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Journalist
As news browsing becomes a high-infidelity, click-chasing experience, several digital media services have embraced Facebook Live as a narrative tool writes BV Rao, Editor, Firstpost.com
Has anything changed one year after 26/11? Has India learned anything from 26/11? These questions, or questions to that effect, formed the thrust of all the 26/11 coverage on news channels. BV Rao analyses.
If there is one crisis that is facing the Hindi news industry, it is this. Much as the industry tries to paint a picture of the viewer as a willing consumer of pulp, the ground is slipping under its feet. It is clear that the average viewer has had enough of nonsense and is turning off. And yet, I have never heard any CEO or editor talk about this looming danger at any industry meet or interview, observes BV Rao.
Zee News has been gradually climbing up in ratings, and it is due to its steadfast adherence to the sensible news formula, points out BV Rao.
BV Rao laments the media’s inability or unwillingness to look within and course correct in some cases. While freedom of the press is important in any democracy, this freedom comes with a lot of responsibilities and requires the media to be inward-looking and self-policing. This, however, was overlooked at times either due to lazy and shortcut journalism or to make money by cheating the reader and subverting democracy itself.
Hundreds of great stories have died a premature death in our country because media rivalry prevents one from picking up and following the other’s scoops. BV Rao gives the recent example of how different papers covered Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s statement on the Kyoto Pact, to emphasise this point.
Things are looking up at The Times of India as it announced the end of recession with a sort of bonus payout. However, BV Rao feels it has achieved nothing more than to open old wounds of the staff.
In 1987, The Times of India set in motion a process of deconstructing the Indian newspaper as we knew it up until then. It shelved the prevailing trend of periodic cover price increases with invitation pricing and style took precedence over substance. Twenty-two years later comes Crest, which is a complete departure from everything that The Times of India has stood for in the last two decades. BV Rao analyses the latest offering from The Times of India.
Not long ago, NDTV Imagine helped Rakhi Sawant find a suitable boy. Imagine has now decided that while Rakhi’s marriage can wait, she needs urgent training in minding babies and has devised the show ‘Pati, Patni aur Woh’. But hearing the distressed baby’s cries, one wonders where the activists crying hoarse over ‘Balika Vadhu’ and ‘Sach Ka Saamna’ are, asks BV Rao.
If the cost of telling blatant lies is guaranteed and instant industry amnesia, you can bet your life that we have not seen the last lie on television. Yes, television channels self-regulate. They “regulate” their urge to report an offending competitor for its misdemeanors, because they expect the latter to look the other way when they are themselves in the box, says BV Rao.
When a news channel is openly ducking the law (news channels should not be airing GEC serials) and cheating its viewers (by inventing news around last night’s stale soap) you don’t care about disclosure. You care about closure, says BV Rao.
News channel editors are like horses. While horses are forced to wear blinkers, news channel editors wear them voluntarily. Horses are made to wear these blinkers so that they see only the road ahead and stay on course. We call that focus. Blinkers are meant to keep the horse on course, not to blind it. However, the editors’ preoccupation with the ‘big story’ often blinds them to the other stories of the day, says BV Rao.
In the 30 hours between the disappearance of Rajashekhara Reddy’s chopper and the declaration of his death, information was sparse and nobody knew what was happening. But 24x7 news demands that information or no information, you have to keep the talk-shop going. But when a channel takes recourse to exaggeration and outright lies to create an illusion of victory over its rivals, you have to call the bluff, says BV Rao.
TRP is a weekly game. So most channels take the easy route to success and TAM takes the brunt of the blame. Instead of hoping that all the advertisers will come together one day and force the channels to clean up content, how about trying this easier way out: why can’t all the channels come together and banish the trash, asks BV Rao.
News channels hunt and hide in a pack. When they are on to something, they are on to it like there’s no tomorrow, and when they run from something, they run like their tails are on fire. Sting operations are a case in point. BV Rao explains why he misses sting and how overzealous channels have all but killed TV’s most potent weapon.
We do believe that our values are strong enough to hold their own against all attacks, but television rating points (TRPs) have no respect for culture. Here, there is no established hierarchy and Gods get no extra marks, says BV Rao.
Much like any average person in any average job, the TV journo, too, has made his peace. He gets by the tough life of the TV newsroom by throwing the protective ring of philosophy around himself. Thus, the television newsroom is a very philosophical place. It is littered with life’s eternal truths, says BV Rao.
In this second part of his two-part series veteran journalist BV Rao continues with his analysis of what ails print media today. Just like underwear, print will survive. But the waist that wears the underwear will shrink dramatically, so print will have to recast and resize, he concludes.
With recession putting the skids on print media’s brilliant bull run and the digital-age news consumer becoming more of an immediate reality rather than a distant mirage, an old question returns to haunt the industry: Is it over for us? It’s been discussed at various industry seminars just this month. BV Rao adds his two bits in this two-part series.
BV Rao responds to (in his own way) Janata Dal (United) President Sharad Yadav venting his ire against ‘Balika Vadhu’ in Parliament recently. In an open letter, he points out that there is a whole world that exists beyond the walls of Doordarshan that is not some sanitised fantasy land. So, is the hoo-haa really called for?
If you are reading this you have already lived three days more than mandated by some channels and some unnamed expert astrologers. We were all marked for death on July 7. I can’t ask you to celebrate because there is more danger coming. July 22, August 6 and then… Apocalypse!
One story that news channels should have grabbed and played up was the investigative report of BBC’s Richard Watson on the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, says BV Rao. India’s news channels have unfairly been carrying the stigma of helping the terrorists in their mission. Watson pointed out that there was something elementarily wrong about the Government’s accusation.
I always thought that the immortal Amitabh line in Sholay, “Tera naam kya hain, Basanti” (what’s your name, Basanti?) was unbeatable for its eloquent, if deliberate, stupidity. But try this for competition: NDTV’s Nagma was in Surat, outside a shop that caters to Andhra migrants. Nagma, to the shopkeeper: Aap ka naam bataiye, Telugu mein bataiye (tell us your name, tell us your name in Telugu)! He said his name was ‘Anil’. Wonder what his name would be Hindi!
Our channels take any defeat badly, but cricket defeats are especially personal. Not only are the endless hours of hype wasted, the channels are short-changed on easy content by a few days. Criminal dereliction of national duty on the cricketers’ part... The problem is, cricket is moving in a new direction and all our arguments and debates are getting outdated fast. The question is not anymore about how much cricket to play, whether to play for money or honour, etc etc... writes veteran journalist B V Rao.
Media veteran B V Rao writes on the variety of exclusives that the English dailies had to offer to readers in the week gone. “It was a pleasant read through the week, as the three dailies continued to hawk their virgin stories rather than treat us to their normal routine of yesterday’s repackaged TV… But good things don’t last forever,” says Rao.
The attacks on Indian students in Australia and the disappearance of Air France flight 447 took up TV time last week. The coverage of these two incidents showcased at once the power of TV as a medium and how the channels insist on undermining that power by constantly digging the ground under their feet, says BV Rao.
When the markets opened on May 18, 2009 for the first time after the thumping Congress win, it wasn’t just the Sensex that went berserk. CNBC’s Udayan Mukherjee’s exuberant on-air antics left quite a few speechless and highly bemused. This has left BV Rao wondering if it is becoming acceptable behaviour for anchors to wear their emotions on their sleeve.
Politicians are masters of denying the obvious, so it’s not easy to get them to acknowledge defeat. But some of the defeats of Election 2009 have been so stunning that even the most hard-boiled have not attempted to twist facts, says BV Rao.
For too long has Bihar been seen as a drag on the country. The heartening thing about Nitish Kumar’s three years in power is that he is deconstructing Laloo’s Bihar not merely by matching political chicanery, but by good governance and by appealing to the unifying ‘Bihari pride’ rather than the divisive Bihari castes. BV Rao takes a look at Bihar under Nitish’s rule.
In three press conferences in three weeks, Rahul Gandhi showed he has emerged out of the shadows of his family to be his own man. BV Rao writes an open letter to Congress party Chairman Sonia Gandhi, imploring her to end the older Gandhi’s political internship.
Before 26/11, I used to be an Arnab Goswami regular. The ‘Newshour’ show moves fast, the debates are brief, he moderates the debates well and comes prepared with the stuff. But post 26/11 and the attendant success for Times Now, something has changed, says BV Rao.
If, as a society, we are turning out to be actors for TV, venting anger at the drop of a hat, ignoring acceptable norms of behaviour, I think I owe an apology to my professional mates. I suppose every society gets the media it deserves. But that does not mean the basics of news journalism can be brushed aside to load more emotion into an already sad story, says BV Rao.
Justice Verma had enough scope for making an example out of India TV for its omissions and commissions. But a judgement delivered without a hearing to the accused knocks the bottom out of justice. In his eagerness to establish his authority early on in the game, Justice Verma seems to have just missed a sitter at the net, says BV Rao.
Jarnail Singh has been soundly condemned by journalists for shaming the profession when he crossed the line between journalism and activism. But my embarrassment as a journalist began much before Singh tossed his shoe, with deliberate miscalculation, into an empty chair two places away from P Chidambaram, says a candid BV Rao.
On seeing US President Barack Obama go on air on Jay Leno’s ‘The Tonight Show’ about 10 days ago, BV Rao wonders when one can see such a development in India. According to him, no Indian channel is even thinking of it, perhaps because they can’t see beyond their larger-than-life editors; and no Indian head of state has bothered to face the public directly after being elected to the high post.
Even as the nation remained glued to the TV sets during the 60-hour Mumbai terror attacks, the ‘live coverage’ came in for a lot of flak. Veteran journalist BV Rao in an open letter to the National Broadcasting Association (NBA) analyses what was wrong with the coverage and why the need of the hour is better content more than a self-regulating content code.
