Opinion God’s not in the Details

But ‘God particle’ was the top trend by late evening,propelled there by the barrage of TV reporting. Flipping through the channels,one was pleasantly surprised to find that while producers and anchors were expectedly moved to absurdity by the ‘divine’ nature of the boson,reporters understood what was afoot. Some channels had correspondents reporting accurately from the venue,saving programmes from the mystical excesses of their producers.

When asked what was the big deal,NDTV’s Noopur Tiwari betrayed the same caution as CERN’s scientists. She said that it was a five sigma finding (a statistical measure of certainty) but clarified that a Higgs boson had been found while several may exist. And she ventured into the mysteries of dark matter,the insensible stuff that makes up all but four per cent of the body of the universe. Until the anchor told her to cut the crap and tell if the scientists were wetting their pants in excitement,though not exactly in those words.

ABP News mashed together astronomical imagery with creationist myth-making: “Who gave birth to the stars and planets,a divine force or a scientific particle?” A strap read,“Science gets a glimpse of God.” But a correspondent in Geneva did a quick but comprehensive interview with CERN physicist Dr Archana Sharma. Meanwhile,IBN-7 had the story in the lead,where it actually belonged at that moment,ahead of the Adarsh scam and Akhilesh Yadav’s automotive profligacy.

Sabse tez Aaj Tak produced the zingiest mash,with stirring background music — Enya meets Star Wars theme with Tchaikovsky setting off cannons to keep time. Highly appropriate for the galactic spectrum that the special of 19 minutes covered. On one hand,Aaj Tak’s reporter Siddharth Tiwari responsibly cautioned that the existence of the Higgs boson was not 100 per cent certain yet — the combined rating of the two sightings reported is actually a fraction under 5 sigma. At the same time,its anchor was mystically convinced that the God particle would explain where volcanoes get their oomph from and make time travel and intergalactic travel possible. Volcanoes?! One correspondent spoke of the “Lord Hadron Collider”— that’s my next World of Warcraft avatar! — and a strap read,God tussi sukshma ho.

Despite weirdness like this conflation of filmi Punjabi and philosophical Sanskrit,the big channels proved to be surprisingly enlightened. Many carried part of the actual Webcast of the CERN conference (To see it in all its si gma giga electron volt magnificence,browse http://webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/play_higgs.html#). Perhaps it’s experience. The media has had four years to prepare for this discovery since the Large Hadron Collider was commissioned and gone through numerous drills when a sighting of the elusive Higgs boson was declared to be imminent. In journalism,past experience is a great comfort.

One recalls the apocryphal story of the Skylab crash and the editorial writer at the Hindu. In 1979,Skylab was expected to crash as flamboyantly as Krakatoa had erupted and an edit had to be written. Space stations were new,Skylab was the first of its kind and the writer found himself in the great unknown. With nerveless fingers,he reached for his security blanket. He dialled the library and asked the surprised librarian for the file on Skylab crashes. The ‘God particle’ has fared better in the media’s hands.

pratik.kanjilala@expressindia.com