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Journalism of Courage
My first 8220;shock moment8221; since I started watching television so as to be able to write about it; and to think it came courtesy Star World, which definitely carries more entertainment than news channels. Sunday evening, and I was channel surfing as they did in pre-history 8211; manually; the remote wouldn8217;t work. Thus it was that I stayed on for more than two seconds with Oprah as she was emoting with Meg Ryan. Ms Ryan, it appeared, had been convinced by an NGO to visit the third world. 8220;One of the poorest parts of the world8221;, Oprah said, and I thought, sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps.
Then the video came on, and Oprah said, 8220;Delhi8221;. Hello? Delhi is 8220;one of the poorest parts of the world8221;? Is that how the capital of the second fastest growing country in the world looks like from certain vantage points in the world8217;s wealthiest nation? If the jaws of people like us drop at this description are we being misguided metropolitan elitists? Or is Oprah misinformed? Ms Ryan visited a Delhi slum. Slums offer multi-faceted demonstrations of our urban policy failures. But slums, however appalling, do not make Delhi one of the poorest parts of the world. This is not a matter of silly jingoism; it8217;s simple statistics. And I also thought it was obvious. But then it was on TV. And if it8217;s on TV, as ex-US Senator George Allen discovered, plenty can happen.
Indian news television 8212; by that I mean mostly NDTV and CNN-IBN, the two channels which attempted serious coverage of the US elections 8212; spent a lot of time on the nuclear deal. Justifiably so. But when Allen8217;s became the swing seat in the Democrats8217; fight to take control of the Senate, it would have probably been good news strategy to spend some time on the now-famous footage of the Republican trying to, as one US TV journalist described it, commit political suicide in front of a camera. It would have definitely been at least as interesting television as Australians getting impatient with Sharad Pawar or Ram Jethmalani getting angry or Delhi traders getting very angry.
On traders and TV, I admit to being surprised 8212; by Aaj Tak8217;s Delhi-specific programming. It was busy, busy, busy, rushing from place to place in South Delhi, trailing the sealing teams and holding people8217;s forums. All that busyness had a fresh feel to it. It was lively, as-we-see-it reportage. It would have been interesting to anyone with a special interest in Delhi. Oprah Winfrey, for example.
