MEDIA MATTERS
Overdose
SEVANTI NINAN
IF you learnt about what the Left had said about scrapping the disinvestment ministry from your morning newspaper would you rush out and sell your stocks? Would thousands of investors do likewise? May be not. What is it about an excess of television coverage that triggers panic reactions?
As the stock market dived on Friday and then again on Monday you could not help wondering how much of it had to do with the amplified effect of such statements on multiple news channels. Friday was extraordinary. The Left party stalwarts began to shoot their mouths on television in the morning. Then, and up to the time of writing on Tuesday it was difficult to remember that it was the Congress that was going to lead this government. That is the effect an overdose of news channels has. Whichever one you switched to, you were likely to run into Sitaram Yechury as Congress spokespersons disappeared into the woodwork and the Left effortlessly took centre stage. If you needed a defence of Sonia Gandhi's claim to be prime minister, A.B. Bardhan of the CPI was at hand to provide it.
Even a couple of hours of an overdose of the comrades were enough to rattle investors in Mumbai. By afternoon Jairam Ramesh and Manmohan Singh were on the same channels, desperately trying to do damage control. TV does the damage, and then people try to turn it around and use the same medium to quell panic. It is the medium with immediacy. And on Monday it was apparently a CNBC interview with A.B. Bardhan which triggered fresh panic.
Why are many news channels worse than just one or two? Because the urge to score over the competition leads every channel to try and break news. How do you break news? You grab someone and try and get him to utter a headline-making statement. And ask leading questions till you can extract something provocative. The information industry is now primarily an opinion industry. Invite studio guests on the night when it has become clear that the Congress and its allies has the numbers. Then hustle them into saying something that will make the next morning's headlines: "So-and-so said today to a TV news channel." Or don't bother with the studio. Just look for the portly profile of Amar Singh or the familiar posturing of Laloo Yadav and stick a mike in front of either.
On Thursday night, Rajdeep Sardesai on NDTV 24x7 to Ambika Soni: "Do you want to invite him (Amar Singh) on this programme to join your government?" Huffed Soni, "I am not authorised to give invitations to anybody." Sardesai to Amar Singh, "Do you want to join this government or not?" And shortly after to Tariq Anwar of the Nationalist Congress Party, "Since the foreigner issue is no longer there why don't you merge with the Congress?" Snapped A.B. Bardhan, "It is not for you to say who should merge with whom." Sardesai decided after that to begin speculating on portfolio allocation in the new cabinet. Said Soni, "NDTV has taken on the role which is normally that of the prime minister." Banter apart, the nuisance value of TV news channels is growing. The mikes are everywhere, waiting in anticipation for something to happen, goading statements out of people. And they cannot hide their biases. As the results came in Prannoy Roy could barely contain his exuberance on NDTV 24x7, while Prabhu Chawla looked faintly ill on Aaj Tak. Star News took a long time to let the Congress+ overtake the BJP+ in the onscreen tally, as did Aaj Tak. As if by dragging their feet they could postpone the outcome. Surprisingly DD News, expected to be the government mouthpiece, held the BJP+ tally in the 180s range, while on other channels their seats climbed to 200 and then came down.
The news was so overwhelming that morning that Roy, Sopariwala and Co. forgot to admit even in passing that they had got their exit polls badly wrong. On Star News though, the anchor and Mahesh Rangarajan did pause to take note and attempt an analysis of why everybody has been so off the mark.
Okay, so the press didn't see the rout coming. If Sonia Gandhi logged 60,000 km and did not see it coming either (the Congress freely admitted as much) perhaps the media should not be blamed. If the BJP's in-house pollsters and the micro-management by its super smart duo of Jaitley and Mahajan did not give them an inkling of where they were headed, the media, I think, can be forgiven. It had less resources to deploy.
But can we at least have some decent post mortems? Apart from the hustling, the news channel culture is promoting oversimplification of issues. Extraordinary glibness has been on display in the instant analyses being dished out. Such pat explanations. If Chandrababu Naidu was so focussed on Hyderabad (sorry, Cyberabad, that irresistible cliché) and so neglectful of rural areas, you might at least expect him to win in the city. But the TDP got only two seats there. If the drought and farmers' suicides did him in how come the TDP got six seats in the worst hit district, Anantapur, where there were 2,000 suicides, according to news reports? If water was the issue why did it do so dismally in coastal Andhra districts which haveplenty of irrigation and where irrigation channels have been re-excavated?
Election outcomes have a variety of reasons that do not lend themselves to quickie analysis. With so much media you might expect one or two to go into the details and produce something thoughtful. If the rural voter in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere was sensitive to performance why did he or she not vote back into Parliament the one minister whose constituency was assiduously nursed, with crores being poured into it, Rural Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu? Can you tell us, just very, very quickly? Because we are completely out of time.
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