Flash Mob

Prime time news has declared that the Pakistanis are exposing themselves. Where to look now?

Yet again, a spectre is haunting Europe. It is the spectre of the migrant worker, and the magnitude of the scare is not obvious until you look at the local press. On Wednesday, the BBC was still closely following events at Calais, where migrants trying to hitch a ride into England on freight running through the Channel Tunnel had caused an international traffic snarl. The same day, the lead picture of the Wall Street Journal’s European edition showed migrants fighting their way aboard a Macedonian train bound for Serbia, displaying the kind of energy that erupts outside the great Indian institution of the unreserved coach — human beings in violent Brownian motion.

Also on the same day, the lead picture of the International New York Times showed a rubber dinghy overloaded with migrants being hauled to shore on Lesbos-Sappho’s island in the Aegean Sea. Up to 1,500 people have been landing every day, mostly from conflict zones in Asia like Syria and Afghanistan, quite unaware that Greece is not currently the finest place to be in.

In comparison to this grimness, the business programming that Europeans see is such fun, even when it addresses issues like Syria. Nothing like the Indian channels, whose most exciting offerings are cheat sheets for punters delivered around the time of the opening bell. For instance, European viewers get to see Lisa ‘Kennedy’ Montgomery on Fox Business ripping into Rutgers University professor Deepa Kumar, who had tweeted that the US has been more brutal than ISIS. “If you’re right, they call you crazy,” observed standup comedian Joe DeVito. “If you’re left, they call you professor.” He went on to suggest that the allegedly leftie prof should be sent off to benighted places “where educated women like her would be raped and sold into slavery, and that is not a metaphor.”

What’s a comic doing on a business channel? For that matter, why is a former MTV veejay anchoring a business show? That’s where Kennedy’s screen life started. But who are we to complain? We have more weirdness per square inch of screen in many Indian stations. But when Fox threatened to deliver the low-down on a robot arms race, the hand could no longer be stayed from creeping up on the remote.

On to Bloomberg. In India, every summer, the business press ritualistically produces a blockbuster cola wars story. In Europe, they do the bra wars. Bloomberg has a story about how Adore Me is creatively disrupting the Victoria’s Secret business model with a mix of internet, individualism and guerilla design. Next change — CNBC droning on about a French firm. One imagines candlesticks and cost of revenue analyses in the offing. We are back in the argot-intense comfort zone of the business news.

Here in India, we like soap opera, even on the news channels. For failing to distinguish clearly between Parliament and Jantar Mantar, the Speaker suspended 25 disruptive MPs, forcefully spiking the index of opposition unity. And with absolutely no awareness of the absurd, Sushma Swaraj delivered her defence arguments to an absent opposition in the House, its sentimental basis being an unseen woman in Portugal.

In the meantime Times Now, which had been lustily demanding her head, turned excitedly to Mohammed Naved alias Usman Khan, the rather weird militant who had infiltrated India with an Ajmal Kasab haircut. That backoff prompted Rahul Kanwal to tweet about “supari journalism”. Earlier in the week, the revelations of Tariq Khosa in Dawn had turned on Times Now. “Inevitably, it’s the Pakistanis exposing the Pakistanis,” said Arnab Goswami. “They just blatantly exposed themselves all over again.” That gives fresh meaning to the term “news flash”.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com

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