YouTube has many hilarious Arnab Goswami parodies. A lot of you may have laughed out loud seeing the remixes based on actual footage of his news shows. If you haven’t, it is time to check out the famous “Arnab Trap” featuring the “Never Ever Ever” rap mixed from a live interview. Or, check out “Bollywood Aam Aadmi Party: The Nation Wants to Know.” The wit, humour and sarcasm of these videos nail the ridiculous way in which debates are organized on national television. These parodies were thinly veiled screams for help from smart citizens against the increasing dumbing down of Indian media. Had we paid more attention to these spoofs, a section of television media would not have gone so grossly wrong today.
The antics of television news media reached abysmal lows in the last 20 days with the highly controversial coverage of the JNU sedition case. Using videos lifted up from social media as evidence, many news channels began proclaiming the students as “anti-nationals” even before the court had had its say. The anchors leading high-pitched debates about nationalism had forgotten the basic journalistic requirements like skepticism, caution and objectivity. Never below has Indian television media dropped so low, and in such a collective fashion, in recent memory. We can’t laugh away their unprofessionalism any more. It is no joke when an ill-formed media takes the onus of opinion-forming.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra had played the (doctored) video during a Times Now debate as evidence of Kanhaiya’s “anti-national” activities on the JNU campus. The video showed Kanhaiya at a rally, shouting slogans endorsing freedom for Kashmir, including “Hum lekar rahenge… azaadi.” The Aam Aadmi Party government meanwhile sent seven videos, allegedly from February 9 and 11, for forensic verification.
Hyderabad-based Truth Labs confirmed on Wednesday that two of the most controversial videos “ including the one shown by Patra - were clearly manipulated and voices were added to them. This revelation raises serious doubts about the journalistic practices followed by channels like Zee, NewsX, India News and Times Now that allowed to air parts of unverified videos on their show. These anchors even led subsequent debates, despite the possibility that the videos could be doctored, without doing a background check.
ZEE TV reporter Vishwa Deepak submitted his resignation on February 19 to protest the channel’s coverage of the JNU case. His open letter alleges several questionable journalistic practices, mostly dealing with ethics, decision-making, and spinning story angles. This man’s voice rather died out in the cacophony that all the channels had successfully created by then. The underlying theme of the TV coverage continued to be high-pitched debates on nationalism.
Two news channels, India Today TV and ABP News, stood apart from the maddening, TRP-hungry crowd by debating the veracity of the said videos. On February 19, journalist Siddhartha Varadarajan wrote an article on thewire.in, blaming several news channels including Times Now, for airing a doctored video. The channel immediately refuted this allegation with much chest-thumping and fanfare, asking for apology in bold red tickers throughout their show. Its stand now remains to be seen.
Another interesting discrepancy was that while Times Now, with its poster boy Arnab on the helm marched on a high-pitched, prove-right/prove-wrong track; The Times of India showed restraint. The print has always remained the reserved, shy cousin of broadcast. One hopes that print media remain indifferent to the hype of broadcast and stick to their solid, old-fashioned rule-book in future as well.
Television news anchors have always been great at coaxing words down the panelists’ throats and coaxing views down ours. This pattern of highhanded news coverage, where debates drag on a pre-decided agenda and the star anchor dismisses views in quite a dictatorial fashion is the specialty of at least one major news channel. That said, no single anchor or TV channel can be blamed for the collective rot that has set in, all have their fair share of contribution in eroding fundamentals of journalism.
What happened on television last fortnight is starkly different from other worthy campaigns in the past. We saw a brighter side of the television news media when it championed causes based on facts on hand, like in the case of Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Matoo. But, ever since it tasted power, things have been on a downslide. Examples of news media fatally damaging reputations abound.
The height of insensitivity is exemplified in the case of Professor Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras. Prof. Siras was the head of the Department of Modern Indian Languages at Aligarh Muslim University. His tragic life story has come into mainstream discussion only because of the film, Aligarh, which released on February 26. Perhaps, the media played a role in his untimely death. A sting operation, allegedly instigated by four university officials and two local media persons, caught Prof Siras on camera getting intimate with a man inside the privacy of his home. This led to Siras’s expulsion from the university. He fought this decision and won the case in Allahabad High Court on April 1, 2010. On April 7, 2010, he was found dead under mysterious circumstances.
