MxMIndia

Tag: freaking news

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji tracks the news (and non-news) on TV, in the papers and cyberspace

    Ranjona Banerji: Why focus on Asaram Bapu’s copter crash?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    On the one hand, TV did as good a job as it could in its reporting on the twin verdicts on Wednesday – confirmation of terrorists Ajmal Kasab’s death sentence and 32 people, including a former minister and prominent Bajrang Dal leader, found guilty in the Naroda Patiya massacre during the Gujarat riots.

     

    However, being TV, they are easily distracted. The continued focus on the CAG report and coal allocations is understandable as is the disruption of Parliament by the BJP. But was it necessary to focus quite so much on Asaram Bapu’s helicopter crash considering injuries were minor? For some reason, the acquittal by the Supreme Court of two suspects in the November 2008 terror case was overlooked by TV. Kasab’s guilt was self-evident – he was seen by millions on TV and captured on film by newspaper photographers. But the other two were caught later by the Mumbai police and have been acquitted by three courts for insufficient evidence. The first time they were acquitted, the inefficiency of the Mumbai police was pointed to by former IPS officer and now activist lawyer YP Singh to a young anchor on NDTV, she was quite upset. She asked shocked, “How can you say that? They work so hard?” It was Singh’s turn to be shocked as he was stunned into silence.

     

    **

     

    By Thursday, the news cycle for television had changed. Karan Thapar on The Last Word on CNN-IBN was worried about whether NAM was still relevant and Sagorika Ghose also on CNN-IBN was asking about education and sports after St Stephen’s College in Delhi did not allow India’s Under-19 cricket captain Unmukt Chand to sit for his exams.
    But the widest search for a subject to save India from itself came from Arnab Goswami of Times Now. He wanted to know why some MLAs from the Karnataka Assembly were travelling abroad on study tours when Karnataka was in a drought situation. The first rule of responsible journalism: first report extensively and comprehensively on the drought situation. After that, look for sensational subjects to shore up your viewership.

     

    **

     

    Newspapers remained more circumspect and traditional and they reported on the two judgments, analysed them and wrote editorials. Most slammed the Modi government in Gujarat, all accepted that the Kasab verdict was inevitable and there was comprehensive explanation over death row procedures. Some debate over capital punishment ensued as well. Nothing untoward or unusual in the papers.

     

    **

     

    However it was unusual that television did not go to town on Narendra Modi’s comments that Gujarat’s malnutrition figures are high because beauty-conscious girls don’t eat enough. Now that would have been an exciting debate to watch on Times Now. Really, India wants to know.

     

  • 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

    Ranjona Banerji: Indian Media’s cheapskate policies lead to shallow coverage

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Indian media’s biggest weakness has been exposed by the violence in Assam – lack of both intellectual depth and old-style news-gathering. Driven either by the race for rating points or by marketing research drivel imposed by them by corporate offices, journalists have reduced themselves to page makers and anchors. As news rooms have got younger and younger – by design – institutional memory has been sacrificed for cheap and amenable goods.

     

    The result is that not a single mainstream news channel or newspaper has the ability to inform the reader about just what is happening in Assam.

     

    On top of that, we are seeing a return to the right-left Hindu-Muslim polarisation in the media which was last rampant in the 1990s. This means that no conversation can take place without barbs and sideswipes and a complete disregard for fact or indeed for clarity. Last night on Headlines Today, I dare anyone to have gleaned anything substantial from the squabble between Vinod Sharma of Hindustan Times and Tarun Vijay of the BJP over the exodus of people from the North East on fear of retaliatory attacks from Muslims.

     

    I can understand the need to sensationalise news. I also understand that when news moves at a fast pace, you have to move as seamlessly as possible from subject to subject. But our failure is in building up foundations of knowledge and information. We see stories in such lightweight terms that the idea of depth has been forgotten. It is one of our biggest ironies that as the media has become bigger and journalists are paid more, newsgathering has shrunk.

     

    I have yet to read – TV is a complete failure here – any sustained set of articles in any one publication on the Assam situation. The right wing has been screaming about illegal immigration of Bangladeshis into Assam for years but figures do not seem to bear that out. Is it too much to ask that someone shine some light on the issue? The best I have read has been in kafila.org and if newspapers are not careful, the internet is going to walk all over their domain. Given the standard of newspapers sometimes, I don’t even know if that’s a bad thing.

    http://kafila.org/2012/08/16/the-myth-of-the-bangladeshi-and-violence-in-assam-nilim-dutta/

     

    **

     

    Madhu Kishwar’s open letter to Arnab Goswami has created some waves in the social media. She has laid out all the problems which viewers (and as it happens, participants) have with prime time TV discussions. Many people have said what Kishwar has, but few have said it better.

    Open letter to Arnab Goswami by Madhu Kishwar

     

    In the light of that, it was amazing to watch Goswami and his guests on Times Now start frothing at the mouth a couple of weeks ago over the Sikh gurudwara killings in the US state of Wisconsin. I bring this up because I fail to see how hysteria between Goswami and Meenakshi Lekhi of the BJP over why the US called the killings an act of domestic terrorism and not a hate crime will make any substantial difference to the American legal process. Goswami I understand is on his peculiar jingoistic mission of catapulting India to the leader of the Universe status. But Lekhi is supposed to be a lawyer. From reading Kishwar’s piece you understand – the more you agree with the anchor, no matter how absurd his position – the better your chances of being called back as a guest.

     

    Last night on Times Now, Goswami wanted to know why the persons who spread the rumours about people from the North East being attacked and the person who made a provocative speech in Mumbai last week had not been arrested yet. He provided an example of China, that beacon of justice and fair play, to prove his point. This is about as absurd as it gets.

     

    For an illuminating, if unpleasant for the right wing, comment on Mumbai’s violence after some Muslim organisations protested the killings of Muslims in Assam and Myanmar, here’s Jyoti Punwani in the Hindu

    http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3772309.ece?homepage=true

     

  • 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

    Ranjona Banerji: The news that did not happen on TV

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    All day on Monday all that happened in India was that yoga teacher Baba Ramdev and a few thousand followers continued their protest against corruption and black money in New Delhi. That is, if you watched television. As the day progressed, political leaders attended the protest and gave speeches. That was it. The rest of the news day was in Shavasana – the dead body pose.

     

    Not however, if you read the newspapers on Tuesday. Grains rotting in Gujarat, Haryana minister Gopal Kanda on the run after an employee’s suicide writes a letter saying that a suicide note is not admissible, the latest on the Mumbai violence, especially the provocative doctored videos on the attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, Sharad Pawar given the number 3 slot in the Cabinet behind AK Anthony, a woman researcher allegedly molested on the IIT Mumbai campus by a staff member and the end of the Olympics.

     

    This is just a smattering of the news that did not happen on TV. There is more, though undoubtedly a lot of it is city specific. However, it would have been interesting to know how Delhi reacted to the traffic snarls created by Ramdev’s protests, whether people suffered or not, how many were affected and so on. TV sadly did not oblige.

     

    ***

     

    Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju has been mainly silent after his dramatic ascension to the throne. But now he’s popped up again. Strangely, it is not the media which is his focus. Rather it is West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who he had once lauded for her honesty and determination. Now he is appalled at her authoritarian ways after a farmer was arrested after he questioned the CM at a rally. Banerjee accused the farmer of being a Maoist.

     

    Katju has also stated that Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev’s anti-corruption movements are “empty gas”.

     

    He said: “Nothing is going to happen by Anna or Ramdev’s crusade against corruption”. The former judge said he was not justifying corruption but instead was pointing out that India was going through a “transitional period where there is no moral code”. His prophecy: corruption will continue for 15 years.

     

    Presumably, we will all become moral after that.

     

    * * *

     

    What does one make of anti-corruption activist Kiran Bedi’s statement that the media spends too much time on “small rapes” (she then said she meant rapes by “small” people) instead of corruption? In Bedi lies a lesson for the media. She was pumped up for being India’s first female IPL officers and qualities were attributed to her which she never had. Once she was made into a heroine in the people’s eyes, it became very difficult to dethrone her. As a result of all that hype, she is now in textbooks and has won numerous awards.

     

    Prolonged exposure to her during the Anna Hazare-led movement has however exposed her many short-comings. Now we know that amongst her other faults, she is also dismissive of rape. Some female role model.

     

  • 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

    Ranjona Banerji: The shame of the PR influence on the media

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    It is interesting indeed to see that newspapers have chosen to report on the Maharashtra government’s decision to ban the sale of Mahyco’s Bt cotton seeds in the state but has not gone very far beyond that. In another story on Friday morning, a Parliamentary panel has sought a probe into the current stand-off over the introduction of Bt brinjal in to India.

     

    Criticism of Bt cotton in the media started off by being as expected but soon buckled under the tremendous pressure brought upon it by Mahyco Monsanto Biotech. Earlier in this column we have discussed the “expose” on The Times of India done by P Sainath in the Hindu. The marketing department of the TOI used articles done after a Mahyco Monsanto junket to promote the company, years after they were originally written.

     

    Although there have long been allegations that the forced or over-encouraged use of genetically-engineered cotton seeds have been detrimental to farmers as yields have fallen and land has to be fallow for too long. The initial success of Bt cotton, coupled with the promises made, led to high expectations from farmers and a corresponding high debt burden. This in turn led to most of the suicides by farmers is what most activists and social workers have alleged.

     

    While many such stories appeared initially, the enormous pressure brought upon the media by the company and by the government saw the stories petering out. Monsanto, the American company and Mahyco, the government venture, both employed very persuasive PR to push their case. The Sainath column in Hindu, in fact, went through all the mistakes and misrepresentations in the Times of India Bt cotton junket, point by point. A Parliamentary committee which went to the same areas of Maharashtra a few months later found an area rife with debt and suicides – sometimes quoting the same people who claimed to be happy in the TOI report.

     

    In Friday’s papers, TOI has a single column story while Hindustan Times has a more detailed report.

     

    The shame of the PR influence on the media is not just about glamour or lifestyle stuff, although that is rampant and in some cases institutionalised. But when it comes to corporate pressure, especially from aggressive companies who are willing to use the law and every other avenue to protect themselves from criticism, the media comes up against a formidable opponent. In the case of Monsanto and Mahyco, having initially put up a fight, most of the media seems to have capitulated. Friday’s stories have been carried only because the Maharashtra government has finally accepted that the shift to genetically modified cotton has not been the universal success initially claimed.

     

    Time perhaps for the media to find its teeth again?

     

  • 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

    Ranjona Banerji: Anna movement reaches its predictable end

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The news was quick to jump on India’s new Union Home minister after a series of bomb blasts hit Pune the day Sushil Kumar Shinde was appointed. In a revealing interview with Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN, Shinde exposed himself as a “family” man and also attributed his political success to his Dalit caste. These are just the kinds of things a new India does not want to hear. Even worse, he then went on to say that he had been an “excellent” power minister – this on the day that North and East India reeled under power blackouts for the second consecutive day.

     

    Fortunately for Shinde and his possible short-comings – and also therefore for the UPA government – escape came from what has been the top news story, especially on television: the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement.

     

    Two days ago, Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami had practically been in tears over the frail but defiant condition of Anna Hazare adviser Arvind Kejriwal. The activist, who is apparently a diabetic, was in a bad way but was refusing to break his fast until all his conditions were met – arrest half the government and so on.

     

    Goswami therefore got into fighting mode as there were indications that the movement was looking for a political solution. Karan Thapar also explored this on his Last Word on CNN-IBN.

     

    By Thursday, it was announced that the anti-corruption movement would now become a political platform. The news was welcomed by all political parties since the fight had moved away from civil society to a battle ground they were all very familiar with.

     

    The media’s relationship with the Anna Hazare movement has been fascinating. TV went overboard last year as it supported the movement wholeheartedly and since most TV journalists are under the age of 11, they must have felt this was bigger than the freedom movement. The print media however remained cautious and in some cases critical. The people of India also get enthusiastic and social media was buzzing with anti-corruption rage. The government helped by bumbling and fumbling in its negotiations. But nothing topped the one lakh people who supported the movement in Delhi last year. The Lokpal bill was passed in the Lok Sabha but did not get past the Rajya Sabha.

     

    Buoyed by its success, the movement went a little overboard in its demands and so TV also started asking difficult questions. No one showed up in Mumbai in December and TV totally turned. All the allegations against people like Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal were discussed. Hazare’s rustic ideas on politics and society became public knowledge. The group’s diverse and contradictory views on the politics, on political parties and ideologies were exposed.

     

    This time’s agitation saw the love coming full circle. TV tried to be supportive but the people were not. The movement’s supporters roughed up journalists for reporting the lack of popular support. The government was unmoved.

     

    The result is that the movement has gone political. Media support, which bolstered the movement so much in its early days, is now no longer assured. An interesting tale of how activists took on the government and enthused some people for a short while has reached a very predictable end. The media, they will have to remember from now on, will never be a pillar of support if it has to be a pillar of democracy.

     

  • 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

    Ranjona Banerji: Why I love Arnab Goswami. Really!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Kudos must be given to Times Now for its drive to expose the little acts of callousness in India. These are problems which are so commonplace that they are overlooked, not just by the media but by the general public as well, perhaps even by NGOs. The death of a five-day-old baby girl in a Jalandhar hospital because her parents could not pay Rs 200 for a life-support system made it to Arnab Goswami’s News Hour. Just as a reference point, the story is on page 11 of the Mumbai edition of The Times of India – and made it there only because of television.

     

    Goswami dignified the death of the girl by cross-examining the doctors – and rejecting all their excuses. He and his guests discussed the callousness of the system, a Supreme Court ruling that bans taking money for life-support from poor people and asked whether the baby would have been treated differently if it was a boy.

     

    Goswami is right when he says that it is these little problems which have to be solved if our society is to be sensitised.

     

    TV continued with its campaign against crimes against women as all channels highlighted the plight of a woman in Kolkata who struggled to file a rape complaint even though she was bleeding profusely and a girl in Bangalore thrown off a train by molesters.

     

    **

     

    Even TV has realised that the Anna Hazare movement has run out of steam and merrily had discussions on it. I would venture to offer “Team Anna” some advice: if it took up the issues of the “little people” it might find greater resonance than its current policy of going after big sharks. In our everyday lives, it is the callous hospital staff, the indifferent police constable who hurt as the most. Let Team Anna follow the path that Goswami has forged for them.

     

    Sudden thought: Can you imagine what would happen if Arnab Goswami and Aamir Khan joined forces? Wow!

     

    **

     

    Of course, one’s love for television cannot go too far. The discussions on the Assam problem have been largely unsatisfying except perhaps for Karan Thapar’s Last Word on CNNIBN, if only because his guests did not have hysterics and screaming fits. It makes a life a little easier if you can understand what everyone is saying. The Jerry Springer version of TV gets tedious after some time.

     

    **

     

    The completely pointless discussions on Narendra Modi’s “hang me if I’m guilty” interview to Urdu weekly Nai Duniya were the other ear-sore. Modi, who likes to be in the news, manages to provoke some TV air time and create the same amount of sound and fury. The same guests every time on every channel on opposite ends of the political drama saying the same things as last time have become a yawn. The highlight on Thursday was apparently Teesta Setalwad walking out of the discussion on Times Now and walking back. This is hearsay evidence because I never saw it but was informed by people who did and by Twitter.

     

    **

     

    Chaos in the social media universe on Thursday incidentally as GTalk and then Twitter collapsed. How on earth did we manage before Twitter everyone asked when it came back. Indeed.

     

    **

     

    The “Greatest Show on Earth” begins. More on that next week. Happy viewing.

     

  • Almost 30 years in the media have taught me that life and death are cyclical. You never know when something revives, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Why slam Mid-Day, Ms Baghel?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This week, I’m taking on a personal grouse, so I apologise in advance.

     

    There can be no doubt that Mumbai Mirror started in 2005 like a breath of fresh air in the city of Mumbai. It was exciting, bold and entertaining and gave the idea of news a daring dynamic. Much of the credit for this goes to Meenal Baghel, the editor of the newspaper who was interviewed yesterday on mxmindia.com.

     

    I know Meenal only very vaguely but am full of admiration for the newspaper that she created and nurtured. Mumbai Mirror has in a short space of time – six years – made itself indispensable to many and has displayed a sure hand, a deft touch in dealing with news and giving it that tabloid spin. All kudos. But I have felt a dip in Mirror in the past couple of years – perhaps because Baghel was involved in overseeing the various editions of Mirror which have started all over the country. The edge was missing and the newspaper had started doing what seemed to me to be “college boy” stories. In fact, I shifted to The Economic Times, using The Times of India’s various subscription schemes as a result. This I must emphasise is my personal opinion.

     

    However, I was intrigued to read this in her interview to Anil Thakraney:

     

    “You’ve pretty much killed Mid-Day. Feels good?

    The paper killed itself. And I feel really bad. I feel bad that what was such a robust paper is no longer that. We all worked very hard out there. We worked our asses off at Mid-Day and we used to take great pride in the paper being so robust, that it was second only to the TOI.”

     

    Before becoming editor of Mirror, Baghel was deputy editor of Mid-day.

     

    But this is where I have a little story to tell. In 1993, Pradyuman Maheshwari, editor-in-chief of mxmindia.com joined Mid-day. We left at the same time in 2000. In those years, we had to work very hard, for most of that time under the editorship of Ayaz Memon to make Mid-Day a strong and credible Mumbai property. Baghel worked for Mid-Day in the dispensation that followed all of us leaving in 2000. When we left, Mid-Day and Sunday Mid-Day had been on a rising graph as far as circulation and readership were concerned. A survey of readers during that stint had this most interesting quote: The Times of India is seen as a “respected uncle” while Mid-Day is seen as the “Shah Rukh Khan of newspapers”. I can say without any false modesty that when we quit, Mid-Day was a force to reckon with in Mumbai. Tariq Ansari is the best publisher I have every worked with, so all credit to him. Incidentally, Anil Thakraney was also part of the group for a few of those years, as editor of The Brief.

     

    Within six months of our leaving, Mid-Day lost almost 60,000 copies in circulation. It has taken it almost a decade to get back to the figures it was at when Ayaz, Pradyuman and I quit. Mid-Day has had many great editors and journalists working for it in the past – some great luminaries of Indian journalism – but not, I have to say, since 2000. They still have time to turn luminaries. I am sure that everyone worked very hard because that is what the newspaper and the medium demanded. We had four editions a day in my time but that was disbanded shortly after.

     

    I do not want to take away from Baghel’s formidable achievements in journalism. Her book on the Neeraj Grover case is excellent from all accounts (I have not read it). But almost 30 years in the media have taught me that life and death are cyclical. You never know when something revives, and I for one would advise desisting from slamming other publications – especially those that you have worked with in the past.

     

    From what I understand from IRS figures, Mid-Day is on the rise again under the able stewardship of Sachin Kalbag. Plus I write a column for them again, so who knows! (That last line was a joke, by the way.)

     

     

    The views expressed here are Ranjona’s own. But we are carrying these not because I endorse them, but it’s a view and must get aired. Plus it’s part of her blog/column. Also, who doesn’t mind a li’l bit of controversy. Lol.

    Just for the record: I had moved on from the main paper to the interactive division in ’99, though I would still write a media column in the Sunday paper. And, yes, I quit the group a couple of months after Ayaz and Ranjona had moved.

    I resubscribed to Mid-Day (on weekdays) three weeks back, and must say it has improved much. However the paid news policy – albeit in the entertainment section – sucks. Sunday Mid-Day though could do with some more, to use the word Meenal used, energy.

    – Pradyuman Maheshwari

     

  • 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

    Ranjona Banerji: TV news viewing can be injurious to the lower jaw

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Since president-elect Pranab Mukherjee spoke to almost everyone on Tuesday, it was hard to see why news channels rushed to qualify their interviews as “first” or “better” or whatever. Exclusive, in TV parlance, is apparently when you do the same thing as everyone else, except five minutes before.

     

    Anyway, Mukherjee did not say very much about anything he was going to do as President although he talked about his childhood and his early political career. The silliest question I reckon came from Sagorika Ghose of CNN-IBN who asked whether Mukherjee’s ascension to Rashtrapati Bhavan was a “return of Bengal to the mainstream”. At this point my jaw dropped so low that it fell off and I was so busy retrieving it that I couldn’t pay attention to the rest of the interview.

     

    The best I could get from Arnab Goswami’s interview with Mukherjee on Times Now was that first Mukherjee walked round his garden 40 times, then 33 times and now 30 times and he did not know how many times he was going to walk around the Mughal Gardens. He said he heard the gardens were very large. Anyway, as President he will have ample time to work out stuff like that. Or if he asks someone they might tell him how big the Mughal Gardens are.

     

    * * *

     

    Sunday was all about the presidential election as well as everyone gave us live coverage. Of course, after some time they ran out of things to say because there was very little to say about a presidential election in India, at least not enough that can last a whole day even given TV’s marvellous propensity for waffling on about nothing. The highlight of the day was losing candidate PA Sangma’s losing speech. He started by congratulating Mukherjee and then went into a whine about how the Congress had used bribery, extortion and threats to ensure Mukherjee’s victory and how the North East and betrayed not just him but all tribals and themselves as well. (They didn’t vote for him.) Sangma’s entire campaign was based on pettiness, so nothing surprising here. What was surprising was Navika Kumar of Times Now stating emphatically that this was the best, most gracious and most sportsmanlike speech she has ever heard from a loser. Her guests Krishna Prasad of Outlook and commentator NN Satchidanand tried to point out otherwise, but she would have none of it. Jaw-retrieval is a common affliction for those who watch too much TV news, as I should know by now.

     

    * * *

     

    Rupert Murdoch has stepped down from several boards which control News Corp’s titles in the US, UK and India. The pressure to do so apparently came from investors, after the phone-hacking scandal led to the closing of The News of the World and all the arrests of News Corp staff, current and former. Murdoch’s rise saw a lot of bile but in his fall are some abject lessons for media bosses and for those journalists who decide that principles are nothing when faced with corporate pressure to perform in a particular manner or to do anything to get results. The Nuremberg trials ought to be required reading for young aspiring journalists: the fact that you got an order is not defence enough.

     

    * * *

     

    I was appalled yesterday and continue to be appalled today about Monday’s front page anchor in The Times of India about a group of Indian athletes that went to the 1936 Berlin Games under a saffron flag singing Vande Mataram and impressed Adolf Hitler enough to give the group a medal. The story behaved as if getting a medal from the 20th century’s most frightening dictator was a great honour. There was not a squeak in the story about Nazism and what the organiser of the group thought of that. The glorification of Nazism in India is restricted to those influenced by the religious nationalism that comes of out of Nagpur. The story, therefore, should have mentioned or questioned the RSS connections of the group. Saffron flags and Vande Mataram were clear giveaways but why not come out openly and say so? And for a journalist – and a newspaper – to ignore the Nazi angle to such a story is criminal.

     

    * * *

     

    Vikram Doctor’s article in The Economic Times on food and the Olympics was extremely readable and well-researched. Try it: http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/onmyplate/entry/thanks-to-french-humour-here-s-best-of-british-food

     

     

     

  • Had the story not been shown on TV, would there have been such an uproar? But then did the journalists incite the violence as has been alleged?

    Ranjona Banerji: Media was hero & villain of Guwahati horror

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The media turned out to be the villain and the hero last week. The case was the same – the shameful and horrific molestation of a young girl on a busy street in Guwahati last Monday night. The girl was apparently coming out of a bar where she had gone to celebrate a birthday party. She was then attacked by a mob which beat her and stripped her for about half an hour till the police arrived. The reason for the attack seems unclear as yet but it is enough to say that no reason is justification enough. What increases the shame is that there were several bystanders – it was about 9 in the evening and the area was crowded – who did nothing but watch.

     

    A local TV channel, Newslive caught the incident on camera. One version is that a passing reporter from the channel alerted his office. Another is that the channel “got to hear” and came rushing out. Editors of the channel claim that its employees called the police. The DGP says the call came from a neighbouring hotel. The editors of the channel also claimed that they debated for a whole day about whether to show the footage or not and decided that it was in best journalistic interests to show it, if only to help catch the perpetrators. The incident was televised on Tuesday. By Thursday it was picked up by the national media and went viral on the internet as well.

     

    By Friday, it was the news of the day everywhere. Most news channels showed it, blurring the victim’s face. She appeared to be a young girl being brutalised by this mob of men. The men’s faces were seen clearly. Most channels also interacted with viewers who were obviously outraged.

     

    In the early evening on Friday, Times Now put its own spin on the story and decided that it was not going to show the footage because it would only lead to the victim being further traumatised. The channel said it would only show the faces of the attackers. It then asked its viewers to call in and discuss whether the channel was right or not.
    The media itself was now an integral part of the story. The first question is one that journalists regularly face when covering such events – should they do their job and observe, collect information or should they have a human reaction and help. It is a difficult problem and probably has to be answered on a case by case basis by the individuals involved. But it is fair to ask whether the journalists on this case needed to watch for half an hour without stepping in. This was not a war, this was a street fight. One journalist appeared on TV saying he was too frightened by the mob. Headlines Today interviewed the girl, face blurred, who said she was begging for help which did not come.

     

    Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN, tried to grill Assam DGP Jayanta Narayan Chaudhury on why so few arrests had been made and why the police took half an hour to arrive but only got anodyne answers.

     

    Then there is the issue of whether showing the footage served any purpose. The sad fact is that had Newslive not shown the story, no one would have known about it nor seen, in all its horror, what such an attack looks like. The anger which was felt across the country was precisely because people saw what happened. Just reading or hearing about it is not quite so moving. The helplessness of the girl, the glee on the men’s faces – the brutish nature of the human condition was laid bare for all to see. Was Times Now therefore being too squeamish or even self-righteous?

     

    Also, by showing the incident, the faces of the men were clearly seen and some were even identified. (It is another matter that the main culprit, Amar Jyoti Kalita, also identified by his Facebook page, is still absconding.) Many viewers pointed this out to Times Now.

     

    However, the involvement of the media has now become murkier. An India Against Corruption activist from Assam, Akhil Gogoi, has handed over footage to the police which shows Gaurav Jyoti Neog, a journalist with Newslive, inciting the mob to molest the girl. Gogoi showed the footage at the Guwahati Press Club. Neog has resigned his job and said he is “cooperating” with the investigation.

     

    If indeed Gogoi’s allegations are correct, then the shame on the media is incalculable. Sadly this is not the first time that TV journalists have been accused of inciting people to horrific acts just to get a story. But some attempts need to be made to ensure that this is the last. The Indian media has enough problems without walking down the News of the World road to get a scoop.

     

  • For a change, Ranjona Banerji, finds reason to praise the efforts of the television news media

    Ranjona Banerji: Kudos to TV news

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Wonders of wonders, I find myself forced to praise media efforts in a few rather reprehensible cases. The first is the curious story of former athlete Pinki Pramanik. This Asian Games medal winner was accused of rape by her long-time partner. As Pramanik is female, this raised all kinds of questions and plenty of salacious interest. It is just the kind of case that the media could have gone overboard with. But instead, it has concentrated on the human rights abuses which Pramanik has been subjected to. Not only has she been put through several gender determination tests, a video clip of those tests was made public with some extraordinary scenes apparently of policemen groping her breasts. She has also been placed in a male prison, pending the rape investigation. Thanks to media scrutiny we now know that West Bengal, where Pramanik lives does not have adequate gender determination facilities. Yet she was humiliated over and over again.

     

    This media attention will hopefully focus on the group of people who could be called “inter-sex” with indeterminate physical sexual characteristics. They may see themselves as male or female and society has to find a way to integrate them without stripping them of their dignity. Since there are situations where we see things only in the male-female perspective (like sports for instance), some greater awareness and sensitivity is needed in dealing with this issue.

     

    The media is often accused of being prurient and insensitive. However, in the Pramanik case the current “permanent outrage” mood has come to its assistance. Both TV and print media have taken up this story from the human rights angle.

     

    **

     

    The second case is that of Suja Jones Mazurier, a mother of three who has accused her husband, French consular officer Pascal Mazurier of sexually abusing their four-year-old daughter. The Bangalore police have apparently treated her as an accused rather than a mother trying to protect her child. This is extraordinary behaviour by the police who usually decide that all accused are guilty – as in the Pramanik case – without the benefit of investigation and trial.

     

    The media has informed us that the police not only delayed filing an FIR, they also delayed taking the accused into custody, well after it was made clear that he did not have diplomatic immunity. They also asked Suja Jones the most incredible questions as well as conducted tests on the child in the most appalling conditions.

     

    **

     

    The third case is that of the 10-year-old girl being forced to drink her own urine by a hostel warden at the prestigious Patha Bhavan school in Santiniketan. This is a case with very few grey areas and the media has gone hammer and tongs at the Vishwa Bharati university authorities for trying to protect the warden at first and slapping “trespassing” charges against the girl’s parents when they tried to rescue her as well as at the police for delaying taking action.

     

    **

     

    All these cases involve human rights abuses, exposing which has usually been the domain of NGOs. But the media now appears to have stepped in as well and upped the ante. This challenges old media notions of what is a “big” story or not and shifts the focus from politics. It might be too early to herald this as a shift towards a more mature society but it does appear to be a step in that direction.

     

    **

     

    All kudos to TV news however for having the courage and naivete to challenge old journalistic traditions, as they insist on answers for what India wants to know.

     

  • 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

    Ranjona Banerji: Times Now = Alternative government on Pakistan?

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    There is a need perhaps for news channels to rethink their positions as far as prime time studio discussions are concerned. One might be so bold as to suggest that they are running out of steam. Sadly, not everyday brings up a topic so incendiary that the nation’s hackles rise one way or another and as has happened over the past few weeks. If panel discussions (debates, fights, yelling matches, whatever you want to call them) are about subjects like India’s team selection for the World T20 Championships (NDTV) or one more interminable inquiry into Air India (Times Now), then who’s really watching?

     

    Times Now however seems to be setting itself up as an alternative government when it comes to Pakistan. Night after night it badgers various Pakistanis (not members of the government) and tries to get them to confess that Pakistan is sponsoring terrorism in India. There appears to be some sort of strange naivete at play here. No one in India doubts Pakistan’s involvement. But it is hard to imagine that this kind of TV assault is going to make the situation any better.

     

    * * *

     

    Are newspapers alive or dead? Two takes on the debate are in the links pasted below. Well, the first is certain that death is imminent. The second is one of those “India rah rah” stories which foreign news agencies alternate with ‘India boo hoo” stories. Sadly, the reasons given in these links on why newspapers are dying are as pedestrians as the reasons why newspapers in India are booming.

     

    I have another take: news is not dying. Conventional methods of dispersal are. Any other ideas?

     

    http://listverse.com/2011/07/03/top-10-reasons-the-newspaper-is-dying/

     

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14362723

     

    * * *

     

    Senior journalist Sevanti Ninan of The Hoot writes a scathing piece in Mint on the collapse of newsgathering in newsrooms and the replacement of reporting with hectoring on TV channels. She also lifts the lid of newsroom practices and the ruthless retrenchment policies followed by newspaper managements.

     

    http://www.livemint.com/2012/07/04211735/The-changing-newsroom.html

     

    * * *

     

    Meanwhile excerpts from veteran journalist Kuldip Nayyar’s autobiography show the former editor to be in vicious form as he eviscerates former colleagues young and old. There is lesson here: refuse a former editor a column or suddenly cancel the column and you will pay the price later by being exposed in print.

     

    The link is from the blog sans serif: http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/kuldip-nayar-on-shekhar-gupta-n-ram-co/

     

    Read and enjoy. And may there be a lesson for all those who have refused to give this writer columns…

     

  • 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

    Ranjona Banerji: Don’t be jingoistic; do your job, journos!

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The coverage of the arrest of Abu Jundal or Zahibuddin Ansari has, sadly and as usual, tilted towards being a spokesperson for the investigating agencies. Rather than take a cold and dispassionate look at investigations into terrorist attacks or activities, all too often even very senior journalists become jingoistic, as if criticism of the way a probe is being conducted somehow impacts on their own personal patriotic duties.

     

    Yet the fact is that in the Mumbai terror attacks at least, it was the personal bravery of constable Tukaram Ombale that led to the capture of the lone surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab. The shame of the attacks is still enormous and the blame for that rests solely on our police force and state administration. (Is that my own sense of nationalism asserting itself, albeit in a converse manner? Perhaps.) The court which sentenced Kasab to death let off the other two names added to the case by the Mumbai police for lack of evidence. This was the worst, most audacious terrorist attack on India’s premier city and the police could not come up with enough evidence.

     

    The media in any other country would have gone to town on this. We instead had some mild criticism and more PR activity. It is only when there is enormous embarrassment like sending a list of wanted criminals to Pakistan for return to India only to find that some are dead and others are in Indian jails that there is obvious criticism.

     

    Crime reporting in Indian newspapers veers between police mouthpieces and gangster mouthpieces – a sad outcome of which is the murder of one journalist J Dey and the arrest of another, Jigna Vora, in his death. The onus for this lies with editors who seem unable to analyse the bigger picture in the race for some exciting story. Sensationalism is fine but somewhere there has to be a larger responsibility to present the reader with a more comprehensive story.

     

    In the Abu Jundul case, I would like to read more about how the police have been unable to crack these apparent sleeper cells all over the country, how the same names crop up as being responsible for most terrorist attacks in the country and yet we never get closer to catching them, why we still don’t know which dreaded terrorist is in the country and which is not, how the conflicts between various investigating agencies is impacting their efforts, the progress of our diplomatic efforts with Pakistan on the issue of terrorism… the list goes on. Yet what is available in newspapers is scanty and one can only glean all this from throwaway remarks here and there.

     

    TV news has to absolved from all this because its levels of maturity are still low. One of the funniest moments for me remains when the verdict on the Mumbai terrorist attacks was pronounced and the judge acquitted ?? and ?? for lack of evidence.

     

    Policeman turned activist and lawyer YP Singh was on NDTV. He said the acquittal reflected very badly on the Mumbai police. The NDTV anchor said: “how can you say that sir, they work so hard”. The expression of speechless incredulous horror on Singh’s face was classic!

     

    * * *

     

    As with terrorists, so also in the killings of “Naxals” in Chattisgarh, we put “patriotism” or adherence to state policies before journalistic rigour. It took the Indian Express to point out that many of these so-called dreaded Naxals were ordinary villagers and school children. If the media does not call out the government on these transgressions, then it is conceding all its “freedom of expression” space to NGOs and activists and thus abdicating one of its biggest responsibilities.