Three southern Indian editions are around the corner for Papermint shortly, maybe even before the close of the calendar year. While Bangalore is a strong market for ET, Hyderabad and Chennai should be interesting. The paper will have an editor in charge of the southern editions based out of Bangalore. Phase-II for the paper should be interesting, particularly since the quality of their features have improved slowly but surely. News breaks on the other hand...
After seeing yesterday's events in Bihar and reading some of the apologists excuses in the papers, I have been wondering if the mere presence of a video camera gives life to a mob. Not that mobs need much of an excuse, but has the advent of TV News made them crazier? As it is, the difference between news and entertainment, or to use that wonderful term tamasha has blurred to such an extent, it does become a bit difficult to make out what is what. I wonder how difficult it is for an editor to decide to scrap a news show because Salman Khan farted? Not too difficult I imagine.
But, giving coverage to otherwise peaceful and small groups of people and egging them on is standard practice in India. It may not win Pulitzer's but it can win Indian TV awards and gets you eyeballs. Or so one believes. Heck, when Richard Gere kissed Shilpa Shetty, cameramen and reporters went and found small groups whose worldview echoed their own insular ones and egged them onto protests. Heck, if this isn't editorialising what is?
Back in the day when I was a trainee, I had a colleague whose interviewing style was "So what you are saying is XXXXX?" and before the startled interviewee could mutter an answer, it was too late. Technically, nothing wrong in putting words in someone's mouth, technically it still is not incorrect to write that "XXX believes that YYYY is a bitch". That was a lot better than making up quotes or waking the dead, which thanks to the advent of cameras you can't really do. But what you can do with a camera is possibly far worse.
I am not condoning what happened in Bihar, though I am pretty sure that the poor bugger would have beaten to a pulp inside the thana anyway and the cops were so lazy that they let the mob take care of their work for them. But, did the camera egg the mob on? Did the presence of TV cameras make the Gujjar protests worse than they should have been? While I would like to think that it did not, a part of me has a feeling that it did.
PS : When you are carrying a massive visual below the masthead like HT did today morning - they should at least get the planes right. I am pretty sure I was not the only person not sniggering when HT identified a JAS-39 Gripen as a MiG-35. Might have been a small mistake had they taken small images or taken it in an inside page, but for the location this is an awful mistake. Heck, you can even see the Swedish AF markings. Sure, you can argue I'm an aircraft fanboy, but still...
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3 comments:
It's like Schrodinger's Cat. When you observe you invariably change the outcome. I'm sure this is the case for newspaper and magazine reporting as well. It just takes place at a greater intensity for TV news.
This is such a fundamental philosophical question and without a very satisfactory solution that I guess we should accept the fact that the act of observing the world does alter it in some way.
the appointment of a certain editor for mint's southern editions has caused widespread shock and disbelief.
Mint is given to shock and disappointment. It hired a woman (sharing surname with BCCL owners) to head its editorial team in Delhi with no newsdesk background. She has always been in features section. The rumour mill has that lots of its editorial staff are on lookout for jobs due to work conditions, which are at best uninspiring. She has definitely proven to be 'hole in the mint'.
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