Ten reasons I couldn146;t get my fix from BBC

I watched BBC World on Thursday night and Friday morning 8211; and fought cold turkey. Beeb was going big on the Heathrow/foiled terrorist plot story. But I wasn8217;t getting my fix.

First, the news anchors looked composed. Second, the scrolling text on screen was stark sober. Third, the anchors didn8217;t ask spot reporters impossible questions. Therefore, fourth, the reporters didn8217;t offer impossible answers quoting improbable sources. Fifth, there were no retired cop/spook/8221;expert8221; coming on air every 45 minutes and trying to tell us, over a scratchy phone line, what the planned attack meant before getting cut off mid-sentence by the anchor. Sixth, there wasn8217;t a politicians8217; panel in which all the invitees quarreled with each other, helped by the journalist anchoring the show, who appeared certain that he/she was offering great television. Seventh, there were no jaw-dropping inane comments from ordinary people who were either too delighted or too intimidated at having a TV mike thrust into their face. Eighth, all through the fairly long period I watched BBC8217;s coverage, there wasn8217;t a single exclusive. For example, a BBC reporter didn8217;t stand in front of a suspect8217;s house in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and say in a breathless voice that he was about report an exclusive: an interview with the suspect8217;s neighbour8217;s aunt. To confirm this was the case in the wider coverage of the story in BBC8217;s home service I checked its web site. Eyewitnesses of police raids on suspects8217; homes were interviewed. But the reporters simply allowed them to say what they saw. Ninth, when the BBC discussed the issue of how the Muslim minority saw the latest terror story it didn8217;t appear either cloyingly politically correct or adolescently super-nationalist. Tenth, all the time I watched BBC, the screen never split in six showing six reporters who didn8217;t have three substantive points between them. Overall there was a sense of measured professionalism.

By Friday afternoon, though, I could partially get back to the television news consumption equivalent of substance abuse. NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times Now were all carrying warning flashes of a new terror threat to India. But they were also faithfully reporting that the home secretary had politely rubbished the US embassy terror assessment as nothing more than an advisory to American citizens in India. Did the US embassy claim something more than what its advisory contained? Did the home secretary under-react? Did the media overreact? How could one even ask these questions 8211; forget about answering them 8211; when TV news had decided on the headline, the angle and the blurb without fully understanding what it was reporting.

As I was writing this last paragraph, breaking news on NDTV was MK Narayanan, national security advisor, saying Al Qaeda is present in India in many forms. And CNN-IBN was promising an evening special on 8220;new age terror8221; and India8217;s ability to cope with it. I was going to get my fix.