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Magazine
Cute newscasting
SEVANTI NINAN
AFP
The future? ... leaving Basra under a watchful eye.
IF the news these days is about perspective, you wonder who is going to provide it in the Indian TV news business. The anchor, the reporter, or studio guests? Most likely the latter, because with each new channel that pops up, a peculiarly Indian trend is gaining acceptance: smart looking young things as anchors rather than seasoned news hands. You don't find cute young anchors on BBC or CNN, the assumption is that a degree of credibility comes with experience, and the news anchors must be old enough to have had some. But here, and to some extent now even there (CNN has experimented with an actress from the series "NYPD Blue" to read the news), the idea of teeny bopper newscasters is gaining ground.
Given that the express objective of a satellite news channel is to garner advertising (statistics show that the percentage of advertising pulled in by news channels as a percentage of total TV advertising last year was several times the percentage of audience ratings achieved by these channels) a channel's look is dictated by media buyers. If the audiences for advertisements are between the ages of 18 and 35, they will relate more to a smartly dressed young thing presenting the news. And the news itself should be lighter and more digestible: short cycles, interspersed with a lot of soft news.
You recognise the prescription when you watch "Headlines Today", Aaj Tak's new English twin, with its spiffy look, bright colours, and chirpy anchors in designer jackets, hair glistening with gel. (Delhi stylist Ambika Pillai who does The Look for this bunch is actually opening a salon in the building which houses Aaj Tak and Headlines Today, presumably so that they never run out of gel). We live in newsy times, but it seems that is not enough to draw Indian audiences to a news channel.
Aaj Tak is also reinventing itself with a breakfast show type chit chat format, twice a day. So Sanjeev and Monica, or Anju and Namita, will tell each other rather than us, what is happening in Iraq. Anju to Namita: "How many innocents are dying in this war, Namitaji. War is the kind of thing where innocents suffer!" If that is corny, the labelling of Aaj Tak's unfolding news is often jarring. "Adiyal Saddam aur Bush belagaam," or, "Bush pareshan, jung nahin asaan," or "Basra par shikanja," or "Ab hoga do do haath." War presented as a spectator sport. Go get your chips and coke.
You have to hand it to Aroon Purie. His TV news operation has synthesised market friendly interactivity (SMS us on "Headlines Today's" birthday and you could win an Opel Astra) with zingy language and the younger generation's fleeting need-to-know, to create a news product that is internationally unique and evidently very saleable.
The contrast in terms of what is possible is demonstrated by Doordarshan in its late night Iraq war wrap up, when Farah Deba presents "Worldview India". She is both personable and seasoned, and though the programme has its overextended moments, it's been a small triumph for DD, and a relief for serious viewers.
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A single news photograph, usually of a child, can become the image to remember catastrophes by. Thus the horror of Vietnam for those of us old enough to recall its coverage, was symbolised by the picture of the naked little girl running, her body in flames — Kim, the victim of Napalm. The Bhopal gas tragedy was immortalised by the still of a sightless baby in a shallow grave, only the face unburied. This time in Iraq there have been many horrific pictures of children, faces burned, arms amputated, imprisoned in plastic tubes of drip. The most eloquent however is the photograph Outlook magazine used on its cover: a little girl in a fluffy white and blue frock, hair flying, fleeing aboard a vehicle, as black smoke from an oil well curls in the background. Her face is crumpled in bewilderment and misery, and the picture speaks volumes about the displacement of civilians.
By the time this column went to press, the sanitisation of the impact of war had ended somewhat on channels like BBC and CNN, and Iraq has ceased to be a faceless target. Their cameras were beginning to dwell on people in hospitals, many of them children. They were beginning to show homes that were now rubble. On the flip side there was a United States Defence department video showing a Marine sharing bread and a meat patty with a little boy. Other pictures from embeds showed children asking for bottles of water, and grinning their thanks when they got it. Mothers with children trudged to safety in temperatures of a 100 degrees F. Wars may be about oil or dominance, but they impact people.
Finally, a country is about so much more than its current international stereotype. I wonder how many Americans are being told by their media that Iraq is Old Testament land. The Biblical Garden of Eden is believed to be here, in a triangle between the Tigris and Euphrates. The kingdom of Babylon, described in the Old Testament, is also here. Twenty-six years ago, travelling by bus and taxi from Basra to Baghdad to Babylon, one had many little encounters with a warm, modestly-off, local population. A little old woman outside a bank offered me a kulcha-like bread in Basra, because she thought I looked hungry. People would chat out of curiosity as we bought black olives to snack on from open carts in Baghdad. Even then Saddam was Vice-President, and a watching Big Brother for ordinary Iraqis, his pictures and those of the President, all over the place.
Walking along the bank of the Euphrates, just past the city of Ur in Babylon, picking up dates from the ground, we were startled to hear some one calling, "idhar aao. (Come here.") Hindi in Babylon? There was a large group seated in a date grove, eating a repast. It turned out that the head of the family had served as a cook with an Indian army unit when it was stationed in Iraq during World War II. And he could recognise an Indian when he saw one. Later, in a bus racing across the desert towards Amman, we rode with a Palestinian driver who sang Raj Kapoor songs to make us feel at home.
It's much easier to bomb a country when you haven't been in it.
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