Tag: freaking news

By Ranjona Banerji

 

After all the encomiums heaped on television media since the night of December 16th and its coverage of the gang-rape in Delhi and its aftermath, one has to now hold one’s head in anguish. It is hard to know whether TV wants India to go to war with Pakistan or whether it felt that the Indian government should do a tandav nritya at the United Nations. The beheading of an Indian soldier on the Line of Control in Kashmir is definitely a shocking act and in contravention of the Geneva Convention. It is not a matter which India can let drop. But some perspective is required and the sort of hysterical sabre-rattling or AK-47 waggling which we saw on Indian TV was unwarranted and unnecessary.

 

That the Indian media should become so sentimental is in direct contradiction to its largest mandate – to provide information to the general public which it cannot gain for itself. There is definitely a place for opinion but for that opinion to degrade itself into uncontrollable rage and verge on war-mongering is dangerous. I was amused to see Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today tweet for some responsibility on the issue as far as the media is concerned when his own channel was no less over-the-top. I thoroughly enjoy Arnab Goswami’s attempts to save the nation every night on Times Now but am equally grateful that India’s foreign policy is not in his hands. I fear we might be at war every other day. As for Barkha Dutt’s faux misery whenever something happens which affects the Indian army, it only leads me to search for another channel. If I want pap there are enough soap operas available.

 

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While on the army, there was a discussion on Karan Thapar’s Last Word on CNN IBN which turned out to be quite amusing, but for the wrong reasons. The subject was whether former chief of army staff VK Singh’s antics were an embarrassment to the army. (I would have thought that the answer is a resounding yes, with no need for a discussion). All the worthies on the show had earlier twirled their luxuriant moustaches and given Singh the benefit of the doubt through his bizarre battle over his date of birth. This time round there was almost unambiguous condemnation. I suppose even army discipline and camaraderie cannot allow a former chief of staff to sit on a dharna with Baba Ramdev!

 

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I have never liked Piers Morgan on CNN – he is often both smug and smarmy as if such a contradiction is possible. But one has to admire the way he has taken on the gun lobby in the US in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shootings. His interview with Alex Jones who has started a petition to deport Morgan back to Britain was a study in journalistic fortitude and the proverbial British stiff upper lip in the face of the most insane rant TV has perhaps ever seen. Jones even used the Delhi rape to make a case for guns! Morgan however is not always as polite – he has also demolished the gun lobby people quite effectively. Also, having sucked up to Americans and the American way of life, he now seems very quick to establish that he is British! Hopefully he has come into his own and will not go back to licking the posterior ends of celebrities.

 

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The weather people of BBC World need to get over their obsession with rain and understand that the World Service is not about telling Brits where to go on holiday (searching for “dry fine” weather which could be the Sahara Desert given the British weakness for extreme sunshine) but for natives of that area to know what to expect. The cold wave in North India which has killed over a hundred people is therefore of no consequence to the BBC’s weather wing since it did not involve rain. Instead, there is every attempt to chase down any possible rain system starting from Tierra del Fuego and taking the round the globe route to Fiji.

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Do people invite Shaina NC to their shows only to take issue with her or ignore her or humiliate her? I am no fan of this member of the Bharatiya Janata Party but I cannot understand why she is invited as a guest to studio discussions only for her views to be pooh-poohed. It is true that her views are usually extremely silly – in which case, why ask her to share them unless you want to expose her? There are many other foolish people in all parties who regularly express their equally daft views without being treated with similar contempt.

 

On Arnab Goswami’s show last week, Shaina NC tried the impossible task of trying to defend RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s India versus Bharat remarks regarding rape. There were other Sangh Parivar worthies like Subramaniam Swamy and GVL Narasimha Rao on the show who also did their bit but Shaina NC got the most flak. There were times when she looked on the verge of tears. On the Best of the Big Fight on NDTV, Shaina NC got the same treatment from Vikram Chandra and other guests like Madhu Kishwar for her somewhat confused remarks about how India was a fully spiritual nation (as in no sex please). Please note that this was seen as a “best” bit.

 

The other question of course is: why does Shaina NC want to get treated like this? There is a theory is that she is the most personable face that the BJP has, which is why she is sent out to defend the cause. There is another sexist theory that she has a pleasant face. And a somewhat nasty theory is that she is one of the more stylish members of the BJP, especially since she belongs to India and not Bharat (by Mohan Bhagwat’s definitions, not mine). Plus there’s a cynical theory that her father Nana Chudasama was hedging his bets by making one daughter join the BJP. Whatever the reason, it is unfortunate that she is such a sucker for punishment.

 

I can safely say this much: Shaina NC is not the sort of person edit pages of newspapers would or should invite to write opinion pieces.

 

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Have to say that I was most disappointed with Prasoon Joshi’s appearance on CNBC’s Storyboard show with Anuradha Sengupta. For someone who has used his advertising experience to craft himself as a sort of Renaissance man, one would have expected some better responses on a show about how the media can become more gender sensitive. There was Joshi at protest venues after the Delhi gangrape reading out emotional and meaningful poems. And there he was on CNBC saying well, advertisers are marketers after all and we just try to sell products.

 

The “too bad if you don’t like it” attitude was attempted to be ameliorated by some anodyne remarks about how gender sensitivity as important but it was mere tokenism at best. Unfortunately, there was no Arnab Goswami to call him out. However, the hypocrisy was exposed one way or another.

 

I suppose the problem comes from wearing too many hats and sometimes you forget when you’re a sensitive poet and when you’re a hard-hearted purveyor of rubbish.

 

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The Indian media has stuck to the rape story and the treatment of women in India for over three weeks now, showing incredible tenacity. India TV, often not the most credible but always entertaining, had a brilliant sting operation last week which exposed how women in India are harassed for the simple crime of just standing by the road.
The media has of course been helped by sheer idiocy of remarks spewed forth by politicians and so-called spiritual and societal leaders.

 

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A pat on the back to the media for sticking to the law and not revealing the rape victim’s name, even though the father has apparently given it to the UK Mirror. The Hindu had a front page note from editor Siddharth Vardarajan explaining just how the law worked as far as India is concerned

 

The news agency ANI has apparently taken action against a stringer for taking remarks by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat about a woman’s place being in the kitchen out of context. Bhagwat was it seems explaining how marriage worked in the western system unlike in India where it is a spiritual union. Sadly, a woman’s place remains in the kitchen here as well, judging from how our worthies feel about women in public places!

 

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

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

All right, I retract my claws… for now.

 

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

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Mumbai’s last and final appointment with the late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray was a long and emotional day for half the city and perhaps an intriguing experience for the rest of the country, given the non-stop coverage of his funeral on most new channels.

 

After the announcement of his passing was made on Saturday afternoon, TV channels were up and running with their assessment and forecasting programmes. As expected, most got Mumbai-based newspaper journalists to share their expertise with viewers. As perhaps not so expected, some journalists were caught between their respect for someone who had just died and their objectivity. Senior journalist and columnist Sidharth Bhatia and author Shobhaa De on CNN-IBN stood out for their frank appraisals of Thackeray’s politics. Kumar Ketkar, editor of Divya Marathi, was a disappointment as he tried to hedge in his comments about the Shiv Sena chief. Praful Bidwai was characteristically outspoken in his criticism of Thackeray as was Paranjoy Guha Thakurta on Headlines Today, but perhaps not quite so brutal. On Sunday morning, it was veteran journalist Mahesh Bijapurkar (for many years with The Hindu in Mumbai), on CNN-IBN who was objective and knowledgeable in his assessments of Thackeray. Ketkar on Times Now (and occasionally on CNN-IBN) continued with his wishy-washy analysis which sometimes bordered on hagiography.

 

The fact is that Thackeray was a controversial character. His hold over Mumbai was perhaps unparalleled and he did give hope and courage to many who felt marginalised by geography and circumstance. But he did break many rules of democracy, of the Constitution and of unwritten rules of social discourse. There were aspects of his politics which were divisive and dangerous. He was also witty, warm and charming in person. All these factors have to be discussed.

 

The non-stop TV coverage of Thackeray’s funeral procession however meant that news channels had to come up with constant chatter. This meant calling on “experts” to share their views since we know that TV editors cannot trust their own opinions. But by now, they were running short of experts. As one wag on Twitter put it, just about every journalist who had spent 10 minutes in Mumbai was now an expert on Thackeray and the Shiv Sena. Their lack of insider knowledge or the fact that their opinions were gleaned from newspaper reports was evident to any Mumbaikar (or do we now go back to saying “Bombaywallah”?) The Hindi and Marathi channels both concentrated more than the English ones on the fact that nephew Raj Thackeray was not on the truck with the body but walking ahead. Times Now gushed a bit about Raj Thackeray’s “humility” but Hindi and Marathi channels had other ideas, corroborated by the morning papers on Monday which made it clear that he left the procession mid-day in a huff.

 

Of all that channels, CNN-IBN was the best in its objective analysis of Thackeray’s life and politics. In the evening, Smruti Koppikar, lately of Outlook and now of Hindustan Times, shared her first-hand knowledge of the city and the Sena. It was also interesting to hear former police commissioner Julio Rebeiro’s reminisces of Thackeray, which were also frank. A complete contrast to another former commissioner M N Singh who claimed in Monday’s Hindustan Times that Thackeray never created law and order problems in Mumbai or some such arrant nonsense.

 

Times Now and Arnab Goswami came up short with its inability to distinguish between journalistic objectivity and personal pain. The channel and its star editor-in-chief treated Bal Thackeray’s death like it had happened to one of their own and behaved a bit like British TV presenters at Princess Diana’s funeral – lacking in both distance or perspective.

 

Where all TV channels failed is perhaps in their assessment of the crowds on Sunday. The common consensus seemed to be at 20 lakh – which is 2 million people and they immediately decided this was the biggest ever. On Monday, newspapers hedged between 5 and 10 million which is quite a different number. The state government’s home department put the figure at 5 lakh. The Times of India carried a photograph of Shivaji Park with vast empty spaces!

 

Speaking of the Times of India, it did demonstrate its superior knowledge of the city and its relationship with the Sena but almost all of it through Ambarish Mishra who wrote almost the whole newspaper!

 

Mid-Day lived up to its standing as a city newspaper by carrying a page full of details of what would work in Mumbai on Monday and what wouldn’t – much-needed for a citizenry which has been living without food and transport and in fear.

 

The next few days are going to see more analysis about what next for the Sena. But without a doubt, a massive chapter in the city’s life – and in the media’s life – has closed with the passing of Bal Thackeray.

 

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

By Ranjona Banerji

 

Mumbai lived through an extraordinary day on Thursday both in actual terms and on news television. The news of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray’s ill-health on television on Wednesday night led to the city being shut down on Thursday morning. There were no newspapers and there was no bandh call. It seemed that fear of reprisal by angry Shiv Sainiks kept auto-rickshaws and taxis off the roads and many shops shut.

 

This was, ideally, time for news channels to shine. It was their moment. They could not only tell India about Thackeray’s condition but also report on the situation in the city. Times Now decided that Thackeray was going to be the only story of the day. So its reporters and camera crew perched outside Matoshree all day. However, the channel had no clue about what was going on inside Thackeray’s residence and little clue about what was happening in the rest of the city. So after a while, you felt that you were watching a red carpet report of all the celebrities arriving at the “event”. Initially, funereal tones were adopted by the channel but as the day progressed, these were abandoned. There was no investigative or even standard reporting of any kind – no direct interaction with doctors, either Thackeray’s doctors or anyone else’s, no reports based on conversations with other Sena leaders, no leads as to what was going on inside. And even when it was clear that all the Sena would say is that Bal Thackeray was “critical but stable” the celebrity parade was all that the channel would focus on.

 

Outside the Bandra East area however was the big story – how India’s financial capital shut itself down in the morning for fear of attacks by Shiv Sainiks in case of an eventuality. This the Mumbaikar learnt about from hearsay to social media to talking to people, with rumours merrily mixed up with facts. Times Now, incidentally, is a Mumbai-based channel unlike the others which are headquartered in Delhi.

 

Headlines Today also concentrated on Thackeray but instead of standing outside his house, had panel discussions on Thackeray’s life and politics. Anchored by Rahul Kanwal, the channel looked at Thackeray’s career and the various controversies surrounding him and the contradictions in the man himself. Sociologist Dipankar Gupta and journalists Vir Sanghvi and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta shared their own experiences and their insights. One could not agree with all of them but it was a mature discussion about a politician who carved out a unique space for himself in India’s polity.

 

CNN-IBN treated Thackeray’s ill-health like just another news story, also looking at the visit of Burmese politician Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland because she was refused a medical termination of pregnancy after a miscarriage and the fact that the government had not mopped up Rs 1 lakh 76000 crore from 2G spectrum auctions.

 

At night, however, Times Now having perhaps decided that it had wasted a whole day on what turned out to be a non-story, had its primetime discussions on Savita’s case. Being the foremost upholder of national pride, the focus of course was on the fact that an Indian had died and not on the medical and religious aspects of the case.

 

Deciding on the news is a judgment call in any media organisation and everyone makes mistakes. But Times Now not only called the day wrong it also showed incompetence in the way it handled its news of the day. It could have changed its strategy at any time but appeared to be sleeping on the job. An unfortunate example of how not to run with a news story.

 

It took the morning’s newspapers, as ever, to put Thursday in perspective and tell us what else had happened.

 

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own (though we often agree with them)

 

By Ranjona Banerji

 

As Smita Prakash pointed out so succinctly in her column in Mid-Day on Monday, we’ve entered an almost ridiculous season of allegations and counter allegations (http://www.mid-day.com/columnists/2012/nov/051112-opinion-Smita-Prakash-The-Supreme-Court-of-press-conferences.htm).

 

There is mud-slinging from all quarters and at the middle of the arena stands the media, especially television news. It seems that every publicity hound has crawled out of the woodwork to have his or her moment in the glare of TV lights. The champions of the hit-and-run game are members of India Against Corruption – Anna Hazare has been far less hysterical after he disassociated himself from the group. But politicians, whistle-blowers, activists have all jumped on to this point-and-preen bandwagon. And the media has allowed them to do it.

 

The diligence required to check whether any of these accusations have substance in them has been abandoned in the merry-go-round of hourly revelations. It could be Nitin Gadkari or Robert Vadra or Naveen Patnaik, it’s like the night of the long knives: slash and burn.

 

It is not good news for journalists when they allow activists to do all their work for them. It not only makes them lazy, it also surrenders vital ground. Many people who dig up dirt on others for a living have a vested interest. If journalists cannot dig up the dirt themselves, they must at least find out why x and not y is being targeted. Objectivity doesn’t just mean not taking sides; it also means being suspiciously mindful of every bit of information that comes to you. Nothing should be taken at face value and all facts given have to be re-checked and corroborated. It’s a sort of constructive cynicism if you like.

 

Instead, we have journalists full of glee at allegations made by others and then a massive jump to the final result (innocent or guilty, action or no action) without an investigation being conducted. It is not just trial by media: it is an insane spectacle. TV is especially guilty of this bizarre innocence. A child falls into a well. What, a star anchor thunders, is the chief minister going to do about this? What indeed. What does the star anchor-editor do when gross errors of fact and language are made on his or her channel? How many heads roll? Who takes the blame? India, the nation wants to know.

 

**

 

The diatribe against writer VS Naipaul by theatre doyen Girish Karnad at the Literature Live festival in Mumbai got far more play in the media, especially TV, than such events normally do. As many pointed out on Twitter, it suddenly took the attention away from politics. Karnad used his theatre session to object instead to Naipaul being given an award by the festival pointing out that Naipaul’s views on India and Islam were objectionable.

 

Naipaul, apart from being a brilliant writer of prose, is also known for his sometimes unsustainable opinions and his great disdain for everyone apart from himself. He is also rude and crotchety. His non-fiction cannot in that sense match his fiction because his ideas and knowledge can be ill-formed.

 

Interestingly, Naipaul’s various staunch defenders seem to have been somewhat dumbstruck by Karnad’s assault and instead, the playwright, actor, director has been applauded by many more.

 

**

 

The headline of the day must go to the Hindustan Times for this one: ‘Gadkari talks up a storm, leaves party speechless’.

 

The BJP president for reasons known only to him decided that Swami Vivekananda and gangster Dawood Ibrahim had similar IQs. He kindly went on to redeem the philosopher-monk of the Ramkrishna Mission by saying that he used his IQ for good.