The More The Merrier?

Seven years ago, when I got my degree in journalism, all I wanted to be was a newspaper reporter. I greatly romanticised the idea of going for covering events for ‘my’beat, notepad and pen in hand, the official photographer and my alert, observant mind with me. But that never happened.

I eventually landed up in television. With no prior education or experience in the broadcast medium, the going was tough for me in the beginning. Within six months however, I was comfortable with the ways of the electronic world and had even started to enjoy it. For, I could now see and feel the power of televised image. And also the limitless possibilities the video camera held within itself. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with my vocation. What made it even more motivating was the fact that I was working in an organisation that gave one ample opportunity to learn and explore the television medium. And I just lapped it up.

My job was on the news desk – scripting and proofreading stories, visually editing them, doing voice-overs… that was my work. But on my off days and sometimes after my duty shift was over, I would go out for reporting. For stories of my choice (which often pertained to art and culture and other ‘softer’ themes).

Then, the gamut of my productivity expanded. And in that was included the act of news anchoring. Here I should mention that at that time there were very few 24-hour channels in India. I was working for one of them. And although my channel, which was called TVI (it’s defunct), had a limited viewer base because of technical limitations and organisational apathy, it prided itself on quality. Hence even when I was given the chance to anchor 3-minute headline chunks, it was made sure that I was fit for it and was doing my job well. Live news hadn’t yet begun in India and all our news was pre-recorded. I remember one occasion when I had finished reading the headlines bulletin and was about to disembark from the anchor’s chair. The producer came in to the studio, asking me to wait. He told me the channel head had been watching my reading from the control room and wanted me to repeat a section where I had mispronouned a word as well as a sportsman’s name. I obediently complied. The experience proved valuable. After that whenever my turn to anchoring came, I would ensure I knew what I was going to read on air and that I uttered every word correctly.

My intention here is not to give an exposition of my learning process in television news. It’s just meant to highlight the dismal state of affairs that present day television news in India is. Recently there has been a a surfeit of news channels -- all launching at about the same time, with every channel promising to give you the best and outdo the rest. But at the end of it all, you as a viewer are left feeling cheated. Cheated of your simple right to get accurate information and balanced views. Where you are looking for the latest events that happened, the focus of the channels is to present you with good looks, innovative hairstyles, designer costumes and eye-catching sets. The saddest part is that even with the latest and the best in technology, we are deprived of informed newsreading and correct facts. For, even as the anchors seem to be spending hours in shaping up their appearances, they don’t bother to spend even a few minutes to educate themselves about what they would be reading before a live audience. The result -- mispronouncing the commonest and most famous of names, recurrent fumbling, little involvement with the stories they convey to the viewers and often even getting histrionic where it is least required.

Things are no better when it comes to content. Indian news channels seem to be jumping on the ‘sensationalisation’ bandwagon with alarming speed. Events that would struggle to vie for a corner space in a national newspaper are blown up and just like hydrogen balloons they vanish into thin air within no time. Whether it be the case of a Hindi film actor being abused in the middle of the night by a fellow actor or the episode of a girl calling the police on her wedding day to arrest her dowry-demanding husband, the channels waste no time to latch on to such spicy topics and dish out soap-opera style stories on them. Whereas I agree that it’s fair to highlight dynamic efforts (such as the bride calling the cops on her wedding day), what is detestable is the manner in which such issues are projected. A simple news story with a certain amount of social bearing is needlessly spun into a saga of a young woman’s heroism, who, it is later found out, had called the police only when her father advised her to do so after being manhandled himself by the groom’s party. Newspapers, doing their bit of research also found out that the girl’s father had accumulated huge amounts of luxury items to be sent as part of ‘gifts’ (euphemism for dowry) for her daughter. It was only when the groom’s side asked for a heavy cash payment to be made on the wedding day, that the girl’s family decided to step back. The girl never once protested the idea of being lavished with two sets each of washing machines, refrigerators, television sets and so on. But one desperate call to the police to save her father’s skin and the television found their latest soap item. Within no time, a timid, conforming, submissive girl was turned into a national icon, the very symbol of 21st century womanhood and the channels even encouraged viewers to send congratulatory SMSs to her through their network.

Add to all this balloon-filling, an overdose of cinema, socialite gatherings, countless (and often tasteless) fashion shows and contests – ranging from addictive to bizarre. Recently a newly launched channel invited its viewers to participate in a SMS contest – the question was to pick a correct answer from three choices regarding the exact date and time of its launch. The idea was that every 1000th or so winner would get a prize with a mega prize for a participant who happened to be a mega statistic (like 50,000th) on the contest. So the new mantra for getting good TV ratings is this: if you can’t win audiences based on your merit, try the numbers game. It surely works.

In March this year, the Hindi news channel of the same network announced a rather weird scheme to its viewers. At that time the cricket world cup was on and India was going great guns. It had reached the final and was to take on mighty (in cricketing terms) Australia for the coveted cup. This particular channel proposed to honour the Indian team (if they won the trophy that is!) with an amount of 1 crore rupees from its side. The funny part was, it was encouraging the viewers too to contribute cash amounts in favour of the winning (probably till then) team. The channel promised that all such donations would have the benefit of tax exemption and those who contributed more than a certain amount fixed by them would even find mention in their bulletins. Later, when the victorious team would return home, al l the money would go to it. What a ludicrous way of showing affection! For, a team that won the world cup would get a huge amount of prize money anyway. Add to it the currencies showered on the players by the Indian government, various state governments and other sporting bodies. Not to mention the horde of sponsors that would make a beeline for the Indian demi-gods (that’s what cricketers are in the country). Why then should the ordinary, sport-loving viewer be urged to share his coffer? It’s another matter that eventually, in spite of all the hype, the Indian team could not win the tournament. And hence the channel’s rather ‘novel’ scheme did not materialise.

Lastly, one of the saddest aspects of Indian television news today is its anchor-centric character. Almost all the channels seem to be obessesed with the idea of putting glamour and style ahead of content and credibility. The point they seem to be missing is that 90% of a news telecast is determined by a well-informed, almost empathetic reading of regular affairs. Whereas BBC and CNN (the only foreign networks visible across Indian living rooms) are always careful about choosing their anchors, who, in turn are mostly attuned to current happenings, their backgrounds and future impacts, the new line of Indian anchors seems to be completely neglectful of the need to sharpen their journalistic skills. Instead, we see weekly upgradation of hair styles and the latest array of designer wear on the news sets. There seems to be no reproach for incorrectly pronouncing the most prominent of names, asking the dumbest possible questions to an on-site correspondent and repeatedly making the same mistakes.

In the end, it seems that the viewer is deemed an insensate, daft entity, who would be happy to accept appearances for the actual thing. Unfortunately (for the channels), we, the viewers aren’t a bunch of imbeciles. And so even as there is an excess in news channels as far as numbers go, there’s very little to choose from.