriotism which sweep all over it!

     

    * * *

     

    The fifth edition of the Indian Premier League reveals some maturity on part of the Indian media. The last four years have been filled with enthusiastic hyperbole or visceral hatred all over TV and pages of print. Since last year was something of a flop and the opening ceremony of this season a damp squib, there was general wariness all around.

     

    However, with the IPL being treated more as a sporting encounter with elements of fun rather than a be-all-end-all mega-event which must bring our lives to a standstill, it is well on its way to being a success. Media hype has been limited but media coverage has been adequate. This year, hysteria over the owners and their glamorous friends has been limited.

     

    The worst you can say about the IPL is that the studio shows are enormously irritating and tacky, where seasoned cricketers are forced into silliness by the hosts. When these same hosts prance all over the cricket field, they are no less silly and the cheerleaders in the studio just look tacky. No one seems to care much about those on the field either – and their dancing hasn’t reached the high level of gymnastic ability and artistic proficiency that American cheerleaders have to display. In fact there is a lot of wiggling and waving but practically no dancing. Just saying.

     

    * * *

     

    As you may have guessed, I have been sadly deficient in my TV news watching this week. Blame it on the weather – didn’t want to get any hotter under the collar!

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] It’s all about how the media operates

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The most serious news programme on TV sometimes is The Daily Show by Jon Stewart, aired every week night on Comedy Central at 11.30pm. The only show that comes close is, of course, The Week That Wasn’t on CNN-IBN with Cyrus Broacha.

     

    On Monday night, on The Daily Show, Stewart was all ready to discuss the fact that the Trayvon Martin case was finally going to trial. He was ready with the legalities of the case. Only, his reporters all vanished on him. There they were in Florida, standing outside the courthouse, because story was now no longer about George Zimmerman shooting Trayvon Martin: it was about the media and its reactions.

     

    A programme with a 24-hour discussion on whether the media was over-reacting was proposed. As Stewart had fits in the studio and ordered his reporters to get back to New York, they refused saying that this case was already being called the “case of the century”, “case of the millennium” and “case of the millennia” and they were not going to lose out.

     

    What a fine exaggeration of the way the media operates, I giggled to myself.

    Then, at midnight, I shifted to Times Now. Only to see Arnab Goswami in fine form, as he held forth on morality and the nation and the alleged sex CD featuring former Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi and a lawyer. Some mention of becoming a high court judge as a result of this slap-and-tickle was made.

     

    The panel was three journalists (four, if you count Goswami) and Siddharth Singh of the BJP. The BJP was, as far as I could understand, upset that Singhvi had resigned from his posts. They wanted him to explain the CD in the house (presumably not in a sex education way but knowing the BJP’s penchant for porn in legislatures, anything is possible). If the CD was real, then a probe (not like that!) was required. And if it was not real – as Singhvi has said – then another probe was required.

     

    Vinod Mehta, guiding light of Outlook said it’s all over and done with, Singhvi has resigned and let this remain a private matter. Vinod Sharma of Hindustan Times said the BJP was trying to squeeze every last drop of political mileage out of this, in spite of their own transgressions and once the Pandora’s Box was opened, they would not be safe. Arati Jerath said if this is the way high court judges are appointed, it is shocking and the matter should not be ignored.

     

    Goswami said that politicians can no longer as for privacy when their private lives are made public by the media, given the BJP’s demands.

     

    If this wasn’t fascinating enough, the next debate turned to the rift within Team Anna. Here the viewer was spectator to an incredible public squabble between three Team Anna members as Goswami and Hartosh Singh Bal of Open magazine watched with their mouths opening astonishment. Truly it was jaw-dropping stuff. All sorts of internal problems and ego battles were revealed.

     

    At the end, Goswami sternly admonished Team Anna that the fight against corruption was not anyone’s monopoly!

     

    At the end – 1.30 am — there was only the terrible truth of The Daily Show to think about. I didn’t sleep till about 3am as a result.

     

    * * *

     

    There is plenty of cyber rage over Press Council chairman Markandey Katju’s “proof” that 90 per cent of Indians are fools. People, get over this. The man is entitled to his opinion!

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Murdoch inquiry: the murky side of media highlighted

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The questioning of Rupert and James Murdoch in the Leveson inquiry into media ethics in the UK was undoubtedly the highlight of this news week. Both the BBC and CNN showed major portions of the inquiry live and it was fascinating to watch these two very powerful men being closely questioned on their closeness to British politicians as well as on the way they ran their business.

     

    James Murdoch followed the line he had had at the earlier Parliamentary inquiry after the phone-hacking scandal broke which led to the closure of The News of The World: he remembered nothing. This is, even though he had been the recipient of a chain of emails which explained what was going on. Murdoch the younger claimed he had not read any of the emails.

     

    Two days were devoted to Rupert Murdoch who seemed far sharper than he had been during the Parliamentary inquiry. However, he also claimed to remember nothing, in spite of there being sufficient documentary evidence to prove his various meetings with various British prime ministers. Murdoch claimed that politicians always wanted to meet editors and proprietors but that did not mean that he wielded any influence.

     

    However, by the end of the second day of questioning, Murdoch admitted that there had been a cover-up of the practice of phone-hacking in his newspapers, which went at least up to the editor and beyond. He apologised and called it a failure.

     

    The venerable and respected Harold Evans, the one editor of the Times who Murdoch sacked, was scathing in his criticism of Murdoch’s testimony and his supposed inability to remember anything significant at all, in his piece in the Guardian on Thursday.

     

    In the backdrop of this questioning were the revelations that a close aide of British culture secretary Jeremy Hunt had been leaking secret information to the Murdoch organisations about the BSkyB deal, which has since been scuttled. But with both sides of the political spectrum in Britain being in the pockets of the Murdochs, finger-pointing is going to be a little difficult. In Prime Minister David Cameron’s favour is the fact that he commissioned this judicial inquiry.

     

    The parallels with India are fascinating, if at the least because media tycoons here remain shady figures, lurking in the background, pulling strings and manipulating policies. Also, despicable as phone-hacking was, it is hard to remember the last time any newspaper really spent any effort on news-gathering. We, in India, follow the other Murdoch model – use PR agencies to get everything done.

     

    Needless to say, Indian TV was not much taken with the Murdoch case, although newspapers gave it the mandatory space on their international pages.

     

    * * *

     

    The one story which got almost no space in the Indian media, in spite of the verdict being shown live on the BBC and CNN on Thursday, competing with Murdoch, was the trial of Charles Taylor. The former Liberian president was charged with war crimes for his role in the brutal and bloody war for power in the neighbouring Sierra Leone. Although the film Blood Diamonds got considerable media attention in India, the man who was part of that horror story, was obviously not worthy of too much space. For example, The Times of India had nothing, the Hindustan Times, a brief and The Indian Express a story on the international pages.

     

    * * *

     

    Instead the Indian media had absolute hysterics about Sachin Tendulkar accepting a nomination to the Rajya Sabha. One would imagine this was the first time anyone had ever accepted a Rajya Sabha nomination (12 distinguished persons are appointed every term) for all the hot air expended on TV. Newspapers also saw this as headline news.

     

    So far of course no one knows whether Tendulkar will be a good, bad or indifferent Parliamentarian. Therefore, tedious before-the-fact discussions and camera-inspired rage are pointless. Much time was spent on why Tendulkar was joining politics. It occurred to no one that being nominated to the Rajya Sabha is not “joining politics”. That would be when Tendulkar fights an election. Many nominated members gone back to their distinguished lives after their terms finished.

     

    The only benefit of such discussions is that you see just how stupid some people are.

     

    * * *

    Sometimes I find myself in full agreement with Press Council chairman Markandey Katju that 90 per cent of Indians are fools. And most of those fools find their way to TV studios.

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] TV arguments that go nowhere

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Few crimes have been more astonishing and more bitterly fought over in the public domain than the murders of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar and the domestic who worked in her home, Hemraj. Unlike the Jessica Lal murder case – where everyone know who the murderer was and the scandal was the cover-up – everything about this double murder remains open-ended four years later.

     

    The role of the media, however, came into question from day 1. it started with the intrusive and speculative reporting about Aarushi’s own life – with ridiculous segments on TV channels about how Aarushi would have celebrated her next birthday, had she been alive. Then, the initial police investigation added more grist to the rumour mill – were the parents swingers, had Aarushi and Hemraj become too close because of the parents’ activities and as a result, had the two been shut up because they knew too much? No evidence was presented to prove any of these speculations, yet the Noida police had no problem putting all these theories into the fray.

     

    Then the expected happened -various domestics were blamed. it didn’t help that Hemraj himself was blamed, by the parents as it happened. His body was found the next day since neither the police nor the family even bothered to check the whole house after the murder of the girl was discovered. His body was on the terrace – not really that far away.

     

    The media at this time, rather than focus on the salacious aspects of the case and dramatising this young girl’s life, perhaps should have put the police under the scanner for destroying evidence, for not treating the Talwar home as a crime scene and for careening between believing the Talwars implicitly to treating them as criminals.

     

    Television on Monday night revisited the Aarushi case as her mother Nupur finally appeared before a court after giving the authorities the run around for a year and was sent to jail. We have seen the Talwars presented as both victims and perpetrators. The media has taken sides and many have sided with the Talwars. The arguments presented have been sweetly naive -how can parents kill their children and neighbours say the Talwars are nice people. The dentist couple also had high profile patients like historian Patrick French who have launched a spirited defence.

     

    On NDTV, there was some soul-searching about whether the media had gone too far, Headlines Today enjoyed chasing Nupur Talwar all over Delhi and told us all about the jail she would be staying in and how she would be treated. On Times Now, we were treated to an expected fight fest. One of the lawyers for the Talwars, Pinaki Mishra, historian French, activist Ranjana Kumari and TV journalist Ashutosh Tiwari and Arnab Goswami himself slugged it out. Or rather, Mishra and French batted for the Talwars, Tiwari for the media, Kumari hardly got a chance to speak and Goswami seemed unsure whose side he was on. He did however ask why no one was bothered about the domestics who were accused at the Talwars’ behest and then let off. Mishra wanted everyone to know he was taking no money – how this impacted the case was unclear. Should his paying clients now feel that he only pays attention to cases he does free. French said that everyone said the Talwars were nice people. imagine writing a history of, say, Hitler, and then telling us many people liked him. it’s hardly a defence.

     

    The Noida police and the CBi, who really should be under the microscope, were not grilled. So one more TV argument that goes nowhere.

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] Jingoist of the year award to Times Now

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    For some reason best known only to Times Now, the channel decided to huff and puff over a Barack Obama campaign ad, which said that not only did Republican presidential candidate hopeful Mitt Romney outsource jobs to Mexico and China as a CEO, but as governor he also outsourced a task to a call centre in India.

     

    My god, the insult – Obama has spent, said Times Now, a million dollars to “trash India”. This news played over and over again on the channel all evening, even as it had to compete with the other “big story which we are tracking” – the release of Sukma district collector Alex Paul Menon by the Maoists (that’s another example of a TV extravaganza).

     

    On the Newshour last night, there was Goswami, filled with nationalistic pride, surrounded by Chidananda Rajghatta of The Times of India looking a bit embarrassed, Pramit Pal Chaudhuri of Hindustan Times looking smug and embarrassed, Mohandas Pai, once of Infosys, looking amused and not sure if he could tap sufficiently into his inner jingoist and a few other guests.

     

    Goswami launched full steam into his heartfelt anguish at this perfidy by Obama – when the facts said that Indian companies contributed millions of jobs and billions of dollars to the US economy (a few gazillions and who knows, India might solve all the US’s economic problems). But guest after guest pointed out that all this was election rhetoric and that anger with outsourcing was now normal campaign guff and that whoever won would do little to change US policy.

     

    Goswami, as he watched his argument crumble, smiled wryly and changed tack. He was not, he said, talking about the inner workings of the US election process. He was bothered about perception and stereotyping. Luckily he found one guest who weakly agreed, sorta kinda.

     

    After 15 minutes of sound and fury signifying nothing, and guaranteeing a good laugh for all viewers, the debate petered out as everyone just repeated the same thing. Goswami ended by asking why the Indian government could not spend some money to issue a counter ad. Indian pride, one can only hope, was restored amongst those viewers who spend their time picking up stones and weeds everywhere, hoping to find an insult to India and then demand reparation.

     

    On Friday morning, interestingly, only The Times of India was interested in this story.

    (An aside: the other fight for Indian pride was on the internet over Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher and some chips ad where he mimics an Indian. The Indians won because on the internet, power operates differently!)

     

    * * *

     

    Stewart by the way, took on the sex scandals in the US secret service, hardly guffaw-inducing stuff compared to Goswami.

     

    * * *

     

    Meanwhile, the collector: all day TV told us that the kidnapped by Maoists collector Alex Paul Menon was about to be released. We were treated to some pictures of some bush and scrub with very bad communication lines and no collector. Then in the evening an exhausted man appeared, only to be mobbed by eager reporters. This is one of the fault lines of modern journalism and you have to feel for both parties. The media needs the story and the collector needed some rest. He looked as he himself said, “shattered”.

     

    Since Zee had most of the pictures, everyone had to credit it. Headlines Today and NDTV, instead of showing the bush and scrub, showed us Menon’s father-in-law. The CNN-IBN website told us that the collector was freed hours before he appeared out of the wilderness.

    No explained whether that was inside information or a false start to the race.

     

    Jai Hind!

     

  • In Freaking News, which will now appear every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] The Modi merry-go-round continues

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    As expected, the release of the report by lawyer Raju Ramachandran into Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 riots got TV channels into a frenzy. Having whipped themselves up over the “clean chit” given to Modi by the Special Investigation Team, the indictment of the chief minister by the “friend of the court” provided just the kind of contradiction that Indian TV thrives on.

     

    However, the arguments for and against Narendra Modi and his “crimes” or his “achievements” have become old and tired. As have the panellists. There on NDTV was Jainarayan Vyas putting up a stout defence of Modi. And, of course, a short while later he was on Times Now. Kumar Ketkar, editor of Divya Marathi provided the objective line – while slamming Modi for his well-documented anti-minorities stance – also appeared on both.

     

    But at the end of the day, little is achieved with such debates. The BJP and Modi’s fan club spew their spiel. Modi’s detractors have their own. The debate moves along predictable lines. The events have become so far away that the details have been forgotten which leads to even more chaos. Both Nidhi Razdan and Arnab Goswami had a tough time controlling some of their panellists who as usual forget all rules of civilised behaviour once a TV camera is turned on them. Smriti Irani of the BJP, for instance, gave us ample proof of how she can now graduate to the “saas” role in a poisonous soap – if they still have them on TV that is.

     

    (A disclaimer: I was deputy resident editor of The Times of India, Ahmedabad, from 2001 to 2004 and have a fairly good idea of what happened during the riots. Watching people who were nowhere around in those dark days holding forth can be both a frustrating and amusing experience.)

     

    * * *

     

    The big TV event of the week is of course the first episode of actor Aamir Khan’s Satyameva Jayate on the Star channels and DD. He dealt with the contentious and emotional issue of female foeticide and India’s skewed gender ratio. It was a well-researched show, with the subject presented from various angles and certainly struck a chord with the audience. The cyber world went gaga, judging from the number of tweets about the programme. Newspapers the next day were also congratulatory.

     

    If there was criticism – especially on Twitter, the home of manufactured outrage – it was about whether female foeticide was such an unknown problem after all as well as whether any change would happen as a result of the show.

     

    It is amazing to hear journalists talking about whether social change can result from media efforts, since we know from our own experience what a slow and pain-staking experience that can be. Your 140-character aphorism may take seconds to go out to the world; change on the ground takes a tiny bit longer than that.

     

    * * *

     

    An evening at the Mumbai Press Club was a great opportunity to meet up with former colleagues and old friends. The now annual awards for journalists in categories from crime and cricket to politics and the environment is a very good idea. Giving the lifetime achievement award to Vinod Mehta was a winner – since he promptly said that working in Bombay (as it was then) were the best years of his life!

     

    Applause all around.

     

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] Holier than thou Hindu takes on the Times


    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Hindu has published a massive “expose” on paid news in The Times of India. According to painstaking research done by veteran journalist P Sainath, the Nagpur edition in 2008 carried a special feature about how farmers in Vidarbha had benefited from using Bt cotton seeds. This went against all other evidence that it was the use of Bt cotton which had led to falling yield, depleting the land, increasing debt burden and consequently the large number of suicides in the region.

     

    The TOI team spoke to farmers who said they were making much more money than they thought and were very happy. The villagers spoken to said no one had committed suicide. The trip was sponsored by the manufacturers of the Bt cotton seed – Mahyco Monsanto Biotech. The newspaper added this as a disclaimer, maintaining however that the journalists had done their own research.

     

    According to Sainath, in 2011, the same feature was dredged up and re-printed, this time as an advertising feature – paid for by Mahyco Monsanto Biotech – and published in all editions of The Times of India except the Nagpur edition.

     

    Yet, the same villagers, when they spoke to a Parliamentary Standing Committee in March this year, Sainath points out, said that 14 people had committed suicide since Bt cotton had been introduced and that their financial plight was pitiable. The enormous amounts of money being made – as claimed in the TOI report – were untenable and were also contradicted by figures provided by Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar.

    So what do we have here? A cynical manipulation of events to help a giant corporation out of a PR disaster? Or exploitation of journalists to further the commercial interests of the newspaper? Or complete contempt for the reader and disregard for the newspaper’s credibility?

     

    I would say the worst sin is number 3. The first two lead to the third. The fact that Bt cotton has aggravated rather than alleviated farmers’ problems ought to be a fact universally acknowledged. It is also well-known that Monsanto has an extremely aggressive public relations department. Further, the government has also pushed farmers to opt for Bt cotton and thereby helped Mahyco Monsanto Biotech.

     

    However, it has to be pointed out that The Times of India is not the only practitioner of paid news. This menace is prevalent through the media, both print and television. The ways in which it is done can be subtle or brazen – here TOI seems to have opted for the latter. It is also not clear if this deal with Monsanto was limited to the Nagpur marketing department which then shared it with headquarters or whether the entire editorial team was aware of what was going on.

     

    Either way, though, both the initial report and the use of that report as an ad are highly questionable. Cynicism on the part of journalists will only make life worse for them more than anyone else.

     

    There is one more question here as well. Holding the media up for scrutiny is necessary and important. But The Hindu’s tendency to take this holier than thou line is bound to boomerang at some time. It now has to keep its house cleaner than everyone else’s.

     

    The link to Sainath’s column in The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/article3401466.ece?homepage=true#.T6tjbKDv3XQ.email

     

  • In Freaking News, which appears every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] TV leads to early onset of maddening rage

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Sometimes, television viewing can be seriously injurious to health. On Monday night, I tried to wade through TV discussions and only landed up with all the signs of early onset of maddening anger which soon developed into full blown rage. And I didn’t even venture further than two channels – Headlines Today and Times Now.

     

    On Headlines Today, the discussion was about the decision to ban all cartoons in textbooks. The guests were all having hysterics, the anchor – Rahul Kanwal – tried to say that vital airtime should not be wasted this way but the panellists were having none of it.

     

    This makes one wonder whether this format of prime time discussions on the news of the day is working any more. Night after night, we watch these so-called experts descend to the worst examples of civilised behaviour. Nothing fruitful is discussed as a result.

     

    One panellist could not even distinguish between a political cartoon and comic books. The first was not suitable for children apparently while the second were Archie comics and all that are fine she says. Clearly she has not read too many comics or cartoons – regardless of the unintended hilarity of her arguments. All I know is that her first name is “Kakoli”, since the channel never repeated it after that.

     

    Cartoonist Suthir Tailang also gave up after some time, the gentleman from the Bahujan Samaj Party just yelled incessantly, the comic lady continued with her routine and the anchor ended the whole farce.

     

    * * *

     

    On Times Now, we shifted to another dimension. Editor in chief Arnab Goswami decided that the government had to step in to save General VK Singh’s reputation as the army chief edges closer to retirement. This is in response to a Press Trust of India story about how some official in the Cabinet secretariat is apparently going to be blamed for leaking the army chief’s letter to the PM about India’s lack of defence preparedness.

     

    The panel was full of former army officers, both them and their moustaches bristling away about how the army was all good and everyone was all bad. Where do they get their accents from by the way? Sometimes they sound like London meets Ludhiana or Kota meets Kanada or more likely Billy Bunter in Bundelkhand. Forgive me, I’m just more used to Salman Khan’s Mumbai meets Manhattan. Do you think they teach accents at the IMA? I concentrated on their accents because it was impossible to understand what they were saying. But anyway, they all went off on their own tangents with India demanding answers and the country wanting to know every two minutes.

     

    The only voices of sanity were Kumar Ketkar, editor of Divya Marathi and KC Singh, former ambassador to UAE. But since they did not join in the general outcry to save the army chief, they were shunned. Ketkar was roundly castigated for suggesting that VK Singh was “hobnobbing with Anna Hazare”.

     

    In all this, no one asked (or dared to ask) why the government should save VK Singh’s reputation when the general himself had scant concern about it during his date of birth fight and especially after the spanking he got from the Supreme Court.

     

    Anyway, by this I had burst a few blood vessels and could not even watch Jon Stewart’s Daily Show to restore my equilibrium.

     

  • In Freaking News, which appears every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] TV journos prove Katju is right

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Journalists have evidently signed a pact to prove Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju right – 90 per cent of Indians are idiots. There seems to be no other reason for this enormous media reaction to the late night fracas between film star Shah Rukh Khan and a security guard at Wankhede stadium two nights ago.

     

    Of course, the shenanigans of film stars are exciting and when they behave badly it’s even more fun. But is there anything to justify front page headlines and TV debates for two days? What exactly is there to debate? Khan arrived last the stadium around the time Kolkata beat Mumbai, with a bunch of kids. The kids ran into the field. A security guard stopped them. Khan intervened. Words were exchanged and some apparently not very polite ones and then Khan left.

     

    For this, the world has come to an end. We are discussing politeness, propriety, banning, apologies, role models, respect for the uniform, high-handedness, diplomacy, official inefficiency, entitlement or the sense thereof, protection of children and the decibel level of whistles.

     

    If we went to war with China, I cannot imagine more being discussed on television. The journalists on TV cannot seem to distinguish between a security guard and a policeman. Rahul Kanwal almost burst a blood vessel when on Headlines Today veteran adman Prahlad Kakkar tore into the behaviour of security guards: “You have to respect the uniform”. I would really like to know how any of these TV guests react when faced with the officiousness of a security guard.

     

    Kakkad was a rare voice of sanity as was Rohan Gavaskar who said: “Banning Shah Rukh Khan from Wankhede is like banning Sachin Tendulkar from PVR”. Meaningless, in other words. Except for Arun Lal on Times Now, no one wanted to discuss whether officials of the Mumbai Cricket Association, who called for a ban on Khan entering Wankhede, were not over-reacting. Lal said it’s a question of contesting fiefdoms – with Khan as an IPL team owner against MCA officials with their hurt pride at being event managers rather than stakeholders.

     

    The levels of self-righteous on Times Now were staggering, with anchor Arnab Goswami, veteran columnist and author Shobhaa De and not-so-veteran columnist Simi Chandok leading the way. Goswami kept bringing up police action against Hollywood stars Nicholas Cage and Russell Crowe, again unable to distinguish between security guard and a policeman. (Hint: different uniform.)

     

    Former Mumbai police commissioner MN Singh tried to point out that criminal charges against Khan were not possible and this led to him being dragged over hot coals by Goswami. When the nation wants to know, let no man or woman try and douse the fire.

     

    Commentator Charu Sharma however poured cold water on Rahul Kanwal’s spectacular rage – mainly it seemed because uniforms were not being respected, apparently a prime concern in his life – by forecasting that an amicable resolution would be reached and the incident would soon be forgotten. The truth is that everyone knows that that is what will happen.

     

    As a matter of interest, after all the hot air expended over the fight which Saif Ali Khan had in a restaurant at the Taj a few months ago, can anyone remember the names of those self-righteously hurt complainants from South Africa? Hmmm.

     

    * * *

     

    On NDTV, I watched another somewhat circular debate over whether PA Sangma could become the next president of India. These speculative discussion with weak premises only illustrate our emptiness of thought. I greatly admire Divya Marathi editor Kumar Ketkar for his fortitude and level of tolerance as he sits through so many TV debates these days, trying to inject a little sanity into proceedings.

     

    It seems amazing to me that no TV people seem able to realise that all this political hoopla over the next president is just a diversionary tactic from all the political problems this country is facing.

     

    Goswami even wants a debate between Sangma and Vice-President Hamid Ansari, since he possibly believes that India has a presidential form of government. Contestant 1: I will plant 400 varieties of roses in the gardens. Contestant 2: I will conduct the tours of Rashtrapati Bhavan myself. Contestant 3: I will never build a large retirement home for myself. Contestant 4: I will never bore school children with my poems and ideas.

     

    Please, somebody, save us!

     

  • In Freaking News, which appears every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] Media has to protect freedom of expression and thought

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The knee-jerk government response to the Ambedkar cartoon controversy – banning cartoons from text books – got a very strong response from Sunday’s newspapers. The need to protect freedom of speech, why cartoons frighten those in power, the personal attacks faced by cartoonists were covered by The Times of India, Indian Express and Hindustan Times in special features and detailed stories.

     

    Many also carried cartoons which have caused trouble in the past and tried to examine just why cartoons are seen as dangerous.

     

    Indian Express had a comprehensive interview with historian Mushir-ul-Hasan who has just written a book on Parsee Punch, a cartoon magazine brought out by Parsis in colonial India. The British in India at the time either had a good sense of humour or the good sense to realise that going after cartoons was hardly likely to end subversive thinking.

     

    The media has to come out and protect freedom of expression and thought – because in any battle against it, it will be the first casualty. The threat does not come just from those in power but also from pressure groups in civil society. Unfortunately in India, the first response by the government is to cave in to the demands of those whose “sentiments are hurt” rather than stand up for the Constitution.

     

    * * *

     

    After running through the IPL as the scourge of human civilisation, TV channels found something else to amuse themselves. Not, of course, the Indian economy, which seems perilously close to bad times ahead – there is after all little scope for a melodramatic studio-based jatra based on a falling rupee and rising inflation. Much better instead to concentrate on parties (not political ones, but the others where people gather to eat, drink and make merry and thus promote unconscionable evils), why the BCCI has insulted Kapil Dev by not giving him lots of money (and then providing the answer – because Dev hooked off to the rebel league ICL) and for all I know whether the sun will rise tomorrow or not.

     

    * * *

     

    It is always interesting to see journalists take the moral high ground when it comes to other people eating and drinking. Everyone knows that there are journalists who will do anything for a free meal and many attend press conferences only for the free drinks at the end. Even those who are not quite so greedy enjoy a drink or two at the end (or the middle) of a long and stressful working day. So why this moralistic posturing when it comes to others? Just to appeal to a puritanical audience or has alcohol dimmed their memories of their own excesses?

     

    In fine contrast, of course, the glamour sections of newspapers and glamour segments on news channels only serve to glorify the “having fun” lifestyle and employ almost no critical faculties at all.

     

    Just because the general public doesn’t know what you get up to in your spare time does not mean that you have to give in quite so much to hypocrisy.

     

    * * *

     

    Now that the Lokpal Bill has been put off till the next session, one can predict an all out publicity campaign by the Anna Hazare brigade – that’s easy. However, it is also possible to predict that while the movement may not fizzle out, the media coverage will.

  • Every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on news television and the newspapers in Freaking News

    MJR: TV worries about aam aadmi, forgets economics

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The petrol price hike announced on Wednesday sent TV into a spin. Since the economy is not a strong point for our honourable anchors, they all decided it was a bad thing but then didn’t know how to go further so opted for passionate pleas on the plight on the aam aadmi. Economists have a slightly different view – they see the subsidies to the aam aadmi as the problem as far as India’s oil bill and budget deficit is concerned. The hike on petrol will apparently have only a marginal effect on easing the financial burden carried by the gas companies.

     

    Said The Economic Times on Thursday, “Subsidising petro-fuels is not something that India can afford: this subsidy accounts for a sizeable part of the fiscal deficit and drives up the current account deficit. These twin deficits depress growth by curtailing investment. India needs de-control and competition in petro-fuels.”

     

    The Times of India on Friday says more or less the same thing: “Despite shock and awe for the middle class, the surprising thing about the petrol price hike is that it will only have a marginal impact on the under-recoveries of oil companies or in curbing oil imports. Petrol accounts for just about one-eighth of total oil consumption. In fact most recent numbers show that it is diesel, kerosene and LPG – which account for almost three-fourth of the oil products consumed – that has pushed under-recoveries of oil companies by a massive Rs 1.38 lakh crore.”

     

    The Hindustan Times on Friday: “A steep hike in petrol prices has jolted Indian consumers out of a false sense of security that the government can shield them from the relentless rise in oil prices… India’s energy consumption has remained oblivious to how international prices moved. Our oil demand does not decline as prices rise and this adds to the downward pressure on the rupee. It is a vicious cycle that can be broken up by freeing up all fuel prices and reimbursing only those who cannot afford market rates. A sizeable chunk of the economy is getting a free ride on the government’s fuel subsidy.”

     

    Therefore, despite the hysteria generated by TV channels, the consensus from other sources is clear – we have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from a price increase in all petroleum products. In their anxiousness to get a dramatic confrontation, TV channels forget that not everything makes for a good debate. Why not have a good, solid interview with an economist to explain the problem? They can of course intersperse the interview with song and dance (am I confusing this with IPL?) or run their earlier tapes of panellists yelling at each other so that viewers are not terribly confused with a large dose of sensible talking.

     

    **

     

    On NDTV, there was mudslinging at the media by the friends of the Talwars, now about to be tried for the murders of their daughter and their domestic servant. There is no doubt that the media goes overboard very often and did so in the Talwar case as well, over-dramatising the details of Aarushi’s life for instance.

     

    But nor can there be any doubt that the Talwars manipulated the media and milked the sympathy card for all it was worth. To get a respected popular historian like Patrick French to write an impassioned article in your defence and then follow that up with a TV interview – master stroke. Unfortunately for them, the judge did not quite see it that way and ruled that they be tried for double murder. Justice may or may not be blind but it is often oblivious to TV channel hoopla.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and columnist based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia

     

     

  • In Freaking News, which appears every Tuesday and Friday, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    [MJR] TV gets boring after IPL

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The end of the IPL has seen a flurry of articles, analyses and edits – as well as some television breast-beating. Tuesday’s must-read is Ayaz Memon in The Times of India as he dissects the IPL and people’s reaction to it. TOI also carries an edit on the IPL – a day after everyone else.

     

    On TV, Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today, wearing far too much make-up – almost like those pictures of stars like Rajendra Kumar and Biswajit with orange lipstick that movie halls used to carry – was in “hot pursuit” with BCCI chief TV spokesperson (if that’s not a designation it should be) Rajiv Shukla trying to solve all the problems with the IPL.

     

    The upheaval in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly also bothered our TVwallahs and led to one more verbal fisticuffs on Times Now. This followed another one on the Andhra High Court striking down a quota for minorities. One feels that TV channels need to stop inviting people like Ravi Shankar Prasad and Mohammed Owaisi on the same show as it only leads to acrimonious yelling rather than informed debate. Arnab Goswami did not even bother to control them. TV debates appear to have run through their usefulness. They provide little information or food for thought and now that the actors are the same on every channel night after night, there is no variety or novelty either.

     

    * * *

     

    The big news for newspapers in Mumbai was the horrific road accident on the Mumbai-Pune expressway where 27 members of a marriage party were crushed to death by a speeding truck. Several heart-wrenching details about the accident were in all the newspapers and were in fact almost too much to bear.

     

    The problems of no proper ambulance or paramedical services or the dangers of Indian roads and our lack of disaster preparedness were all covered. None of this makes the spectacle of accidental death any easier of course.

     

    The drought in Maharashtra is also now making almost a daily appearance in newspapers but I haven’t noticed it on TV yet. That is hardly surprising because unless there is mass-scale devastation, even 24 hour TV news channels struggling to fill in the gaps will not be interested. There is limited scope for engineered outrage and explosive TV debates when it comes to drought or even malnutrition.

     

    * * *

     

    The biggest media-related news was former British prime minister Tony Blair telling the Leveson inquiry into media ethics that politicians have to hobnob with the media in today’s world. He admitted to flying to Australia to convince Rupert Murdoch to support the Labour Party in the general elections. Interesting… Now how many Indian politicians would be so courteous to the Indian media?

     

    * * *

     

    On a personal note, was quite pleased to see the French Open get so much coverage in the newspapers. Of course, the IPL is over so there’s plenty of space… Hindustan Times gets top marks – but it has increasingly established itself as a newspaper which covers all sports not just cricket. Even the Times of India deigned to provide a little space to tennis and the Grand Slam which has just started in Paris. That is high honour indeed.