Monday, May 29, 2006


Taking Sides

by : SEVANTI NINAN

THE current coverage of the reservation debate in television news would be a media teacher's delight: it is rich in instances of how the media shapes debate. We may have been taught that there are two sides to every story, or every issue, but when one side is overwhelmingly visible, audible, closer at hand, and easier to empathise with in terms of the class background of the reporter and anchor, the other side has no chance of an airing.

First there is the labelling of the issue on the screen. "The Rage over Quotas". "Ghost of Mandal Returns". "The Fire Spreads". "Losing Patience". "Deserve vs. Reserve". "Doctors Defiant". "Death of Merit" and "India Reacts" (For two soundbites-- from Amit Mitra of FICCI and from banker Uday Kotak). All of the above are from CNN-IBN and Times Now. When a channel has a class constitutency, the labels tell the constituency that the channel is with it on this issue.

Playing to the gallery

Then there is the queering of the pitch. If you wanted to know how much TV can fan a fire, you got enough examples of the yeoman efforts that were made last weekend. The lathi charge in Mumbai on Saturday became the equivalent of Jallianwala Bagh, in the age of public opinion via sms. Times Now actually ran two quotes to the effect from the smses it received. First it invited the smses: "Raise your voice — Should the police be held accountable?" Then it said it had received "hundreds". Within seconds this became "hundreds and hundreds". The anchor said, "What has really enraged the country is these visuals. Watch closely, they tell the story." I did, since they were endlessly recycled, right up to Monday night. The footage was interesting: lots of thwacking with sounds that made you flinch, then pushing, hauling, and chasing, but no evidence of anybody suffering any injuries at all. You were tempted to agree with Chagan Bhubbal who wondered why so much fuss was being made over so little damage. But it was manna from heaven for the TV channels, in terms of visuals.

It's not difficult to judge where a channel or its reporter's sympathies lie. Doctors are paralysing hospitals, how much time do you give to them on air, how much to the patients, or to the difficulties of those doctors who have not joined the strike? Neelu Vyas of CNN-IBN, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, often came across so angry that you thought she had successfully internalised the students' cause. She presented a voice that represented the neglected patients: someone who had brought a relative with brain haemorrhage and paralysis but thought the striking doctors were right. Vyas: "And he has planned to join the hunger strike, which is really overwhelming."

Given the mike, this person told us that if reservations were implemented, of those made doctors, 10 per cent might actually be eligible but what would the remaining 15 per cent do? They would kill patients. "Aaj ka position bahut jyada dangerous ho gaya hai." "OK," said the gratified reporter in response, and went on to present one more voice for the camera. "We also have the parent of a senior resident doctor. Let us see what she has to say." "The future of the children is in the dark," she said. "So there you see Vidhya. This entire mass movement is gaining new (word unintelligible)." Bravo, said Vidhya. "Neelu Vyas you've really done a good round up there of patients and doctors." NDTV, at least on that day, at the same hospital, gave considerably more space to the plight of patients.

Stuck in stereotypes

CNN-IBN has been promising from May 15th detailed coverage of the issue which this column will miss. But when it tried to go beyond the various sites of doctors' strikes in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, what it got was a story on the faking of caste certificates, and another from a village in Bihar on scheduled caste people who do not get the benefits of reservations. If anybody has actually benefited from higher education reservation quotas, they remain invisible.

The Hindi channels might have had a constituency that would be affected by the additional reservations being proposed, but they were on their own trip, as they often are these days, flogging the latest rape/ murder/ suicide or else cricket or a star birthday. On Sunday, May 14, at 9 p.m., Star News gave us an entire hour on Madhuri Dixit because it was her birthday the next day. Aaj Tak was busy with Mother's Day, as was Channel 7, when it was not doing "Gang Rape ka Sach". The Hindi news channels have been depoliticised to such an extent that they are completely redefining the concept of news.

So between them and the English news channels your search for facts and figures on this complex issue is not likely to get very far.