Opinion Caught in the Act

How anchors falter at the altar of science reportage and other surprises that marked television news this week

June 9, 2012 01:03 AM IST First published on: Jun 9, 2012 at 01:03 AM IST

This week,television was ruled by the element of surprise. The sun rose with Venus all over its face while BJP President Nitin Gadkari dived down to touch Baba Ramdevs feet,displaying surprising agility for such a substantial citizen. News is all about the unexpected,but youd need a Sudden in the newsroom to face down a blitzkrieg like this.

Theres nothing like a spot of science to baffle the press. There are so few capable science reporters left that they probably qualify for a special protected reserve of their own. So what do science-poor news anchors do when Venus threatens to transit early in the morning,when journalists are not at their chirpiest anyway? They go for the newspoint and hang on for dear life.

Flipping the news channels,one found everyone seized of the obvious: the rarity of the event. This is only the seventh transit observed since Johannes Kepler predicted the phenomenon in 1631 and the next one isnt due in a century. Rare things are intrinsically valuable. Currencies are founded on them. Want to buy this shirt? Three trillionths of a Transit,after discount. An apartment? Sixteen millionths of a Transit,please,half in cash.

Sounds like science fiction? Then we must conclude that rarity was not the intrinsic value of the transit. It was news because it was rare but the newspoint lay elsewhere,to be touched upon in the mandatory token appearances by experts. On Times Now,N. Ratnasree of the Nehru Planetarium mentioned the Kepler space telescope. NDTV stalwart Monideepa Banerjie brought on Debiprasad Duari of the Birla Planetarium,who talked of understanding the atmosphere of Venus.

But the experts were not given time to explain the importance of the phenomenon. Or,if colour is what TV craves,to talk of Captain Cooks dramatic voyage to Tahiti to observe the 1769 transit. By triangulation,that sighting had produced the first picture of the solar system drawn to scale. This years sighting will help the Kepler telescope to identify the planets of distant star systems. How much imagination would it have taken for anchors to link their channel websites to NASA,which meticulously documented the event with a timeline from Kepler through Edmond Halley (of comet fame) to 2012?

A day earlier,anchors especially on the Hindi channels had failed to imagine that BJP President Nitin Gadkari could suddenly dive for Baba Ramdevs feet. A meeting of minds,inclinations and interests between the Baba,Anna Hazare and the BJP has been palpable. But the amazement audible in newscasters voices suggested that they had expected civil society leaders to bow to the party. However,the Baba or Guru Baba as one Hindi anchor redesignated him is visibly the bigger and quicker draw. Gadkari had fainted on his very first maha-rally as party president. He couldnt take the heat.

Today,Gadkari has all his cards on the table and they dont add up to much,while Guru Baba has several up his sleeve. Ramdev also has two dates of birth. Opinion is divided on whether he was born in 1965 or 1971. But either way,hes much younger than Gadkari,who was indisputably born in 1957 and publicly celebrated his 55th birthday on May 27.

Traditionally,the young always touch the feet of their elders,but never the other way round,except when a demigod heaves into sight. So has Gadkari transgressed a Hindu practice,or has he promoted an entrepreneurial yoga guru to the higher plane where Shankaracharyas live? The makings of great TV drama,but the anchors lost the plot.