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
