Opinion Sometimes,take a break

How many times can you listen to anchors mentioning Nallamalla forest and Naxals? At which point do you flinch when the graphic showing green forest cover comes up on the screen again? What do you make of Jayanti Natarajan saying it would be preferable if YSR is in Naxalite custody because then we will know what has happened — I mean,you know what she’s trying to say but you wonder whether she should have said that at all. You wonder whether politicians would have said stuff like this had news TV not had the luxury of hours to fill when the story is not developing? What do you make of stories that say YSR’s helicopter was not airworthy (CNN-IBN and Times Now) — the info comes from an apparently non-updated DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) website but no one seems to have checked with DGCA before running the story? How do you respond to CNN-IBN quoting sources declaring YSR is safe? Journalists,all of us,make mistakes. But some errors are so avoidable that you wonder whether news TV reporters and editors would do themselves a favour if they take a break from a story that’s not breaking any more.

How can you not be baffled when an NDTV anchor asks his co-anchor,with grave ceremony,to explain the search and rescue mission and the latter,despite all the marvels a video wall can provide,adds absolutely nothing that wasn’t already known? It wasn’t his fault really; nothing new had happened. When you see an Aaj Tak anchor standing in front of a video wall that shows a chopper flying from left to right and an aircraft (ISRO’s remote sensing plane? IAF’s Sukhoi?) flying from right to left,why do you feel a surge of sympathy for the anchor? When you see English channels carrying live broadcast of the Andhra finance minister’s press conference,the minister speaking in the vernacular,no translation forthcoming,you wonder whether the fact that something is happening at last trumps the necessity of explaining what is happening.

By Thursday we all knew what had happened. There was a ground zero too. But,still,so many questions. Was it imperative for Times Now to say three times in a short report that body parts are strewn at the crash site? And why did CNN-IBN,in assessing YSR’s career,think realpolitik was the key? Should you use realpolitik in this context? And if you use it to mean politics that’s practical,not always clean and not always possessing a moral/ideological core,was YSR the only practitioner?

What were we getting into? Unreal-politik,perhaps. Note,in this respect and in conclusion,that the same CNN-IBN show also told me that Charles Bronson can be an Indian political metaphor.

saubhik.chakrabarti@expressindia.com