From a talented guest author:

Ghost in the idiot box

Haunting music, terrified people fleeing their homes, tantriks performing pujas to keep evil forces away, people later rejoicing that they were free of the evil spirits. You’d be forgiven for assuming I’m describing a C-grade spooky film. But no, this isn’t bottom of the barrel celluloid trash. It is the format Aaj Tak used to cover the rampant superstition in a village called Kajlas in Bhopal. The down-on-its-luck hamlet was plagued by continuous deaths, drought and poverty. And so the hapless villagers resorted to superstition, hoping to rid themselves of their problems.

All this superstitious madness was caught on camera by Aaj Tak, which then telecast the tragic-comic farce as a prime time special programme. Aaj Tak’s would have been justified in covering these goings-on if they had addressed real issues. But no, the channel it seems was more interested in the exodus of the villagers and the elaborate pujas.

There was no seriousness in the coverage and no use of facts. Aaj Tak gave a one sided view of the situation and in a way actually tried to justify what was happening.

All the channel did was try to win TRP’S- even if it meant trivializing what was in fact, a serious issue. For a national news channel, Aaj Tak’s coverage was deeply disappointing. TV news can actually end up promoting superstitions with such bizarre stories.

Superstition remains widespread in our society and cuts across caste and regional barriers. Sacrificial killings, astrology, fears about eclipses, the collective hysteria over milk-guzzling Ganesha idols and yes vaastu shastra, are all forms of superstition. Large numbers of tantriks and godmen operate in both small and big towns across India. Superstition needs to be addressed head on.

The media can, if it only cares to, play a crucial role in the reduction of superstitious beliefs in India. Perhaps the most effective thing TV news channels can do is to start a regular series on superstitions. They can also involve local administrations and NGOs that promote rationalism besides calling upon scientists to provide scientific and verifiable explanations for ostensibly supernatural phenomenon.

News channels can also expose tantriks and so called godmen. In, short, they should highlight the negative aspects of superstition instead of glorifying them like Aaj Tak and other channels frequently do.

We Indians remain a superstitious lot. Utterly ridiculous beliefs like seeing bad omens in cats that cross our paths are held even by supposedly educated people. Therefore the need of the hour is for media to become a torchbearer and addres the issue in a manner that is informative, educative and socially responsible.

What major English-language dailies said about the assembly elections results on May 11

The big story from the assembly election results was the rise of the Left and what it meant for the UPA government.

The Indian Express headline played it as straight as it could: “Left gets muscle, UPA strength”. According to the paper, third front fears had ‘evaporated’ and the UPA was breathing easy. Pasted below the headline however, was a picture of comrades in Kolkata waving communist hammer and sickle flags.

The hammer and sickle also featured prominently on a cartoon on the front page of The Times of India, which had the honourable prime minister hanging off the tip of the sickle by his collar, but still giving the V-sign. This stunt also required some artistic license: The hammer and sickle had to be reversed to provide a convenient hook from which to hang Manmohan Singh.

The TOI headline harped on the same theme as its cartoon. “Congress put on red-alert”, it declared and added “Left is set to flex muscle, but won’t rock UPA boat”, which is a shame because rocking boats is a pretty good way to flex your muscles- you should try it out some time.

The Hindu didn’t think the red rampage was the top story of the day. That honour was reserved for the DMK victory in Tamil Nadu. “Karunanidhi to be Chief Minister for the fifth time”, its headline informed us.

Papers with clear-cut political affiliations often give us more interesting headlines. For instance, the Hindustan Times was: “Red Spreads, Son Rises”. “Son” mind you, is no typo. They don’t mean “Sun rises” in a reference to the DMK victory (The party’s symbol is a rising sun). No, they’re referring to Rahul Gandhi of all people and there’s a nice picture of him with gulaal on his face after mommy’s victory in Rai Bareli. “Sonia’s record win is Rahul’s launch pad” was the paper’s justification. It also had a warning for the Left: “… if the Left becomes aggressive, the UPA has other countervailing forces among its constituents to balance it”. Yes, I’m sure.

The Pioneer on the other hand simply could not contain its glee and its headline resorted to slasher flick imagery: “Cong watch out! Left coming with hammer and sickle”.

Both TOI and The Pioneer carried front page stories about Congress MPs calling on Sonia to take over as PM. The Pioneer had a picture of one of the MPs- Ajit Jogi with a caption “Not Man’s best friend”. Since not even Jogi’s most trenchant critics would accuse him of being a dog in the anatomical sense, I can only assume “Man’s” referred to our prime minister.

Budhadeb got his place in most front pages as well: “Record win for Left in West Bengal” (The Hindu), “Bullish Budha” (Hindustan Times), “Brand Budha is a sellout” (TOI) and from the Indian Express: “As his reforms get red carpet, Budha says no alternative to pvt capital”.

Besides being the biggest story in the Hindu, the DMK’s victory got its spot under the sun in other papers as well. “Will DMK, Cong marry?” HT wanted to know. “The man who won’t go away” said TOI about the octogenarian Karunanidhi. The Indian Express declared: “Karunanidhi pens victory poem: politics of vengeance no more”.

Assam was on the front pages too, but there were no interesting headlines. The only remotely interesting headline on Kerala was in the Indian Express: “Left break into Kerala’s League fortress”.

Pondicherry was only mentioned perfunctorily on the front pages.

Rocket to the Moon

(It's) time for the human race to enter the solar system.

                                                             -Dan Quayle

They’ve gone and done it again.

I feared they would. I hoped they wouldn’t. I hoped in vain.

Star News did in fact cover the ISRO-NASA agreement on May 9 to include a couple of NASA instruments on India’s 2008 unmanned lunar expedition called Chandrayaan-I.

Now I have to be fair here- after all Star News did have reasonable, if somewhat sensationalistic coverage of the landing of space shuttle Discovery. But the, we know all too well what Star News can be like at times.

Star jumps over the moon

This was one of those times. The Star News headline on the agreement with NASA went: “Aur chaand par upkaran bhejne ke liye NASA legaa ISRO kee madat…” (NASA will take ISRO’s help to send an instrument to the moon)

Really? So the NASA instruments were going to land on the moon? Not just orbit around it onboard the Indian craft?

Also kindly note the hyperbole (“…NASA legaa ISRO kee madat…”), which I suppose is a pretty clever, if disingenuous way to spin the whole thing.

The rest of the headline went: “2008 mein chandramaa par kadam rakhega Bharatiya antariksh yaan” (An Indian spacecraft will land on the moon in 2008). Among the accompanying visuals: Astronauts unfurling the star-spangled banner on the moon (Apollo 14 footage I think, not sure). The implication: The tricolour would grace the lunar surface in a couple of years.

The anchor’s opening script was an embarrassingly bad attempt at dramatizing it all. It used phrases like “kal tak jo chaand door thaa” (the moon, which was so distant ‘til yesterday) and “jispe gaane bante thhe” (on which songs were written). It was presumably aimed at all those living under a rock for the past 40 years.

Most of the coverage was the usual stuff about how significant Indo-American space cooperation was (why, it never made clear), what the NASA instruments would do (they would examine the moon closely-wow!) and of course, there were the sound bytes of the ISRO and NASA chiefs.

Later on, there were visuals of Astronauts in a space craft (recent footage, definitely not an Apollo mission) and what seemed like a space shuttle some seconds after take-off. Neither of course, has anything to do with going to the moon.

Perhaps it was for the best then, that at least the other Hindi channels seemed to ignore the story. No such luck with the English ones- Times Now, CNN-IBN and NDTV 24x7 all had reports on the space deal.

All three channels said the obligatory things: that the deal came after decades of estrangement, what the American instruments would do and the sound bytes from the two space agency chiefs. Each channel also attempted something different and succeeded to varying degrees.

Times Now

The Times Now headline went: “ISRO is joining hands with NASA with plans to work together to launch India’s first unmanned mission to the moon to map the entire lunar surface.”

Err…not quite. It’s got a very different take on the agreement compared to Star News, but from what little I understand ISRO doesn’t need help in launching its moon mission, thank you. NASA is only, in the words of the channel’s own reporter “hitching a ride”.

The troubles didn’t end there. There was a bit of a voice over where the reporter said: “However whether it will be a manned mission or not is something ISRO is not too sure about.” This was followed by a statement from the ISRO chief Madhavan Nair, in which he said India had not made up its mind on manned mission.

The way this particular portion was scripted and edited, it gave the impression, if unwittingly; that the 2008 Indian moonshot could be a manned one.

Despite these gaffes, the channel managed some redemption in a very brief satellite hook-up interview with Reuter’s space correspondent, who quickly provided us with perspective: How this agreement fitted into the broader picture, what it could lead to and plans NASA had for moon exploration.

NDTV 24x7

While it didn’t tell us about NASA’s plans, 24x7 did give us some perspective by placing the agreement in the context of the understanding reached with the US government on civilian nuclear energy as well as by emphasizing the possibility of greater space cooperation.

24x7 then went into in to what I can only describe as Door Darshan mode. There was an elaborate description of the Chandrayaan-I mission, helped along by an animation from ISRO and complete with a cheesy corporate-video type background score.

The voice-over description itself seemed to be little more than a modified press handout. It was also replete with jargon: It spoke of how the ‘PSLV’ would launch the Chandrayaan-I into ‘elliptic orbit’ (elliptical?) around the earth and that it’s “liquid motor” (liquid fuel motor surely?) would put it into “polar circular orbit” around the moon.

It also helpfully informed us that the craft would conduct “…physical…and chemical mapping” of the moon’s surface.

Now as someone whose knowledge of such matters is limited to Tintin's adventure “Explorers on the Moon”, I must admit I had no idea what any of this meant. I’m sure “polar circular orbit” means something really important, but, my dear news channels, you either explain it to me or leave it out of your script.

CNN-IBN

IBN’s coverage was more promising but not without its problems. At one point, the channel claimed: “Helping (space cooperation) along are NASA astronauts like Suneeta Williams”, which seemed pretty dubious. The channel did however clear the air on manned Indian lunar missions, viz there wouldn't be any.

There were reporters on satellite hook-up from Bangalore and Delhi. The Bangalore reporter told us how data- and not money would change hands in the ISRO-NASA agreement.

It was the Delhi reporter however, who gave us answers to the basic questions that most channels ignored: What was so special about this mission? What was in it for India- and for America?

The reporter spoke of the technological achievement it would represent, the national pride it would accrue and the long-term possibilities of using lunar minerals and water (if there’s any). He also pointed to India’s ability to “get to space for cheap”- at least when it came to launching satellites. He then reasoned that this was because of “us being such jugaadoo people.”

I’m not sure being “jugaadoo” makes for a positive reputation in an organization concerned with space flight. I’m also not sure how many non-Hindi speakers watching got the ‘joke’. Still, jolly good show for most part.

It would be easy of course, for me to complain that there are no space or even science correspondents on our TV channels but I’m not sure we’re in that position yet. Still something like this story doesn’t really need a specialist- it just needs a little care and a little respect for your audience. Covering such matters properly isn’t rocket science.

Back from the dead! Will post very soon.

King Kong and King Gyanendra

India, our leaders assure us, is well on its way towards acquiring superpower status. It’s a claim made open to ridicule now, as the country struggles to come up with effective policies to deal with troubles in its own backyard- in Nepal and Sri Lanka.

But how does our media report on such matters? We all know that coverage of international issues is usually awful, but what about coverage of our neighbours? Surely the coverage of the crisis in Nepal will fare better?

Nope.

What’s most apparent about the coverage of the tumult in the Himalayan kingdom is the sheer, utter lack of depth. While many reporters packed off their reporters to Nepal, there were few in-depth reports on the crisis. Much of what passed for location reporting were piece to cameras- those recorded clips where the reporter talks to a camera- with the backdrop of the royal palace.

At times the coverage seemed to mirror the confusion and ineptness of the Indian government. One report in Star News on the situation in Nepal certainly seemed to embody these problems.

The story, carried at the end of the 8 PM National Reporter bulletin had some fairly generic problems. For instance it didn’t have many visuals- such as those of PM Manmohan Singh- needed in order to visually support the report. But let’s leave that aside for a moment.

The report had some clumsy scripting. It also confusingly referred to King Gyanendra as both ‘raja’ and ‘maharaja’. But let’s leave that aside for now as well.

Consider instead how the issues in Nepal itself were covered. The package began with anchor Ajay Kumar confidently declaring that the sun had set on Gyanendra’s little empire (”…suryaast saaf dikh rahaa hai”).

The voice over then rode the grateful native arc, telling us that the anti-monarchy protestors on the streets of Katmandu were happy with India’s pressure on the King.

But, the voice over added, the Indian stance had been unclear over the last few days- was India supporting the king or the prime minister?

Prime Minister? Before Gyanendra reluctantly relinquished the reigns of power? Presumably the man hailed from kingdom’s sprawling sandy deserts and was a product of the Royal Nepalese Navy.

The voice over briefly gave way to a sound byte of a breathless anti-monarchy protestor berating Karan Singh’s statements and praising foreign secretary Shyam Saran’s. It then resumed, briefly mentioning statements from Manmohan Singh and National Security Advisor MK Narayanan in support of the Kng following his April 21 address.

It was what followed however, that was really strange.

There was a piece to camera from Katmandu by Jyoti Malhotara, an experienced reporter on international affairs. She spoke of India’s size and influence in Nepal and damned the Indian government for its spinelessness in dealing with Gyanendra even as the monarch turned his guns on his own people. The great, big gorilla had failed to tame the nasty shrew.

So far so good, but the voice over interrupted to inform us that the Indian ambassador to Nepal had been working behind the scenes in Katmandu all the while.

Now cut back to another piece to camera from Jyoti Malhotara. This is the great revelation we,ve been waiting for: India played an important role in persuading Gyanendra to give up many of his power; Shyam Saran and the Indian ambassador Shiv Shankar Mukherjee put pressure on the king and a terrible confrontation between the monarch and the great unwashed was averted.

End of story.

The way it was packaged, the second piece to camera thoroughly contradicted the first. We were also not privileged to kern what pressure the Indian side out on the king. Was it the threat of diplomatic isolation? Even an economic blockade? Did Shyam Saran threaten to scrape his nails on a blackboard until His Royal Highness relented?

And what great , impending catastrophe was avoided? Where’s the evidence of it? Actually come to think of it, where’s the news in all of this? No one will be any wise about the situation in Nepal after watching such a vague and self-contradictory report. Admittedly, not all reports on Nepal were as bad, but this particular one illustrates the fundamental problems that plagued most of them: Lack of understanding, confusion and generally shabby treatment.

Filmi hero, asli hero

The media fawns over Salman after his release from the Jodhpur prison

When challenging his enemy to a duel, a samurai would often boast of his martial exploits, loudly and verbosely A hero’s achievements are after all only as good as the stories about them.

Celluloid heroism however, complicates things a good deal. If only subconsciously, people do confuse screen personas with the real deal. Even when it comes to the exploits of genuine heroes, we sometimes learn about them from television. The real and simulation are thoroughly mixed up in a post-modern khichidi to become nearly indistinguishable from each other (think candlelight vigils ala Rang de Basanti).

Salman Khan, macho Bollywood star, is known on celluloid largely for his heroic antics and in real life largely for his notorious ones. Yet even this seems like an extension of his screen persona: Mr. Hyde to his on-screen Dr Jekyll.

No wonder then, that his release from the Jodhpur jail on April 13, following his conviction in the black buck poaching case, news channels went overboard, covering it like a mega event.

Journalists patiently waited for outside the Central Jail for Salman’s release. Cameras tracked him as he walked out in his underclothes- wearing a vest not unlike one he endorses in a TV commercial. Salman did not however, perform his usual top half striptease much to the disappointment of his fans.

New heights in investigative journalism were scaled as news channels reported on conditions in the jail and what Salman did during his internment. NDTV India assured us that there was an electric fan in the jail cell but that our poor little rich boy got a lousy lunch and dinner. There was gud and channa for breakfast and three blankets for bedding. And our munchkin was very much the angel in prison: “Bilkul sharif ke tarah rehataa thaa jail mein” (He was very well behaved in jail) declared the reporter.

Aaj Tak meanwhile went for thoroughness and precision. The channel gave us the dimensions of Salman’s jail cell (10 by 8 feet), told us that our gym-freak hero exercised two hours everyday and that he taught his rodent cellmate Jerry quantum mechanics.

But the coverage really took off with Salman’s return to Mumbai. Ecstatic fans wanted to greet their hero on his triumphant return. The NDTV India reporter got into the mood as well, declaring that: ”Aisa lagta hai ki voh jang jeetke aaye hain.” (It feels like he has returned, victorious from battle). We also learn that Salman’s fans wanted to see their hero dance.

Every breath he took, every move he made they were watching. Reporters on the ground gave us running commentary: Salman had gone into his house, Katrina was with him, here he was, standing in his balcony... and so on.

Then there were special programmes on Salman’s victory march and interviews with breathless fans. Panegyrics came right off the bat. Jerry the rat spoke of Schroedinger’s cat. It was quite a change of heart for the media. Usually accustomed to Salman-bashing for his supposed sins ranging from hobnobbing with gangsters to shooting deer. Salman was now the victim. “Kyaa celebrity hone kaa yeh ghata hai?” (Is this the downside of being a celebrity?), asked an Aaj Tak reporter. NDTV India’s poll question harped on the hunter becoming the hunted theme, asking if Salman was a victim of circumstances.

In this midst of all this hoopla, the story of a real hero became a sideshow, tacked on to news bulletins as an afterthought. That real hero was Javed, a man who saved several lives during the fire in Meerut only to be badly injured himself. He died in hospital on April 13, the day of Salman Khan’s release from prison. His story could not hope to compete with that of the make-believe hero.

Sorry, for the lack of posts. I encountered a technical difficulty in uploading.

Fumbling While Meerut Burns

All too often we’re cruelly reminded that words like ‘safety consciousnesses’ are not mere abstractions. Pay no heed and they can be horribly real; the difference between a pleasant evening of consumer bliss with the latest goodies on offer to middle class India --and being roasted or crushed to death. An event like the fire at a Meerut trade show was after all, hardly new. It is merely the latest in a series of grisly infernos that have snuffed out lives from Dabwali to Uphaar Cinema to Kumbakonam. And each time, journalists seem to become ever more desperate to satiate the ever-growing and voracious appetite TV seems to have for tragedy.

The embers from the fire hadn't died down, but news channels wanted to know how many people had died. Whom to ask, they wondered. Do we have a correspondent on the ground? Zee News had one as did Star News but most stations didn’t. So they asked eyewitnesses what they had seen. Yet people who have just survived a traumatic incident themselves (and have usually only seen some small part of it); are notoriously unreliable witnesses. Some said 50 had died, others one hundred.

Correspondents on the ground were not much clearer. Syed Ansari on Star News darkly hinted that the toll could be much greater until the channel's Meerut correspondent reassured us that the toll would be less than 100. NDTV India even had an eyewitness who never was, describing a professor who was on his way to the ill-fated trade fair before it burned down, as a chashmudeed. Its reporter did however give us a very effective description of the location- what Victoria Park was like, where the fair was being held and so on.

Sarkari guests were, unfortunately, not terribly helpful. Aaj Tak roped in the Uttar Pradesh DGP Buaa Singh whom anchor Sonia described as the DGP of Meerut only to be told by her guest that someone with a title as impressive as his was did not handle khaki affairs in a mere district. The Chief Fire Officer of Meerut blithely told NDTV that all he knew was what he was watching on television.

We don’t usually look our best after a hard day’s night nor when we wake up groggily in the morning, so can we really blame our news channels for being a little taken aback by events in Meerut; even if they live for this stuff? There’s no preparation, no script and nobody has a clue what’s going on. Poor Sonia was left to speculate or if possible, elaborate on bits of information gleaned from somewhere (other news channels?). Many people may have died, she said, some officials should be reaching the place, quite a few ambulances may have left from Noida, people may be making fun of me for talking like this… Filling the airwaves isn’t easy.

Nidhi Kulpati on NDTV didn’t fare much better than Sonia. In the midst of all the carnage, it occurred to her to ask about the condition of the goods on display inside the pandal. She asked one eyewitness: “aapke saamne yeh ghatnaa hue to aapne kuchh dekhaa?”(This incident occurred in front of you, did you see anything?). She suggested that lots of Meerut’s denizens could have gone into the air-conditioned structure to take shelter from the heat.

Visuals are of course, at the heart of television- and with an accident like the Meerut fire, you need to put them on air quickly but at the same time use them with restraint. Most channels were pretty fast at getting hold of on-footage. Sabse tez, Aaj Tak, however took an hour to show us any shots from the remains of the trade fair. Still by the time of the 7-7:30 PM bulletins most stations had them. Indeed, Star News had lots of them, but blurred out most of the shots because they were too terrible to show- something Star’s Syed Ansari repeated ad nauseam. Whether intended or not, his repeated explanation for the blurry pictures seemed more likely to pique morbid curiosity- like plugs for horror shows that warn they are not for the faint-hearted. By the time of the 10 PM bulletin, we had a walkthrough by a Star News reporter trying to be as dramatic as possible. He took us on a grisly, guided tour of Meerut Medical College. This time around, the channel gave us a momentary but appalling glimpse of rows of dead victims before blurring them out. This kind of ‘leaving the rest to your imagination’ tactic had the same effect as Ansari’s pronouncements- accentuating the horror rather than mitigating it.

Still, at least Star News bothered to obscure those visuals- Zee News didn’t even bother with such niceties. In its 10 PM bulletin, the channel briefly carried truly horrific visuals of the dead, some in piles with most of their clothing burnt away. The anchor Kishore, helpfully told us the pictures could be disturbing. Thanks, but we can see that for ourselves.

As if to make up for its lackadaisical coverage of the Meerut fire earlier in the evening, Aaj Tak carried an excellent report that took stock of medical infrastructure in Meerut and the facilities available there to treat victims of the accident, including the number of hospitals and the number of victims they could cope with. It also used an animation to describe the way the fire supposedly started and why people found it hard to escape the structure. Still Aaj Tak’s coverage was limited to the incident itself. There was nothing on the systemic issues that cause such fires to occur in the first place- that was left to NDTV, and Vinod Dua’s Khabardar.

Khabardar was a remarkably appropriate name for an episode such as this one. Along with his guests Pushpesh Pant from JNU and KTS Tulsi, a Supreme Court lawyer, he doggedly sought to assign guilt- who was to blame for the tragedy? How would that be decided? What sort of punishment could be meted out? It was all in all, a superb way to pursue the story.

Breaking news that fails to take off

What on earth is breaking news? When it breaks does it end up with a modest little crack or does it shatter into smithereens? Breaking news must by definition be fresh and full of flavor, but is that at all? If I break a fingernail, is that breaking news? Or does the importance of the story matter?

Let’s say a couple of planes are grounded for some technical reasons. Naturally, passengers go frustrated. Men swear, women complain and children cry. Granted it’s a pain, but is it breaking news? Someone at Channel 7 certainly thinks so. The channel’s breaking news ticker on April 14 flashed “Air India ne udaan radd kee”(Air India flight cancelled) and just so we appreciate the gravity of the situation added that “Viman 5 ghante se khada hua tha”(The plane was waiting for 5 hours) and “Viman mein 400 yatri sawar the”(There were 400 passengers on board).

There was unflinching coverage of this tragedy. The story was the first headline in several bulletins, until it was dislodged from its prime position by the serial bomb blasts in Srinagar that day. The grounded planes did however, remain in the headlines.

Meanwhile, an intrepid Channel 7 reporter broke new journalistic ground with raw coverage of the disaster. We learnt from grumpy passengers, about how they did not get water to drink for hours. There was also the case of a child who had come to India for the first time and now vowed never to return, all the while standing next to his father looking forlorn.

Irate international travelers often site the existence of airport thrillers- those trashy novels consumed during tedious waits while switching flights- as evidence that globe is not shrinking after all. Cancelled flights and insensitive airline staff make things even worse. The passengers of the two Air India flights have our sympathies.

Still, there is an old story; their experience so common place, so mundane and when you consider all that goes in our country and our planet, so trivial, it fits in with no notion we have of what makes news.