By Ranjona Banerji
Some of India’s star TV anchors are ruled by blood lust. When a government agency illegally demolishes the house of a person accused of some disconnected crime, they gleefully jump into a bulldozer to see what it feels like. When a terrorist uses a hand-glider to drop bombs, they immediately set sail to see what it feels like. I suppose it’s just as well for them that none of them had been sent to cover Kamikaze pilots.
What should one call them? Sociopaths is one word. Journalist is not the word by any stretch of the imagination.
And so, here they are in Israel. And they demonstrate how badly attempts at journalism go when you parachute into a place where you have no contacts. These intrepid Camouflage Vests are in Israel. As of now, the assaults are happening on Gaza. They have nothing to offer their viewers except views of empty roads and Indians singing the praise of Narendra Modi. This is not war coverage. This is ego and drama. And I suppose a free holiday.
The lodestar for these anchors was the Gulf War of 1990-1991. That was when we saw a televised war for the first time, on CNN. In India, satellite TV was new. Private TV did not exist yet. Possibly some of these anchors were not born yet and others were little. Some of us were amazed and aghast. Others were turned on by a young Christiane Amanpour standing on rooftops with a young Benjamin Netanyahu looking at green lights in the sky which were scud or Patriot missiles from either side.
The Kargil War of 1999 fulfilled some of these fantasies of our early TV stars. Embedded journalism had been introduced by the US and eagerly adopted by everyone else, not least journalists who felt it was worth being at a carefully chosen war front even if you were being fed propaganda. Now this is accepted practice. And from there you can see how easy it is to never question the government and glorify war, its machinery and its people.
This inability to question has also been seen in the super-fast spread of fake news and misinformation about the current conflict in the Middle East, many of it by journalists and news outlets themselves. The dangers of fake news and misinformation are well-known but complacency is dangerous. Fact-checking may take time, in a war situation, maybe impossible. Therefore caution is recommended. Your first concern has to be your reader or your viewer. What am I saying? As if anyone cares.
Of course, I’ve said all this about blood lust and wanting to be in the thick of it. Yet funnily enough, none of these brave Camouflage Vests wanted to go to Manipur at the height of the violence there. Nope, they did not crave the experience of burning down villages, looting armouries…
Not as exciting I reckon as clapping with glee as the homes of poor Muslims are smashed to rubble. Or as inventing murderers for a crime not committed and vilifying and destroying the lives of whoever you chose. Or going to a foreign land and reporting on nothing In fact, nothing that resembles journalism of any sort. But we all know about TV anchors anyway, right?
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.