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Journalism of Courage
Newsflash: bird flu and cricket receive the same coverage on TV news. Not surprised? Know what President Bush doesn’t? That cricket is a national obsession, not a ‘‘pastime’’ as he called it? How much coverage do you think he will receive when he moves his lips during his visit to India, next week? Probably depends on the state of Dhoni’s hair or the Nagpur Test match between India and England.
TV news is not about what may be, intrinsically, important (whatever that means) but what the channel thinks the viewer thinks is important. So they crowd you with variety, like a box of assorted biscuits. Take Aaj Tak or Star News at prime time: there’s the main evening news bulletin, there is a metro round-up that is just an excuse to party at the latest wedding in town (1,500 people are being fed at Vikram Chatwal’s pre-wedding bash on a 100 chickens, sorry, dishes), there’s a Bollywood bonanza about Will Smith’s Aishwaryya connection (there isn’t one, yet), a cricket commentary on Sourav and whether he will make the Gang for the first Test.
And channels concerned with their cost effectiveness, growth rate (with an eagle eye on ad prospects), devote aeons to the Union budget a week before it is to be presented. Meanwhile, all the poor viewer wants to know is if it is really, really safe to eat chicken or not, irrespective of brave bureaucrats who held a chiconference and waved those chicken legs like a green flag in our faces.
Sanjiv Kapoor of Khana Khazana fame was yanked off his mattress (or so it appeared from his bedraggled clothes) to cook his chicken and eat it too, in the hope that you would be fair to the fowl. And eat it too. Like him.
Doctors were hauled out of their labs, hospitals to vouchsafe Punjab’s favourite dish. Everyone said it was safe to eat as long as we cooked the poor thing at a high temperature. It is, perhaps, a measure of the media’s powers that it can get Amar Singh into trouble over a taped telephone conversation that may (not) have taken place, and the Delhi high court to look into the Jessica Lal case, but it could not convince us eat to chicken, otherwise why has the price of the latter dropped to Rs 15 per kilo in our neighbourhood?
In the bird flu crisis, the media had a choice between throwing caution to the wind and maintaining an unflappable calm. It chose a strong breeze. No panic buttons pressed but plenty of visuals of chickens ‘‘culled’’ by men in space suits — enough to persuade you to move to the moon.
For once, the government had learnt its lesson: it put forth both, or all its feet, and marched into the spotlight. Local and health officials, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Central Health Minister provided regular updates that said the same thing: don’t panic. Everyone looked busy, important and concerned about the health of the nation. Way to go.
The channels helped out with regular reminders on bird flu symptoms in human beings which read like so many other diseases that it’s a wonder we’re not all in hospital. Still, you did know what to look for.
The most inappropriate quote came from ‘Shotgun’ Sinha. When asked about his relationship with the bird, he replied, I don’t have anything to do with chickens or chicks. The poor pun is all of a piece with the kind of juvenile jokes we listen to on television, very many of which are at the expense of the female of the species irrespective of the breed. We’ll return to this theme next week, because, now, it’s time to tell you, in case you don’t read the newspapers or watch Zee channels, that Debojit won the Sa Ra Ga Ma Pa Challenger series. Not because he possessed the better voice, better physique (who advised Vinit to wear that hat in the first place? His mentor Himesh Reshmaiyya who wears the same head dress?) or more charisma but because his name ended in ‘jit’. This is serious name reading: who was crowned Sony’s Indian Idol? Why Abhijit (or jet) Sawant of course.
