Live and kicking?

So, why was everyone, including American buddy George, blaming him for silencing the enemy, oops, the media? All he had done was put an end to 8216;live8217; TV reports of opposition forces mounting an offensive against him. It had to be quelled. How could he be criticised on live television in front of his people? What did they think this was 8212; a democracy? Surely, Bush-boy, with his inimitable command of the American language if nothing else

understood the saying:

8220;Freedom of speech sic is just another word for nothing left to loose?8217;8217;

Priyaranjan Dasmunshi was sulking, too. More than that he was vastly irritated by the willful obstinacy of the private TV channels. He had wanted to act like a Minister not a Sanitary Inspector; but when channels like AXN and FTV sullied the human body, he had to take them to the cleaners. Ban them for three months at a time.

Now, the news channels were giving him an almighty headache with all this live Gurjjar agitation. Why, it was enough to agitate a Buddha or his Bengali bhadralok Buddhadev and God knows he was only a Dasmunshi. People are getting the wrong ideas watching 8216;live8217; performances, often days old. From Singur and Nandigram to Dera Sacha Sauda and now Dausa, they start prancing about in front of the TV cameras like Govinda, Salman, Abhishek and Saif at the IIFA Awards Yorkshire on Sunday hoping these 8216;live8217; images will make politicians keep their promises. That8217;s blackmail, besides being bad for a politician8217;s image.

Worse, they8217;re passing off yesterday8217;s headlines as today8217;s news. Forcing him as I038;B minister to act like a witch with a broomstick, sweeping in regulations to teach them the difference between yesterday, today and tomorrow that8217;s if the broadcast bill ever sees the table in Parliament.

Thus: Musharraf believes live coverage is turning the country against him. Dasmunshi says live coverage is, maybe turning the country against itself. The first wants to curb freedom of speech because he thinks it is inimical to his political fortunes; the second thinks such freedom of speech is inimical to the interests of the country. The president of Pakistan and the minister for information and broadcasting of India have perhaps nothing else in common, but both believe live news coverage can be misleading and injurious to health.

Does 8216;live8217; coverage of events lead to more mayhem and loss of lives an argument that was used during the Gujarat riots of 2002? Would there have been fewer deaths in Rajasthan if the Gurjjar agitation had not been covered by live TV? No one knows.

What we do know, is TV channels have a bad habit of running the same footage repeatedly back to front, beginning to end, end to beginning day in and out, so that one police officer beating one agitator on Monday seems like ten policemen beating up ten agitators every day. Well, naturally we get all agitated.

Fact is, live coverage is seldom accurate. Last Thursday8217;s presidential race saw in the space of a few minutes okay an hour, first four male contenders, then three, then two, then one woman who was the wrong woman and finally, another woman, who was the right one. Had this been recorded, we would have got the right name, right off. So should we adopt the 9/11 policy 8212; show 8216;live8217; recordings only?