MxMIndia

Tag: Special Investigation Team

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

    [MJR] The Modi merry-go-round continues

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

    Applause all around.

     

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare on primetime news and in the papers

    SIT’s report makes for exciting TV but bad journalism

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The Special Investigation Team as appointed by the Supreme Court to look at the involvement of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in the Gujarat riots of 2002, particularly with reference to the Gulbarg society case has submitted its report. The report is still in sealed cover. But television spent half of last week going to town over the “clean chit” given to Modi and promptly a number of TV debates were held.

     

    The BJP, quite relieved to get a break from the behaviour of its ministers in Karnataka, sent out its publicity army in full force. TimesNow insisted that it had exclusive “leaks” from the sealed report while every other channel had their “sources” who told them what was in it.

     

    Newspapers, however, were forced to be more circumspect, although Times of India did initially blow up this “clean chit” – ironically on the same day that it headlined the slamming of Modi by the Gujarat High Court over his government’s inaction during the riots.

     

    By Friday morning, newspapers decided to wait for the actual report even as beleaguered BJP spokesperson Nirmala Seetharaman was begging channels to wait for the report. Some like Swapan Dasgupta and Yatin Oza were happy to jump the gun and blame secularists, the Congress, Muslims, activists and other wicked people for blaming Modi.

     

    Much as all this makes for exciting television, it also makes for bad journalism. One can understand our desire for tamasha but one can hope that at least we have some facts before we start jumping to conclusions.

     

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    It was interesting to hear Chief Election Commissioner Y Quereshi telling NDTV how hard the commission has worked to encourage higher voter interest during these UP elections. For some reason, after that the discussion became about low voter interest in Mumbai with lyricist Javed Akhtar and columnist Sandeep Desai holding forth. Quereshi did point out that Allahabad’s track record was worse than Mumbai’s.

     

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    The arrival of Comedy Central on our televisions has meant the welcome addition of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to our homes. It is well worth watching at 11.30 every night as the comedian takes on American and world politicians and politics, among other things. No one is spared, which is wonderful.

     

    Of course, I understand that all Indian people and things are sacrosanct and far above humour and satire and must never be so sullied but still, kudos to Cyrus Broacha and The Week that Wasn’t on CNN-IBN.

     

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    While on satire, Europe has to sometimes win the day for its devil-may-care attitude. The clip about Rafael Nadal and the power of Spanish athletes – implying drug use – on the satirical programme Les Guignols, shown on the French + Canal channel has Spain up in arms. Legal action will be taken says Spain, as this is one more in a series of allegations by various French sportspersons and media that Spanish sportspersons take performance-enhancing substances. The clip, available on YouTube, is very wicked!