When News TV met the PM

This past fortnight has been a good one to look at news TV’s extremes. That whole Egypt thing. Then the prime minister’s press conference,helpfully limited to TV types. (Editors or proprietors only,none of your other riffraff,thanks.) And there was the big awards show.

No,not the Grammies. I hear Lady Gaga’s egg was quite an entrance,and nobody would be really surprised if they heard she had been hatched rather than born,but what are the Grammies,anyway? Pablum,as Stephen Colbert memorably put it once,made worse to Indian sensibilities by the shortage of lip-syncing actresses. No,I meant that extraordinary Indian innovation,the “newsy” award show,such as this week’s “NDTV Indian of the Year”. Apparently CNN-IBN has an “Indian of the Year” award too — and no doubt India TV has an “Astrologer of the Year” — which I somehow missed,presumably because I was busy the night IBN aired “Grand Finale”on December 31.

Look,as it is Indian TV doesn’t do awards shows properly. They’re awkward and long. They’re cringingly respectful to the point of sycophancy. The transition music is far too dramatic for the low energy level of the proceedings. And how do you pick winners? Or even categories? Nitish Kumar as politician of the year,fine. But a Leader of a New India award? Well,actually two Leaders: Madhya Pradesh CM S.S. Chouhan (“Development”); and Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan (“Credibility”). No,really three,except Sheila Dikshit (“Governance”,which presumably requires your state to have per capita income about twice that required for “Development”) didn’t turn up,and so her award has been excised from the NDTV website. It’s almost as if they find out who’s coming first,and then hand prizes to all of them.

Except for Rajinikanth. New Rajini joke: Rajini awarded entertainer of year,but his charisma made it entertainer of DECADE.

And you had to deal with stilted awards-show conversation between P. Chidambaram and Rajini,and between Nitish and Ajay Devgn. (Sample,from Devgn: “I’m afraid to be sitting with all these politicians.” Cue laughter.) When you force the Delhi news channels out of their echo chambers,they don’t really do very well.

This was reinforced when the TV people were forced into a room with the PM. Manmohan Singh asked newsmen not to make it sound like we were a “scam-driven country”. Outrage ensued. But it had to be contained within that room,making it sound strangely tinny — and surely there wasn’t an uncurled upper lip in the house at the sight of Times Now’s Arnab Goswami being stopped from asking “just one supplementary” by the PM’s disapproving media adviser.

More,the way in which the Delhi news channels drive stories even after everyone else thinks they’re over became painfully apparent: the 2G and ISRO scam questions came from them and only them,while everyone else asked questions they felt were more pertinent. From Chennai? Ask about fishermen and Sri Lanka. From Andhra? About Telangana. From the Northeast? About Assam politics. But nobody bothered to ask about talks with Pakistan,for example. Instead,in the endless detail about what the PM knew when,the national channels showed an odd lack of sensitivity to place and to the story. The PM is perfectly capable of playing back questions about notes and memos and resolutions to them with a Dravid-like straight bat. The viewers are lost. And it seems to them there’s only one story in town,which isn’t the case.

Worldwide,of course,there is only one big story,and at least Prerna Suri of Al Jazeera got the question in: can Egypt-like uprisings happen in India? And what does India think about the Tahrir revolution? The first part is silly,but it seemed a good enough question to warrant being asked by every TV channel. The PM knew the answer: “India is a functioning democracy.” (The “obviously” resounded throu-gh the TV at me.)

And what does India think of the First Televised Revolution? To start off with,it showed how news TV can convey history to you. Al Jazeera’s coverage was revelatory: sensitive,always about the protesters and the story rather than the anchors and the news desk’s idea of where the story should be. They responded quickly — at one point showing Egypt state TV’s solemn pro-government feed alongside their own,to make a point better than screaming could have done. And when Mubarak finally left,they didn’t cut away to anchors pontificating a million miles away. They stayed with the victorious street,helping us participate in the moment.

The other reason why Egypt wouldn’t happen here? The cameras would be in the studios at the time.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com