As seen on TV

Calvin(of the comic strip) summed it up best: “In my opinion, television validates existence”. What is it about a pointing TV camera that causes otherwise normal people to take leave of all good sense? Witness the minister of state for home, Sriprakash Jaiswal, spouting off about the Jaipur blasts barely minutes after they happened, concocting theories in real time. And then, in a bizarre recursive loop, he claimed to have got his information from the media as well. The circle of unreason is complete.

Or look at how the warm glow of a few TV cameras could throw BCCI-appointed beaver Sudhir Nanavati into paroxysms of excitement as he waved around his report on the Harbhajan Singh slapping incident. Twenty-four-hour news networks are greedy for material, they devour every development and spin incidents for maximum public attention. They are also free to “correct” their own hasty facts as the story evolves, but there’s no rescue for the hapless souls who put their foot in it, caught in the glare of lights. Public figures should know better than to get caught up in the business of breaking news, in case it compromises their own credibility later.

The fallout of this round-the-clock media machine is that immediate glib reaction has become the central standard of value. TV cannot help stressing the sensational and the spectacular, it’s the nature of the animal. As Pierre Bourdieu has written about television news, because there is a “negative connection between time pressures and thought”, and because people asked to discuss complex issues are being told to “think under these conditions in which nobody can think”, it is bound to elevate punch over nuance, abbreviation over explication. TV converts news and politics into a spectator-sport, and there’s no denying the hypnotic appeal and the power of the medium. But public figures deliver themselves up to the gaping maws of the beast, not knowing what awaits them as their careless comments are played back, bulletin after bulletin. We wish Jaiswal the best — if it’s any comfort, he’s neither the first nor the last to be seduced by a flickering screen.