Opinion Taking Sides
Commercial TV polarises,Parliaments channels gets neutral.
Commercial TV polarises,Parliaments channels gets neutral.
Theres nothing like a touch of Gujarat to polarise the media. Shortly after Asaram Bapu declared that he was too tied up to meet the police in August,he was alleging Sonia and Rahul Gandhi of conspiring darkly. Times Now renamed him Cornered Asaram and promised a moral supremacist savaging at the hands of their prime time champion,Arnab Goswami. At the very same moment,A2Z News was hailing him by his good name: Param Pujya Bapu. It had desh ka neta Ashok Singhal on hand to rant about saint-baiters and Praveen Togadia to protest,as usual,that no one ever hounded maulvis and padres. Also,the channel appeared to be trying to trash the evidence against the cult leader.
Circumstantial evidence had urged the police to take the allegation of rape seriously the minor victim had provided them with a meticulous description of Asarams private quarters. In retaliation,A2Z interviewed a sadhak who had taken a tour of the ashram and was able to give a fairly rich account too. Did it tally with the victims version? It didnt matter. The objective was to undermine the evidence,thats all.
Earlier,too,the channel had sided with Asaram and did a pretty devastating sting operation on one Raju Lambu,the cult leaders associate for two decades prior to a falling out. It may be recalled that India TV had also taken the cultists side in the matter of a papa aur beta who came to their studios to plead for the return of a wife and mother from the cults clutches. His allegations of the tantrik vashikaran of hapless women were easily disproved and he was accused,in turn,of being a wife-beater and a duplicate Collector who scammed people.
In the miasmic air that usually surrounds cults,only police investigations can separate the truth from conspiracy theory. But what channels foreground with dramatic panache,as on India TV sets you wondering.
Bapu is providing such good theatre and Yasin Bhatkals arrest is such a rare gotcha moment that distant issues like Syria are almost swept away. You need to read the newspapers or turn to BBC,CNN and Al Jazeera to see whats happening,even the unexpected development on Thursday when,for the first time since Desert Storm in 1991,British legislators declined to be drawn into a US-led military intervention. But then,our Parliament offers better theatre than Westminster,and it has two TV channels of its own to show it off. Here is an inscrutable off-camera byte in a strong eastern accent that came up more than once during the long,long day of the Food Security Bill: Pointis,pointis! Haha! Followed by a sober Hindustani accent: Haan,haan,paintees (35).
In recent months,Rajya Sabha TV and Lok Sabha TV seem to have acquired an independence that is surreal for viewers who remember state TV as propaganda machine. We have grown used to excesses,like NewsX reporting that the rupee was in free fall on Thursday morning,when it actually rallied,or News Express showing the rupee sign flat out on an ICU bed with a ventilator attached. We shrug when the anchor of a call-in programme advises viewers to wear onion garlands in place of jewellery. But when an LSTV panellist asks what cheer workers can expect this Diwali,and another urges government not to restrict the benefits of reform to corporates,you sit up. But within hours,RSTV focuses on the prime minister in his ugra avatar,laser eyes boring into the Opposition benches. While the allegiances of commercial TV are become easier to read,Parliament TV is learning to play the field.
pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com
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