Good TV, Bad Journalism

This past Thursday, I was convinced I was a journalist.

I have always debated about whether Television is the right medium for news. Can television news persons be called journalists or are they entertainers?

On the day of the Mumbai terror attack, I was convinced that TV can be a good medium for news, TV news personnel can be journalists. They choose not to be.

It was 4 Am and I was in the Production Control Room of NDTV studios. At 9:15 Pm, the previous night terror had been unleashed across Mumbai. Such an attack was, clearly, unprecedented. For a news person, it was an (as insensitive as it might sound) extremely exciting time. In this excitement, we overstepped.

The TV news person in me will see the past four days as a valuable experience that will stay in the memory for a long time. The journalist, though, will feel it prick her conscience forever.

It is a basic rule of reporting from a war (read conflict, tension) zone that the reportage should not disrupt the security forces at work or harm them in any way. When a slew of cameras stood outside Taj, Trident and Nariman House to give us minute to minute account of the commandos' operations, we were disclosing the strategy of our security forces live, in real time!

What were we thinking? That the terrorists inside the 5-star hotels had no access to TV sets? That they had no access to Internet or phones? Would they not be better equipped now that their television friends have told them what their enemies are upto?

When we chose good television over good journalism and aired footage of the NSG commandos being airdropped on Nariman House (for instance), we might have caused unimaginable damage to the lives of those security personnel and/or hostages. Would it then not sound contradictory and utterly superficial that we ran stylised montages of the security personnel and paid homage to them? For all we know, we could have saved those very lives that we later mourned.

We could have done many things to become responsible journalists. I have always believed that the media should be self-regulatory. We should have aired all news and footage of the operations with a gap of about four-five hours since its actual occurrence. Surely, the shock factor for the viewer would remain the same if all TV channels came together and decided to break news that happened at 9 PM four hours later. This would ensure that we are not airing the operations in real time. When we can organise ourselves to speak out for/against say, Foreign Direct Investment in broadcast, we can surely come together to take collective decisions on matters of such grave importance.

Not everything is meant for live television. We necessarily have to make a distinction between a cricket match and a terrorist encounter. While one needs live footage and commentary, the other does not.

One might argue that even if TV channels would show restraint, in the age of the Internet, can we really hold back information for long? Well, we might not stop information flow but we can surely reduce the impact, the intensity and the reach.

Sometimes our facade of being serious journalists profoundly disturbs me. We have our conscience to answer.

Raksha Kumar

The Changing Face Of Hindi

It is always facinating to see the change in the dominant language to understand the changes that the larger society is going through. In a sense language mirrors the trends in the society. When I landed in Delhi 4 years ago, one thing that struck me as being very strange was the expression of combining 'aap' with 'ho'. 'Kya aap free ho?' 'kya aap aa rahe ho?' 'aap ise kar loge please?' (as opposed to 'Kya aap free hai?' 'kya aap aa rahe hain?' 'kya aap ise karlenge please?') I guess, 30 years ago, an expression like that would have raised eyeballs. Today these expressions are commonplace. A friend who teaches languages in the university of Delhi explained to me that it was the influence of Punjabi on the Hindi that we speak in Delhi, and therefore the useage. Though I believed him then, I think I have my own explaination for the phenomenon.

Hindi, today, is clearly one of the most widely understood languages in India. Such an expression, which is clearly ungramatical is very popular in commercial Hindi films as well. Today, it is accepted as the norm everywhere. I travelled extensively in Utter Pradesh, a bastion of 'classical' Hindi. And I found that such an expression is commonplace in small towns there. One language that has wider reach and influence in all parts of the country is English. There is no distinction between an 'aap', 'tum' and 'tu' in English (as in Punjabi). So, how would you translate 'how are you?' into Hindi? 'Aap kaise hain?' 'tum kaise ho?' 'tu kaisa hai?' or 'aap kaise ho?' Thus, I think it is English that influences Hindi and therefore, it is the English (western, read American) culture that has a lot of influence on our society.

However, another phenomnenon that is not so obvious is the cultural confusion that today's youth face. It is pan-Indian to address everyone older as 'aap'. Our work environments are increasingly getting informal, be it classrooms or offices. Transactions are on a first name basis. Therefore, does one address his collogue as 'tum' while he is actually older in age? Most people find the mid-way. 'Aap pasad karlo ma'am' or ' wahan jaana aap'. This is the same dilemma faced when doesn't feel comfortable addressing an elderly genetleman as 'chacha', or 'mama'. Perhaps it is not considered appropriate anymore.

As someone who is traditional and orthodox when it comes to language, this trend clearly does not appeal to me. However, I think we have to live with more such trends in the future and prepare ourselves for it.

Raksha Kumar

Life Of Live Television

Sometimes the work I do can be very frustrating. Like most things 'Indian', we in Television also rarely question what we do. For instance, we at NDTV (like the rest of the the lot) showed the DD feed of Vijender Kumar's boxing bouts live on our channel.

Question: If I were interested in Olympics, why would I watch NDTV and not DD, that is as easily available? And if I wanted news and was watching NDTV, would I not be irritated to see the same thing that was on DD?

Many similar (quite mindless) 'cut to another channel' happens everyday. We cut to the parliamentarians' speeches when it is in session. I thought people avoided Lok Sabha Channel because it was boring! They just want us to give them the operative bits of the speeches, don't they?

I have three observations to make on this emerging trend: First, I think the logic of private channels going live to olympic events that are on DD is because most people want to watch that event as opposed to news. Fair enough. However, I guess, news channels must realise that they cannot have a share in every pie. The expertise of a news channel is to package events into intelligent news stories and give news (and analysis) about such events through out the day. Showing the entire event that we can catch anyway on another channel, is beyond my comprehension.
Second, I think, somewhere this stems from the principle of American journalism of presenting facts and only facts without adding any editorial judgement to news. Therefore, you show the entire speech of the PM so that the viewer decides what bit is important. I think, this is stretching it a bit too much. Every title (or 'super' as we call it) we give to a story shows our editorial bias. The bit of the speech we decide to take in our news packages later shows our editorial stance. After all, the viewer still trusts the journalist sitting in the newsroom (thankfully). So, I think, we should not think of it as 'being objective'.
Third, if we do cut live to a regional TV channel (show a regional channel live) or a foreign channel, it makes sense as a majority of the people would not have access to it.
However, this is now extended to DD or worse our own sister channel! NDTV profit, for instance, is just a button away. So, why will a viewer tune into NDTV 24X7 to watch NDTV Profit? If people want to know the markets, they would tune into a business channel. As a news channel we would have to simplify stock markets to our viewers, if we fail to do it, then we should at least not show our sister channel live on ours!

I understand that the TV industry is young and will mature in time. But, sometimes, really... wake up guys!

Raksha Kumar

Learning To Leave Behind

It was time to leave. Finally. Just as everything in this world, her stint with the advertising agency also came to an end. So did certain other things in her life. A year seemed like it had just begun... a film that came to an end even before it began, an interesting book that saw its last page before the first was read, a dream...from which one was woken up, perhaps, for no reason. Or perhaps, that was how it had always meant to be.

She had always known that her work in Mumbai will come to an end, and so will her relationship with him. She would have to leave. That is how it was supposed to be. Ever since. But it is stupid how we all sometimes want to, willingly, live in a dream world. Perhaps we just want to run away from reality for sometime, or forever. Rarely do we realise that when we come back into the real world, we are troubled and hurt. It is all our doing, isn't it? That is just what she did. She met Praveen. And met him again. And again.

Rahul would come to pick her up at the Delhi airport. She had been married to Rahul for four years now. They had always been the ideal couple. She had met Rahul in college and had fallen in love. And since then they were truly committed to each other. When there was talk of her moving to Mumbai for a year, he had showed his disappointment in all ways possible. But at the end, had relented, because he realised how important her career had always been for her. "When you come back, we'll make up for the time we could not spend together", he had said.

She was now sitting on her couch in her four bed-room apartment in Mumbai, recounting all the nights she had spent with Praveen. It was the last night she would spend there. The couch was soft, cozy and had a particular feel to it, just like him, she thought. He had a particular feel to him. What attracted her to him? His callousness? His brash replies? His insensitivity? His self centeredness? Or his display of affection? His genuine concern? His simply lovable self? She had asked herself this many times before. Clearly, there were no easy answers. There were NO answers.

Just as she never knew why she thought Rahul is the perfect match for her. But he was, she was convinced of it. But leaving Praveen behind, was, by far the toughest emotional decision she had ever taken. She felt unsure of herself, for the first time. There was pain, yet no pain.. there was disappointment, yet none to feel...

She looked around. It seemed like everything in her apartment was screaming out to her to not go. The flowers on the curtains, the photographs on the side table, the couch that had a particular feel to it, everything. Everything, except Praveen.

"No one is indispensable", Praveen had said, "now that you mention, it might feel strange to not have you around. But what the hell?! We all get over it". What did it mean? She knew not. She had never been sure of his feelings towards her, but was more than confident of her feelings towards him.

She shut her eyes. She knew she would love him in the time to come. She would not let her feelings for him be governed by what he feels for her.

But now she had to leave. And leave she would.

Raksha Kumar

In The Right Spirit

On Saturday, NDTV’s Ahmedabad office was attacked by a few right-wing groups. NDTV India (Hindi news channel) had conducted a poll on who the viewers of NDTV think should be awarded the Bharat Ratna, and one of the contenders was M F Hussain, who is a Musilm. Therefore, this attack.

I was sitting in the Production Control Room of the NDTV Delhi office trying to control the inflow of this news as and when it broke. The PCR is where the bulletins are rolled out from, we were trying to do telephone interviews with various people who can give us information and put the incident in perspective. In this chaos, there was a heart-warming experience.

In this day and age of competition, where news channels are out there to get others, CNN-IBN exhibited the best possible journalistic spirit. Within minutes of our taking on our ‘Breaking News’ flashes IBN had their Breaking News on, which said ‘NDTV office attacked’. As an Output Editor sitting in the rival channel’s PCR, it filled me with immense pleasure and satisfaction as a journalist.

The gesture was not small at all. For various reasons. One: we seldom remain journalists are they are defined in the text books. We are not out there to help the needy, not there to lend a voice to the voiceless, not there to support the just. We are there to roll out news as it is convenient to us, if someone is helped in the process; it is just an unintended benefit. Our considerations are time, logistics and our mood. Apart from, of course, certain ‘outside pressures’. Under these circumstances, it is quite a bit for an Output Editor (Rundown Editor) of a channel to come out in support and show his solidarity for a cause.

Two: imagine the amount of publicity you are giving to your rival channel! A viewer watching IBN will immediately switch over to NDTV to see what has happened. This, when viewership is what drives the economics of a channel. Loss of viewership for a show or for a few hours can mean a lot of money that the channel can lose on the whole. It was only fair that we at NDTV played it up, not just because we were the aggrieved party but also because it was an act of sheer intolerance. But for IBN to have given it so much weightage is commendable.

Three: It is a possibility that IBN did it as it was a low news day. But they needn’t have mentioned NDTV at all. We all flash news of how ‘a certain’ channel was attacked.

As a journalist, it gave me immense pleasure to see the solidarity within the community and sincerely hope we can keep this going.

Raksha Kumar