Two trucks collided and crushed a car between them — somewhere in Telangana. India Today showed “exclusive” footage of the collision with the car sandwiched between the trucks, Wednesday morning. It telecast this horrific accident repeatedly, not just at intervals but non-stop, in rapid succession. At 1.20 pm, a “cam” video recording of the incident was played over 30 times, non-stop. Five people in the car, all dead.
Did the channel really need to show the footage even once, without hiding the moment of impact when the car is trapped and crushed? It was a freak incident; perhaps, that explains why it was shown — shocking, tragic and scary. No one should have to see it, least of all, anyone close to those who died.
The parched expanses in Marathwada looked like gigantic tyre tread or the shell of a tortoise magnified manifold (ABP, Monday). Visually it was riveting, but its terrible beauty is the face of the appalling drought conditions that prevail there. No water, the reporter said, till the eye could see. This is the kind of report TV news should telecast again and again instead of the trucks’ crash.
The belly landing of an Alchemist Airways air ambulance on Tuesday afternoon saw news channels rush to the village of Kair as fast as their vehicles could take them from Delhi to Najafgarh. The channels which got there first, immediately emblazoned “Exclusive” across the TV screen —ABP, Aaj Tak — as though that was the most important aspect of the coverage.
Fortunately, since there were no major injuries or casualties, the coverage was fairly straightforward, although several reporters and anchors allowed their tongues to get the better of them: the CNN News 18 reporter, on the spot, explained that villagers got to the aircraft before the police and “behaved in a mature and intelligent manner”— as if this was unusual enough to be reported. The India Today anchor asked its correspondent if apart from pilots, all the passengers were patients. Had that been true, patients sick enough to be airlifted without an attendant accompanying them, would most certainly have been very unusual and deserving of a story itself.
The video of Bajrang Dal members in mock battles immobilising gentlemen in skull caps is alarming. However, BJP members called upon by news channels to explain the nature of these exercises were unconcerned. Shahnawaz Hussain said they were mock drills in the art of self-defence and “nothing more than that”. When the Times Now anchor asked him whether defence wasn’t better left to the security forces, he didn’t have much of an answer. He pooh-poohed her suggestion that this may be a “fringe army” at a “terror-training camp”. India TV had shown the same video on Monday. If the two leading news channels (by their own claims) in English and Hindi, respectively, thought the video important enough to telecast and even debated (Times Now), then Hussain’s defence of the Dal is rather worrying.
Sonia and Rahul Gandhi must be sick with worry. TV interviews and debates in the last week have diagnosed terminal sickness for the Congress after its losses in the state polls. Since senior Congressmen like Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath advise all manner of treatment to nurse the party back to health, they might consider checking into hospital.
Whether or not reports of the party’s early demise are exaggerated, there was much talk of a “Congress-mukt Bharat”, even a Gandhi-mukt Congress but it was never clear if the latter would or could stop the former or whether a Congress-free India meant the party would sign off or that Congressmen would flee to other parties.
Debate anyone?
