No matter what your medium, if you are a journalist one of the most difficult tests you face is to rise above the banal when confronted with the emotionally wrenching. That’s why reporters who cover riots, disasters, wars and, we add to that list now and forever, serial child murderers, face that special requirement: say what matters in a way that matters. TV news was all over the Nithari story — as was of course necessary. But it perhaps didn’t always say what matters in a way that matters. For example, during NDTV’s visit to Nithari we were told that children, smiling for the TV cameras but too young to understand serial killers, have — as adults know — lost their innocence. This is a cliche. All of us journalists are potential victims of it. But we have to be especially careful of it when reporting a story like Nithari. The same NDTV story said Nithari has been neglected, forgotten for years and now all roads lead to it. That’s a cliche, too. It is also somewhat disingenuous for the media to say it since it is traveling with everyone else along that road. That’s the nature of news. And there are thousands of Nitharis neglected and forgotten by the mainstream and the media that draws sustenance from the mainstream. There’s little point in defining and contextualising guilt in this fashion.But I will take that kind of TV reportage over extraordinarily amateurish analyses of class. NDTV said in a report that it was ironical that the prime accused of the Nithari case comes from India’s elite, a product of its best schools and colleges. Why is it ironical, I wondered. What is there to guarantee that a Stephanian can’t commit heinous crimes? Would it have been less ironical or more natural if the accused came from one of the ‘lowly’ colleges?CNN-IBN asked whether the rich will step out of the bungalows and light candles for the victims of Nithari. Again, a disingenuous question. We all know the answer. In fact, TV news knew the answer when it celebrated candle power in 2006. But it wanted to argue then that the processions were reflective of a society as a whole. So when Nithari happened, it had to be disingenuous — why don’t the rich and the poor interact more? In which wondrous country does this happen as a matter of routine? When an ex-RAW director — why have an ex-spook talk about social conscience and class conflict? — told CNN-IBN that civil society doesn’t always want to rise and that the unwillingness to rise is callous and it hurts all of us, he was not challenged by CNN-IBN for in effect arguing for a permanent people’s revolution.Nithari should be and must be with us for a while. TV journalism should and must learn to confront it better.
