Media bytes and media bites

Predictably, a lot of people are angry and upset and disillusioned and disgruntled at the Indian political class over the attacks in Mumbai. I'm one such in a sea of several millions. However, I'm also part of a smaller section, one that wasn't too pleased at with certain parts of the Indian electronic media's coverage and reporting of the attacks. I'm sure those who've already been outraged by it will understand fully what I'm alluding to, and those whose reactions now are "Eh, what's he talking about?" were quite obviously thrilled by the spectacle brought to them live on their tele.

The three channels that I happened to swap between were CNN-IBN, NDTV and a little bit of Times NOW, probably the three most popular English news channels, not necessarily in the order given, but you get the picture. And from the three channels, 2 journalists who chose to , how do I put this, let go of the journalistic traits ever so slightly every once in a while and became 'just another curious onlooker': Rajdeep Sardesai (CNN-IBN) and Barkha Dutt (NDTV), both former colleagues at NDTV, both held in high esteem by and large by large sections of the general English speaking public.
Note: At the time of writing this, I was told that Arnab Goswami of Times NOW had even cried on air, or had tears in his eyes and it was quite visible, but since I didn't watch too much of the coverage on his channel, I wouldn't want to comment on his reporting.

So what exactly did they do that is worth chastising them about, and was it really that bad, because if it were, wouldn't there probably have actually been a lot of hue and cry about it? These are undoubtedly some of the thoughts that would be crisscrossing the neural highways inside your head. Well, take a step back and try to recollect what exactly was done - whether it was just reporting the facts of the crisis while it was unfolding, or did they go beyond, and were theatrics and hysterics part of the reporting, along with personal emotions that were coming out to the fore? Let me clarify that I am not part of any group that is constantly against the media and out to string them up every time I feel like. I am an ordinary guy who wants fair and balanced reporting, and just calls a spade, a spade.

So let's start with Barkha Dutt, who at most times asks the right questions and I've never noticed her being partisan to any one political party. The Mumbai attacks saw her day and night, shuttling between locations of different attacks, in the quest to "break" news to the viewers. Fair enough so far. Then when survivours pour out, she's on the button with the microphone, asking "How do you feel?" [Freakin' relieved, I'd say] "Can you tell us what happened to you in there?"[ Well what do you think happened?] Maybe it's the most obvious and natural question that you'd ask, I know, and I don't have a problem with journalists if they want to talk to survivours, because most of them can directly 'inform' their loved ones that they are safe, but it's the questions asked that are, well, not the most articulate, if I have to put it mildly. There are times when she puts her comforting arm around victims, which is nice, but clearly not something that could have been even imagined if she didn't have a microphone in her hand with the camera running (which isn't in any way to imply she doesn't care). So my point is, why dramatise an already emotionally and physically draining situation? Why try to make the audience connect with the victims, when in fact we already are able to?

On the NDTV site, she has clarified certain things, but has conveniently shrugged off responsibility with her statement "...I am sure we inadvertently made a few (mistakes)- as did every department of government...". Barkha, that kind of a statement is something we associate with our politicians to be saying, not from seasoned and well respected journalists like you. You would have been better off following in the footsteps of your colleague Srinivasan Jain, who never once floundered into an emotional dramatisation of the events unfolding behind him at the Taj Mahal hotel. Even when he was interviewing guests, including Milind Deora, the south-Mumbai MP, he never once lost his cool, and always maintained the same voice control throughout the telecast, and indeed throughout the rescue operation that he was reporting on, and most importantly, stuck to the facts.

Moving over to their former colleague, and editor-in-chief of what he claims to be India's most popular English news channel, Rajdeep Sardesai is an excellent journalist when it comes to asking the tough questions. But sadly, the tough questions come out in flashes, and invariably are directed towards an increasingly (and alarmingly) popular BJP and the right wing. Where does the tough-talking journalist go when it comes to asking the Congress the tough questions is anyones guess. Visibly distraught over the attacks in Mumbai, especially over the death of DIG Hemant Karkare, Rajdeep launched into a tirade against the right wingers who until his (Karkare's) death were branding Karkare a traitor and vilifying him over the investigations into the Malegaon blasts. What was sad was that he (Rajdeep) chose to twist certain facts and cast aspersion on certain politicians (read Narendra Modi). His channel broke the news that Mr Modi had announced a Rs. 1 crore package to be given to the Maharashtra govt. to be distributed to the families of the victims of the attacks (which included the families of the security personnel killed). He, however, chose to state it as Modi announces 1 crore to the family of Hemant Karkare, and attacked Mr Modi for doing something he quite clearly didn't do.
Note: If Modi did indeed announce it to the families of the slain policemen, that wasn't the way it was reported by the media at the time, and since then to the time of writing this, there has been no clarification by the channel, although the BJP spokesperson did say the package was given to the state govt. to distribute.

Also, what we kept hearing was Rajdeep harping on the fact that the BJP was politicising terror. In my previous post, I already pointed out the fact as to why there is nothing wrong with the BJP going around asking why there was an intelligence failure, or making an election issue out of it (to summarise, it's the job of the opposition party to do, just as the Congress did during the Kargil war). What's more, there were several states that were to go in for polls in the coming week (underway currently as I write this), and given the fact that the BJP was always harping on the fact that the UPA was soft on terror, they would have even otherwise said that the govt. cannot ensure safety of the citizens, etc etc. The Mumbai attacks just came as a shot in the arm for the BJP (in terms of raising issues during elections) at the right time. So Mr. Sardesai's vitriol wasn't very professional. Also, as a journalist, why wasn't he asking the center and the state the tough questions? Why wasn't he asking about why there was such a glaring intelligence failure? Why was the focus being shifted to the opposition, rather than towards the ruling parties? What I kept hearing is that this isn't the time to ask such questions, but the time to unite and face the problem. Sounds good, but then when is a good time to ask the tough questions? 5 days after, 10 days after, 2 weeks after? Maybe we ought to come up with a time table for such things: upto x days after an attack, no asking tough questions; from x days to x + 10 days, ask tough questions; beyond x + 10 days, no more talking of topic because media has to cover other interesting topics (where x belongs to I, integers, and x > 0).

Please, for goodness sake, journos, we in the public want the facts reported to us, we do not want a dramatisation of events, for which we already have Ektaa Kapoor and her clutch of serials. We as a progressive society seek facts, not opinions; we seek information, not disinformation; we seek rational discussions, not emotional hysterics; we seek answers from our leaders and so expect you to ask them questions, not just question the role of the opposition. Where I will give you credit is the fact that we did see some restraint on your part, but it would have been better had there been unanimity and uniformity in the coverage across channels. So what if there were no "guidelines" given to you about what could be telecast and what couldn't during this crisis? Wasn't it the media itself who were up in arms against the government when they proposed guidelines to restrict telecasts? (which I too thought was bogus, because I felt the media was responsible enough to decide what should be shown and what shouldn't).

Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State under the Clinton administration, said that Pakistan has everything that gives you an international migraine. Well, to paraphrase Kaveree Bamzai of India Today, 24-hour news channels give us our greatest domestic migraine. I hope they are game enough to admit it, if not publicly, then at least privately, and strive to keep things the way they ought to be.

We survived, in spite of the politicians

I'm writing this post well past midnight, when the terrorist attack in Mumbai enters its third day - more than 48 hours later, more than 160 dead bodies and more than 250 injured. Where have we gone wrong? Well, in fact, that in itself is a wrong question, because the real question is where haven't we gone wrong? The attack actually shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to us because there are so many holes in the existing apparatus (and mind you, I say holes, and not just loopholes). The Taj Mahal hotel still burns, but the scars that this latest attack will leave on the families will be permanent. I say only families because the rest of the hoi polloi will forget about all of this by the end of next week and we're all going to go back and forget about the necessities lacking by our men in uniform.

The media:
So, again, what did we see going wrong? Let's start from the coverage. We saw shots of the electronic media try to brush past hotel security and police of the Taj and/or Oberoi to find out who was firing inside. While the action on it's own can be seen as commendable, the fact that the security personnel were pleading, I say again, pleading, with them not to go closer was unheeded. Since when did the cops have to plead with someone to allow them to do their duty? We often blame our security personnel as being insensitive because of their lack, or the level of education they have received, but when educated TV journalists so nonchalantly try to brush past these men and women of the security, like it's some right they possess because they come with a microphone and a camera, it is absolutely disgusting.

Staying with the media, I was struck by the hypocrisy of certain eminent figures from the electronic media, who talked about the politicising of terror. What exactly is this 'politicising of terror'? As far as I know, and from what I've learnt in school, the role of an opposition party in a democracy is to raise uncomfortable questions of the government when it is found wanting. I understand that at the very moment of a crisis may not be appropriate, because the government would have it's hands full with dealing the situation at hand, but otherwise what's wrong? Tomorrow if the state of garbage disposal is in a bad shape, and the opposition raises a stink about it, will it be called politicising sanitation?

Rajdeep Sardesai, the editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN, was understandably distraught with the events in his hometown of Mumbai., and more so with the death of ATS chief Hemant Karkare. However, every time a member of the public expressed anger on his show at the government's apathy towards a better plan to improve the security of the country, he termed it as understandable anger and empathised with them, but when politicians of the opposition, whose job it is to point flaws in the governments' actions, asked the same questions at the government, he termed it as politicising terror. Why the double-standards Mr. Sardesai? If you cannot maintain the levels of levelheadedness required to remain neutral (at least pretend to remain neutral) while doing your journalistic duties, then maybe you should have allowed your colleagues to take over, and you could have taken a break at one of the smaller cafés and chilled out a little. The last thing the gullible public needed at such a time, especially in an era where most of them (the public) have outsourced their thinking to the media, were the ramblings of an obviously emotional journalist.

Let's not leave out their old adversaries, NDTV, that constantly kept giving close up face shots of the NSG commandos. Now this may not seem inappropriate to most, but ask any security expert worth his/her money, and they'd tell you that it's not desirable, especially when the face shots are taken along with the names of the commandos printed on their tunics on the right side of their chest.

Society:
Even as the NSG were engaged with the terrorists at Nariman house, where a Jewish Rabbi and his family were the targets (and sadly, they were killed even before the commandos had a chance to save them), the public outside were cluttered around like items in an untidy apartment. Just why did the public deem it necessary to be this close to the action, where a stray bullet, or shrapnel from exploding ordinances could quite easily have killed or seriously injured. What's more, the milling crowds proved to be a hindrance to the security forces, as even ambulances couldn't get through in time, and the police had to resort to a lathi-charge! Imagine that, a terrorist crisis, and the police had to resort to use the lathi against it's own people because they were a little too curious for their own good. Such things can happen only in India - and I say this with a lot of shame.


The politicos:
Blaming the political class is something we do all the time (justifiably on almost all occasions), and at this time, it would almost sound rhetorical, so I'll keep away from it (which in no way means they are innocent and don't deserve their fair-share of blame). The amount of anger and rage against the ruling political class is near boiling point, and in some cases could well have shot past the threshold limit. I am now continuing after the attacks have ended and more the 190 people are dead, and over 300 injured.

It took me a lot longer to continue after I started because at most of the times, tears had filled my eyes and I just couldn't concentrate on what to write - my mind was numb! My thoughts kept returning to the television images and I kept gravitating towards the TV set in the hope that this time when I switch it on, I would hear the news I'd been wanting to hear- all over. But it took a lot longer. I vividly remember a placard held by a citizen after the ordeal. It read:
"Mr. Politician, I'm alive in spite of you". I couldn't have said it better. Hats off to you my lad, may you live for as long as you wish.

What's more, I know everyone will ask for the resignation of the Home Minister, but I have a slightly different angle to this: the Home Minister Mr. Shivraj Patil didn't even deserve to be at that post in the first place. No, this isn't the usual rhetoric that we usually hear, the usual cynical remarks from cynics like me and others. In the assembly elections that took place in 2004, Shivraj Patil lost! That's right, Patil lost the election from his constituency of Latur, but was still made the home minister because of his seniority and closeness to Sonia Gandhi. He was later elected via the Rajya Sabha, the back-channel route often used by parties across the spectrum, if they know they've got to satisfy incompetent, slobbering, egotistical , diseased-looking bastards like Mr. Shivraj Patil who exist among their ranks. So no one in the ruling UPA can claim that it's the people who voted them in, because although their alliance may have received a majority by the people, that incompetant slob Shivraj Patil did not enjoy the peoples confidence, and hence had no place in the cabinet in the first place.

The heartburn:
My sadness was for the lives lost, my sadness was for the economic impact this would have on the city and the country indeed, but most of all, it was because the Taj Mahal hotel was targeted. This hotel is the symbol of Indian defiance against the British, an engineering structure that told the occupying British that we Indians are not just as good as you, but can be better.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the history of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, let me explain a thing or two to you.
>> Firstly, this isn't part of the Taj group of hotels, this is owned by the Tata group - yes, the same Tata group that will roll out the $2500 car called the Nano, the same Tata group that bought over Land Rover and Jaguar, headed by Mr Ratan Tata.
>> Secondly, and more importantly, the reason I said this was a symbol of defiance against the British, was because this hotel, which was built under the leadership of the late Mr. Jamshedji Tata, was built because of the racist behaviour faced by the late Mr. Tata. When he had visited the Apollo Hotel in Bombay (then run by the ruling British) to meet investors, he wasn't allowed inside because he wasn't white. So he had a bigger and grander hotel built, not just for Indians to visit, but also to cock a snook at the Poms to show them that we can build better structures than them.

And it was this very heritage structure of India that took a hit, and it was this very structures' devastation that burned many a heart, including mine. The only saving grace is that the plan to blow it up and bring it crashing like the world trade centers in New York failed, and so it can be looked like a silver lining in an otherwise very dark cloud.

The real heroes:
Our cops and the commandos. The defence forces are only remembered when we want them to sacrifice their lives to save ours, and at all other times we are too busy shopping or watching movies, never once giving a thought to the fact that we are able to indulge in these very activities because of these men in uniform. Hats off to the police, the Army commandos, the NSG, and the Naval Marine Commandos (Marcos), for their selfless actions.

The rogue elephant in the room:
It's about time we stop dilly-dallying about the reasons why such young youth would indulge in such dastardly acts of violence and destruction. Its quite obvious that the amount of brain-washing that would have gone into them can only be the results of one thing - what many sane and rational thinkers would refer to as the elephant in the room, and what I refer to as the rogue elephant in the room - religion. It's about time we, not just the government, but as a people who are secular in our thoughts, beliefs and actions, take initiatives and urge those involved in proselytising, fanaticism, religious indoctrination, monotheism, etc. to put an immediate end to it, or soon, vigilante justice would be meted out to those who are even remotely connected to this, and predictably, there would be innocents who suffer as well. It's time we woke up and took stock of the situation, and we'd better do it fast. That elephant seems to be running amok and no one seems to be noticing it.

Muzzled media?...Democracy...surely you're joking!

Well, well, well, Das Munshi is at it again. First he shoots his mouth off by saying that every sports channel covering an event that involves India must share the feed to DD, then he comes out to express his 'shock' (oh, so sad) on the verdict against the son of a late, former Congress party man, and now the self-proclaimed soccer daddy of India plans to throw the final ace up his sleeve (or up some other dark recess) in which he's drawn up a plan that will effectively knock down one of the pillars of Indian democracy - the media.

The proposed bill, which has provisions such as programmes that will be rated with a 'U', 'A', or a 'U/A' and appropriate time slots will be provided for them to be aired based on the ratings, sting operations can be carried out only if it's in the best interest of the public and cannot be done on ongoing cases and investigations and if it has to be carried out, permission must be sought from the person(s) they wish to carry out the sting against. Was Das Munshi high when he came up with this?What's the point of the sting if the 'point' is being blunted? It's like asking the teacher for the questions of the exam saying "we'll study for the exam, but you please give us the questions".

The bill also has provisions to enable an officer of the govt to review the content of what will be telecast, and if he/she feels that the criticism is harsh, it can be edited. Whatever happened to free and fair media? This would effectively eliminate the free part of it, as the media wouldn't be free to operate on it's own without interference, and it wouldn't be fair because the content put out would be in accordance to what the govt wishes for us to hear, a la North Korea or the former Soviet Union.

I guess someone forgot to refresh the memory of the govt about the early part of the 20th century in Germany and Italy where rulers like Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin had done the same thing and it was termed as fascism. But then again, since Sonia Gandhi's father was an ardent fascist & a supporter of Mussolini, it shouldn't surprise us that his daughter's party is behaving in this manner (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree). If this is step one of the grand fascist revival plan, then the steps to follow are to suspend elections and bring in one party rule and switch back to communism (or give it a fancy name called socialism) and rename our country from the Democratic Republic of India to the Union of Indian Socialist Republics. The iron curtain will come up again, this time in a new geographical location with newer comrades.

What ails Indian media today?

I haven't blogged in a long time, owing to a sudden increase in work and poor health in the recent past. But I couldn't have chosen a more appropriate time to make a comeback with a topic that I have wanted to write about in a long, long time.

Let's be honest, spreading news now seems to have become a game, a gimmick of sorts to see whose news would linger longer in the minds of the public, like the taste of a good meal. 'News' isn't want drives today's media, TRP ratings do; the truth isn't what is being pursued, sensationalism is; matters of national concern aren't given enough space & time, matters of personal interest are. I'm not a journalist and so don't know what are the dos and don'ts taught to journalists today (if something like that is taught at all), but what I just mentioned come from pure common sense.

Last year, in 2005, (or early 2006, I can't quite recollect), I thought NDTV reached a new low when Swathi Maheshwari visited the home of an Indian truck driver who was kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq and thrust a microphone in front of his wailing mother asking her 'how she feels?'. How the hell was she expected to feel when the sole bread winner of her family was taken captive with a good chance of him being paraded in front of a camera and have his head lopped off? Personal opinion, and I'm sure there are many who agree with me on this, but that was one of the most despicable things to do by anyone, let alone a journalist. The appreciable part was that it was the news channel that was relaying information about the captives to the family rather than the Ministry of External Affairs. This, however, didn't give them the right to take a camera into their houses in their hour of grief. And their explanation of "sharing the family's grief with the rest of the country" was as lousy an excuse as any.

Our security forces (armed forces and police) and the nation's security gets the least coverage by the media, although national security should be of interest to everyone national. Terrorism in Kashmir is given it's fair share in the news, and I'm not complaining about that. But how much of news time or print space is given to such stories? The only time these make the headlines are when the number of killed exceeds 10 or so, else it takes at most a little over a minute on the 9 o'clock news or a narrow coulmn in the papers. Why is it that only when the number of those killed exceeds a certain 'magic figure' does the media decide to give more importance to the story? Is the loss of life of one jawan or officer of our security forces not as important as the loss of several of his or her comrades? And even when these incidents are reported, they are not followed up until the next major incident.

More recently, Sanjay Dutt's verdict in the 1993 Bombay blasts came out and for the entire week, the only thing that was running was Sanju bhaiyya's friends, well wishers and sister thanking God, and saying things like 'he's a nice guy', 'no one should have to go through what he has undergone', etc. Was the entire country that desperate to know what his family and friends thought at him not being branded a terrorist by the courts at the cost of what was happening to soldiers like Major Pitambare of the 3 Paras, who gave up his life while eliminating the HuMs topmost leader in the valley? This story was given a few dying seconds at the end of the 9 o'clock news and the papers next day had a narrow column mentioning it. A few seconds on TV and a piece in the paper on 1 day. Is that how much we value the freedom and democracy that our men in uniform unselfishly lay their lives for? Is this the message the media wishes to portray?

The other thing I've noticed is the media has turned from presenting the facts to presenting their opinion. In a nation like ours, where majority live by the news they hear, without bothering to form an opinion of their own based on facts, the media, knowingly or unknowingly, have started started encroaching into a territory that ought not to be transgressed. Everyone has the right to form their own opinion based on the facts presented, but the media seems to have taken it a step further and taken upon itself the role of 'opinion former', so now our democratic minds have that much less to do. This is one (dis)service we could gladly do without.

The media (electronic) in this case went out of their way in a never seen before show of solidarity for the retrial of Manu Sharma, accused in the Jessica Lall murder case. I'm still wondering where that solidarity went when it came to fighting alongside the families of the security personnel who lost their lives during the attack on Parliament, who are opposing the clemency plea of Mohammad Afzal, the person convicted of providing logistical support and accepting money, thereby endangering the security of the country and waging war against the state. I'm guessing it's partly due to our mentality towards our security forces. We think that they are there to die for the country and so when they do, no big deal. however, models like Jessica Lall are people we relate better to since she came from an upper middle class family, like most of us. So at the end of the day, the media has give this story a quiet burial. And surprisingly, there was no 'opinion' presented by the media on this.

The media has for long has claimed that they are targeted most of the times and are made to look like the bad guys. With all that they do, did they expect any better? By no means am I painting all journalists with the same brush, but it's not too hard to see what kind of journalists and what brand of journalism is under fire here. Our country operates with 3 arms- the Judiciary, the Executive and the Legislature; I just hope the media doesn't become an extension of one of these arms, or a fourth arm itself.

more as they come.