Wrong celebrity cause enough to weep

Criticising a confidential source in public is ridiculous: if you give him the right of reply, his confidentiality is violated, if his confidentiality is protected, he8217;s denied the right of reply.

Is I have a cause that I think needs a celebrity, whom would I pick, given the evidence garnered from hours of TV news time spent on the issue last week? My ranking: 1 Rahul Bose 2 Arundhati Roy 3 Aamir Khan 4 Salman Khan, and if you were desperate 5 Nafisa Ali.

Bose was on two of the three8212;NDTV and CNN-IBN; the third being Aaaj Tak 8212;channels that offer the possibility, although sadly not the certainty, of news analysis with some substance. On the same day, in NDTV8217;s and IBN8217;s regular evening discussion programmes8212;these are aired head to head, so the actor obviously manages his time slots well8212;Bose showed he has studied the Narmada issue, knows the limits of his intervention and is perfectly willing to be queried. He also came across as level headed.

Level headed isn8217;t exactly Ms Roy8217;s most evident attribute. Live on NDTV as the first Supreme Court observations on the Narmada issue were being reported, Ms Roy told us the court and the government were asking India8217;s poor to 8220;you-know-what off8221;. NDTV edited that out when the recorded version played later in the day. I thought the censoring blip would have been a cleverer option. And if editing was being done, the NDTV correspondent should have suffered, too. As she put her questions to Ms Roy, the latter must have thought she was speaking to an NBA activist. TV news editors really must recount to some of their correspondents the first principles of reporting. If Ms Roy8212;who also said the poor would start a nation-wide armed revolt8212;calmed down a bit, she would be a far better spokesperson.

Aamir Khan must do more homework. His honest admission that he didn8217;t know the technicalities of why the dam8217;s height must be raised didn8217;t help him when the court order came. 8220;We will all review what happens after three months8221;, he told all the major channels. Not good enough, given that he was sitting in with people who wanted work on the dam to be stopped. Still, Khan didn8217;t deserve the silly special report on Star News that claimed his films have started a new phase of social activism. Sure, Rang de Basanti8217;s candle-lit protest was imitated in life. To hang an argument on that, though, is poor journalism.

Now, the tricky part of my ranking: why Salman Khan over Nafisa Ali. Because, as I saw on TV, if Salman Khan bats for you he would be entertaining; if Ms Ali were on your side she would miss the ball. Released from jail, Salman told his fans to never do wrong things, to think of good things and then took off his shirt. Ms Ali, co-panelist with Rahul Bose on IBN8217;s evening show, was spectacularly off the point. The IBN anchor deserves praise for keeping her patience through Ms Ali insisting on talking about Narendra Modi when the issue was celebrities-and-causes. Ms Ali ruined what could have been an okay discussion. NDTV8217;s show won by default.

Mind you, when in another CNN-IBN evening discussion, on quotas and corporates, the audio link with one off-site panelist8212;a retired judge down South8212;failed as the anchor asked everyone to sum up their position, it was no one8217;s fault but the channel8217;s. There was a surreal moment: the anchor asking the judge to speak and the latter looking on, stone-faced and silent.

Another priceless slice of TV news: In NDTV8217;s programme on the late and aggressively lamented Dr Rajkumar, the earnest anchor asked a member of a selectively chosen audience what he thought of the whole thing. Dr Rajkumar was god, the gentleman replied, helpfully adding that there was nothing more to said on the subject. 8220;Right8221;, said the anchor and he paused. He had my full sympathy.

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But the most curious thing I saw on TV news last week was what was not on Times Now. The two days Narmada news was on the boil, Times Now was way behind the curve. As I flipped channels to find what the PM had told Gujarat MPs and, the next day, what the court had said, Times Now, of all the big name channels, was the last by a considerable margin in breaking the news.

As this was going to the press, news broke of the Nepal King rediscovering the virtues of democracy. Times Now was quickly on the news this time but its editor spent an awful lot of time describing a 8220;confrontation8221; between him and an unnamed government source over India8217;s role in the King8217;s volte face. The Times Now news anchor thought his editor8217;s intervention in the Nepal story was very sharp. I thought it was very strange. Criticising a confidential source in public is ridiculous: if you give him the right of reply, his confidentiality is violated, if his confidentiality is protected, he8217;s denied the right of reply.

I can8217;t 8220;feel the news8221; on Times Now because I am beginning to get a funny feeling about it.