Category: COLUMNS

By Ranjona Banerji

Somewhere along in the line, in trying to be “different” and to stand out, we appear to have lost the process of journalism. Having worked for an afternoon tabloid for several years, I understand very well the need to provide a different aspect of an ongoing story, to provide the reader with other perspectives, not just parrot what the morning papers have said. But even in those hoary old days, we knew we had to maintain the essence and the nuts and bolts of the story in question.

The trend nowadays is to assume that everyone knows what you are talking about, as if every viewer who has just opened the newspaper or switched on the television has been doing nothing else but watching and reading the same thing for hours. This assumption only confuses and frustrates.

A case in point would be the recent communal tension in Bengal, which has led to death and destruction in the Baduria-Bashirhat regions of 24 Parganas. Since most Indian newspapers are local-centric, regional news is often sketchily presented. So obviously, when I am sitting in Dehra Dun, I cannot except to get full coverage of a communal explosion in a district of Bengal.

What I did get from Day 2 is a full report of a resultant fight between Bengal governor KN Tripathi and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Given our obsession with the doings of politicians, this fight overshadowed the actual events. Social media only highlighted the viewpoints of those who posted on the comment and was therefore coloured by the political perspective of the poster.

The details were vague and this is what I have managed to glean after hours of trawling the internet for news reports, not opinions. A Class X student put up an insulting Facebook post either about Prophet Mohammed or about a Muslim holy site – not even this is clear. This led to huge anger amongst the Muslim community in the area which went on a rampage and looted and burnt shops, set up road and rail blockades. The local BJP unit decided to fight the rampaging Muslims. The police initially either did too little or was not able to control the situation. At least one person, a local RSS worker, has since died.

The BJP complained to the governor, the governor instructed the chief minister to do her job without favouring any one community, the chief minister got furious with the governor for running his office like an RSS branch and politics overwhelmed a dangerous ground situation.

Other news agencies concentrated on the growing aggression of Muslims in Bengal after Banerjee’s appeasement policies. Times Now, which has apparently officially turned into a militant Hindu news channel, advertised a story about pockets of Bengal where Hindus are “out-castes” and Islamists run the show. The subeditor in me balked at the use of “out-castes” when the word they may have been looking for is “outcast”, which is also, however, a questionable usage. Even worse, the intention is to create the impression that the whole of Bengal is in the grip of some Islamist fist. It may be pointed out that BJP- and RSS-related websites have been trying to convince the world about this for years now, fomenting hatred and playing up the dangers of a border with Bangladesh. It is also interesting that the series of deaths from mob violence over the cow has not affected Times Now quite so much.

However, whatever one’s political leanings and whatever related elements emerge from an ongoing story, the first rule of journalism must be to remind readers of the beginning and the trajectory of the initial event. Decades ago, the stylesheet at Living Media instructed us to write “Prime Minister so and so” every time the name appeared because we cannot assume that everyone knows the Prime Minister’s name.

Now that rule has been turned on its head and we are left to imagine all the facts while being presented with a series of confusing spins.

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

By Ranjona Banerji

Like many other people I meet these days, I have taken a break from watching Indian news television in English – obviously a tiny minority if you go by the numbers. It has become so shrill and so almost delinked from reality that watching most news television is too painful to justify even 10 minutes. Bad enough that it has increased my blood pressure: why add a painkiller addiction to that as well?

Let us not pretend that news television has suddenly become strident. For the past six or seven years, shrieking has been its staple. But the propensity for divisive even destructive positions has increased incrementally over the years. And with each spin of the planet, news television has moved further away from journalism.

Of course there are exceptions and there are strange oases of reason amidst all the mayhem. A good part of NDTV, some part of CNN News18, only one programme in recent times on Times Now (would you believe it!), most of Mirror Now where you cannot believe that it is related to Times Now and of course, so far, Rajya Sabha TV though there is speculation of what will happen once we have a new vice-president.

But all this is not enough. It is one thing when confrontational journalism is used to expose the lies and wrongdoing of the establishment. It is journalism upended and corrupted when the establishment uses the news to diminish its opposition. And it is the nation which is denied when news deflects from issues facing the people to try and boost a dominant thought process. In such a scenario, what makes so many Indian television journalists different from those who work for state-owned media outlets in totalitarian states?

This is a question that has led me to escape.

**

I found refuge in the feature sections of newspapers which to be honest, I have avoided for years. I cut my eyeteeth in journalism in features and perhaps that is why I felt I’ve had my surfeit of lifestyle stories. But the language used in them continues to fascinate me, for its old-fashioned terminology and sometimes, its sheer ignorance of words and how to best use them.

A feature on Wimbledon – going on now – in the feature pages of a national newspaper focused on the traditions around the world’s oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament. The reader was informed that obviously the “humble” strawberry was an integral element of Wimbledon. What about the strawberry is “humble” I wanted to know. There was no explanation anywhere else in the story. So I wandered into language for fruit to satisfy myself. Strawberries are creepers: is that why the writer thought they were humble? That only fruits that grow on trees are majestic? Is it easy availability? So what makes a strawberry in the English summer more obsequious than an apple for instance? From my personal experience at Wimbledon, the strawberries are very expensive and really quite arrogant about it.

From fruits to vegetables: one of the Sunday papers had a fascinating story on how people in cities were growing vegetables in their balconies, using readymade low maintenance kits. The headline mentioned homegrown “tindas”. But nowhere in the long feature were tindas mentioned. Not one of the people who bought the kits or sold the kits said that tindas were popular vegetables to grow at home. To be honest, I am not sure that tindas are that popular to eat even outside North India or even very nice to eat, but that is not relevant.

So did the feature writer mention tindas which was cut by the subeditor who was making the page? Or did the headline writer just like the idea of a tinda in a headline and thought no one will read this anyway, so I’ll get away with it?

I will never know. But I find the life and times Uriah Heepish strawberry and the tenacious tinda far more fascinating than the rubbish that passes for journalism on Times Now.

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

​By Ranjona Banerji​

In the 1970s, in some parts of India, the only television we had was Doordarshan. The rumour is that Delhi had TV before the rest of India – is that true? Okay, okay I know it did. National capital after all and while it was not dubbed a “region” in those days, truth be told, it was pretty regional – a series of villages collected around the seat of power. Anyway, that’s not the point though a little Delhi-bashing is always good for the soul! The point is that all we had was Doordarshan and all we had were Black & ​White EC TVs because the government also made TV sets.

Doordarshan opened our eyes to the world. We watched old American and British sitcoms and serials, usually high on culture – The Invisible Man, Shakespeare, Jane Austen. We watched cricket and it was so different from listening to commentary on the radio. And then we were privileged to watch the Wimbledon finals. If you were lucky to have your own TV, you invited friends and neighbours. If not, you invaded someone else’s house. It was the “done” thing. Or we did it, at any rate.

To watch Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert even in scratchy ​Black ​& ​White (the screen shook every time a crow sat on the antenna) – such joy! But no matter what, if the match went on to beyond 8 pm, the News came on. It could have been match point, it could have been in the middle of the victory speech, it could have been mid-serve. Wherever you were in India, it was time for the news.

Has anything changed? Do you tear your hair out any less now that we are privatised and spoilt for choice with several dedicated sports channels? I know the instinct is to blame cricket for every problem in India but I can assure you that no matter how important the tournament or the point, the channel concerned will at some point switch to a car or motorcycle race. And more often than not, the channel will show every match except the semi-final and final.

I speak of course as a diehard tennis fan. This year, we watched Wimbledon on Star Sports Select 1 and 2. There were also two additional channels, part of Wimbledon’s own package which showed play on the smaller courts and also what was happening along the grounds. The feed was the BBC feed – like the old Doordarshan days – so no Vijay Amritraj and Alan Wilkins sitting in a studio pretending they were on court. (Once I think they commentated on the Australian Open sitting in Singapore!)

With at least three dedicated channels to one tennis tournament, there was not much pain when the mandatory switch to cars and motorcycles happened (of course it did, it’s a tradition like strawberries and cream at Wimbledon!). Listening to John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Kim Clijsters, Tim Henman and even Vijay Amritraj on the non-show courts was a privilege. Not to mention the expert opinions of Boris Becker and our own Enrico Piperno.

I have to say I was more than satisfied. I watched so many women’s matches which was a treat since the WTA gets short shrift on TV now that Ten Sports seems to have abandoned women’s tennis. I watched every major match except when the rain played havoc with the dish antenna. And I greatly enjoyed the half-hour special on Roger Federer which was aired on Monday evening.

It’s a good feeling not having to complain! Game, set and match Star Sports for this one.

By Ranjona Banerji

Google, in this morning’s doodle, has paid tribute to Marshall McLuhan on his 106^th birthday. McLuhan, media guru to us all, is best known for “the medium is the message”, a mantra of sorts which gets repeated around the world by those who understand it and those who don’t. A Canadian academic and public intellectual, McLuhan was one of the primary influences the media in mid-20^th century onwards, where he foresaw how humans would interact, the vast reach of the media (meaning more than journalism) and set the cornerstones for communication theory which is essential in all media courses taught ever since. It has also been argued that he predicted the World Wide Web years before it was invented.

This is from The Gutenberg Galaxy, published in 1962: “The next medium, whatever it is — it may be the extension of consciousness — will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual’s encyclopaedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”

So what does this mean to us today? Is the medium really the message? Do we in the media have any control over the message? Or has the medium gone so beyond us that there are a 7 billion messages fighting for supremacy in an apparently infinite space?

As it is now, we seem incapable of even discussing the medium and its messages. A debate on the NDTV’s Big Fight recently on how social media, including trolls, spurs on hatred or hope in society just became the usual big fight between various political viewpoints. Politics won that one, and used the medium to confuse its electorate with conflicting messages.

**

Meanwhile, the end of Wimbledon for this year has meant that I am forced to follow The News, a prospect which gets more and more horrific moment by moment. A programme on Union minister Smriti Irani’s sense of humour – is that news? The full telecast of a long and boring press conference on India’s response to the threats from China where the bureaucrat is adept at saying nothing in many words – is that news? And then the interminable coverage of the election of the new President of India where the result was a foregone conclusion and the President of India is not equivalent to the President of the United States. Is that deserving of quite so much news time?

On Times Now, we are told that Gopal Krishna Gandhi, retired IAS officer, former diplomat and former governor of Bengal, is a possible traitor and is not fit to be vice-president of India because he opposed the death penalty for Yakub Memon, convicted in the 1993 serial bomb blasts case in Mumbai. Thus the extreme idiocy of news television comes to the viewer in full Technicolor. The prime anchor makes up his own ideas of what is what, completely unrelated to reality, intelligence and common sense and then concocts an argument to steamroll his beliefs. Neither the medium nor its message makes any sense at times like this.

**

Some TV discussions on the increasing aggression of China have however been sober and insightful providing that politicians are not allowed to run away with the agenda. Luckily, the situation is so serious that few politicians are able to make much sense of it, leaving both postulations and predictions to experts.

**

A senior journalist pointed out to me the other day that Rahul Gandhi must have had a party after reading the Times of India edit page piece which claimed that the Modi government went slow on economic reforms because of Gandhi’s “suit-boot ki sarkar” dig. No one has possibly given Gandhi more political importance than the Times of India if indeed this is why Modi has been unable to gesture hypnotically and produce the promised “good days”.

The message trumped the medium in this case?

By Ranjona Banerji

The selection (was it really an election, please, we’re all grownups here) of the new President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, formerly of the BJP, has really excited some of our media outlets and our various commentators. They have dissected in no detail at all the idea of what should be, of what Kovind should/ will/ might/ who knows brings to the office.

The President of India is one of those curious posts, full of gravitas in the trimmings but of very little power. A senior statesperson in advisory capacity is what he or she could be; a person who follows whatever the government tells him or her is also what he or she could be.

But if you have read most of the commentary in the past couple of weeks, you might have got a very different picture of Kovind and what he will/could/should et cetera do as President. Most of these have sweetly side-stepped Kovind’s main qualification – that is he a loyal Bharatiya Janata Party member, since he has not held any posts of much importance before this. He is neither a politician of repute (good or bad) nor an educationist nor a philosopher, nor a scientist nor a diplomat and so on.

But you would have got little idea of this while these commentators held forth on the president’s constitutional duties. Interestingly, several of these august commentators have very little to say about the constitutional duties of say, the prime minister of India or his Cabinet or the chief ministers of various states and their Cabinets. Nor indeed of the governors of various states who have taken it upon themselves to exercise far more than their Constitutional powers.

But from these high profile commentators, you would have learnt very little of all that. Indeed, best to stick to news stories which will tell you that his fellow politicians have nothing to say about Kovind because he has done so little. That, one assumes, is a qualification in itself.

**

Meanwhile, the steadfastly serious publication, the Economic and Political Weekly, finds itself in a spot of bother. The EPW is required reading for academics, journalists and for people who take the issues affecting our nation seriously. It is run by the Sameeksha Trust, of which reputed names like Romila Thapar and Dipankar Gupta. Earlier this month, EPW editor Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a very senior and respected journalist, published an investigative story into a possible import duty scam by the Adani group. For those who missed the bus, the Adanis are rumoured to be very close to the prime minister of India.

The trustees accused Guha Thakurta of “breach of trust” and “grave impropriety” because he did not inform them of a letter sent to EPW by an Adani lawyer and that he hired a lawyer to reply. To anyone with any idea of how this system works, this is a very flimsy excuse for “breach of trust”. Worse, the trustees said that Guha Thakurta could not work alone any more and would now have a “co-editor” presumably to keep him in check or spy and report. No wonder he resigned.

The issue has got further confused by former editor C Rammanohar Reddy, who has made some excellent points while also pointing out that problems with the trustees led him to quit as well. At the same time, he made it clear that he thought that the EPW had deteriorated or at any rate veered away from its original brief by carrying investigative stories. But then as he and others have pointed out, why hire Guha-Thakurta if not for his investigative skills?

Much of this looks like dirty linen being aired but it is vital that these issues are discussed, no matter how painful. Thewire.in has put up the articles that EPW took off its website as well as various commentaries and an interview with Guha Thakurta on its website. All are well worth exploring.

By ​Ranjona Banerji​

The growing success of Mirror Now as a news channel seemingly points to what some of us have long believed is the essence of governance to most citizens: civic problems. When you ask people what they expect from a government, very few will mention a robust foreign policy, better fighter jets or even economic reforms. But almost everyone will mention better roads, better garbage collection, better schools and better hospitals. In most parts of India, these fall under civic, local and state governments.

The Central government can help in better highways, it can set health and education policies. But it cannot fix the road in your neighbourhood nor can it ensure that garbage is collected on time and so on.

Mirror Now has well understood this. By focusing on such issues across the nation, it has managed to provide an alternative to all the other national and nationalistic channels. Even if the city or problem featured does not affect you directly, the issue most likely will. This makes an enormous change from the raging about Pakistan and liberals and any other half-baked illiteracy that dogs most of our nationalistic channels.

On the face of it, Mirror Now is an intelligent move from the Bennett Coleman group, to cover the national and local spectrum of news. The Times of India remains wishy-washy in its opinion pages – neither here nor there, although reporting and news coverage can be very good depending on where in India you live. (Here in Dehra Dun, local news coverage is excellent.) Times Now is on its way to becoming as obnoxious

​as ​

Republic TV, pole-vaulting over its other contender India Today TV, teetering on the abyss of non-journalism. Actually I lie. It is already non-journalism.

Mirror Now provides the other side of Indian governance and takes some of the discourse away from all the usual political wrangling and taking sides. I am somewhat chary about making another star out of anchor Faye D’Souza but I have understood that this is how television thinks that it works. In any case, more power to Mirror Now for now.

**

As everyone has now pointed out by now, our patriotic TV journalists and star anchors have steered clear of using the sort of vitriol on China as they have on Pakistan. Many feel this is because they have been told by the government to back off. However to this I will add my own feeling – anger about China does not resonate as much with local bigotry as anger with Pakistan does. For our news channels looking to fan flames of hatred within India, Pakistan is a much better target.

It might also be that China is far more intimidating and our fine TV news anchor know less about its border issues with India…

**

Most of the American media on the other hand remains steadfast in coverage of US President Donald Trump’s transgressions and daily shenanigans. Even better are their comedians and late night TV talk show hosts. The shame of the capitulation in India remains…

I was very happy to read as a coffee drinker that I was “less likely to die” in one of those “scientific” articles recently. Although immortality was never a goal of mine, it suddenly seemed like an intriguing idea, especially something as innocuous and painless as coffee was going to make me live forever. Sadly, a few days later I read another version of the same report which said that coffee drinkers are likely to live longer.

1 Is it fair to dash my hopes like that?

2 Why do sub-editors and headline

givers stoop as low as this again and again when they only look stupid?