breaking news like wind
Pramod Mahajan, the general secretary of the BJP, a political party in india, got shot at today by his brother over a squabble. His condition is critical and it will be known within 48 hours whether he will survive.
The above two sentences should be enough to convey the importance of the news, breaking, shmaking or such-like. But it's obviously not enough for Indian news channels, no way. They're acting like they've been awoken from some stupor and scurrying about like restless moles finding out all there is to find out about Mahajan's condition.
The tizzy the incident seems to have sent the government machinery into saving his life - flying specialists from London, conducting mass prayers, all bigwigs flocking at the hospital - is surprising considering how easily they let their loan-strapped farmers and disenfranchised weavers commit suicide. But let me not belabor a self-obvious truth - that of our callous politicians and bureaucracy - and risk digressing from the topic of "news value as defined by the indian media".
Today's news at nine on our premier news channel, NDTV, seemed to start off like an episode of ER. I haven’t seen newsreaders as concerned even when there’s a natural calamity taking countless lives. They beamed reporters grilling medical experts undertaking his case on every aspect of his anatomy and health. On finding out that he was diabetic, one of them feisty reporters continued asking questions like a medical intern should, about the impact of the bullet that had hit Mahajan's pancreas. As if I need to know about how many liters of blood his punctured liver has bled. They also dwelled for quite some time on how he was popular "across party boundaries" and eulogized the not-quite-dead-yet hero*. The whole "thing" took on the proportions of reality TV, only it wasn’t quite reality TV - which reminds of Jean Baudrillard's famous premonition that the simulacrum becomes more real than the real.
And it isn’t just the english-speaking urban middle-class who has the luxury of this fare. Elsewhere, a hindi news channel wanes eloquent to rural hindi-speaking India through an impromptu news program titled "Mahajan ghayal(injured)".
But let me not demonize Glam News for the wrong reasons - the emotion these news-deskers are exuding seems borne out of a certain bonhomie that they share with this very press-friendly politician who has graced quite a few studio shows. Reading news from the desk must really be tedious and uninspiring - 20 dead from heat wave, farmers and weavers commit suicide again, et al. It does raise eyebrows when your favorite TV politician gets a bullet or three.
Meanwhile a Malayalam channel obliviously does a keen report on how aiswarya rai fell off a bicycle while shooting on her next film and got a blood clot on her knee.
Indian news channels all seem to have lost all conviction. News might as well be classified as genre of entertainment in Journalism schools here.
*I personally consider Pramod Mahajan a fundamentalist freak who's good at realpolitik. I've seen footage of him belligerently touting the cause of "hindutva" during a BJP rally in one of Anand Patwardhan's documentaries.
p.s. the BBC seems to be the only world news organization which has a certain ethic regards qualifying news value. there was quite an interesting and candid program today on the failings of the recent EU summit.
p.p.s. which makes me wonder if a CNN or Fox News would give a minute-by-minute medical condition report if Bush were to fall off his horse at his ranch and break his nose.
Side sory: My search for Baudrillard's context led me to this interesting academic link on the hyperreality of Wikipedia.
In other news: I bought 30 DVD movies today!!
Edit: List of films bought included below on sat2's request.
Film
Director (s)
Diabolique
Henri George Clouzot
The Bride wore Black
Francois Truffaut
Hoffa
Danny DeVito
The death of a salesman
Volker Schlondorff
Southern Comfort
Kate Davis
Smalltime Crooks
Woody Allen
M
Fritz Lang
The Color of Pomegranates
Sergei Paradjanov
Tango
Carlos Saura
Monsieur Verdoux
Charlie Chaplin
Ten
Abbas Kiarostami
All About Eve
Joseph Makiewicz
Kadosh
Amos Gitai
Driving Miss Daisy
Bruce Beresford
Wings of desire
Wim Wenders
The Scar
K. Kieslowski
A Short film about Killing
K. Kieslowski
A Short film about Love
K. Kieslowski
Together
Chen Kaige
Father and Son
Alexander Sokhurov
A Woman is a Woman
Jean Luc Godard
The killing of a Chinese Bookie
John Cassavetes
The Sun
Alexander Sokhurov
Oedipus Rex
PP Pasolini
Turtles can Fly
Bahman Ghobadi
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring
Kim Di-Duk
A Year of the Quiet Sun
K. Zanussi
American Splendor
Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini
The Big Lebowski
The Coen Bros
The above two sentences should be enough to convey the importance of the news, breaking, shmaking or such-like. But it's obviously not enough for Indian news channels, no way. They're acting like they've been awoken from some stupor and scurrying about like restless moles finding out all there is to find out about Mahajan's condition.
The tizzy the incident seems to have sent the government machinery into saving his life - flying specialists from London, conducting mass prayers, all bigwigs flocking at the hospital - is surprising considering how easily they let their loan-strapped farmers and disenfranchised weavers commit suicide. But let me not belabor a self-obvious truth - that of our callous politicians and bureaucracy - and risk digressing from the topic of "news value as defined by the indian media".
Today's news at nine on our premier news channel, NDTV, seemed to start off like an episode of ER. I haven’t seen newsreaders as concerned even when there’s a natural calamity taking countless lives. They beamed reporters grilling medical experts undertaking his case on every aspect of his anatomy and health. On finding out that he was diabetic, one of them feisty reporters continued asking questions like a medical intern should, about the impact of the bullet that had hit Mahajan's pancreas. As if I need to know about how many liters of blood his punctured liver has bled. They also dwelled for quite some time on how he was popular "across party boundaries" and eulogized the not-quite-dead-yet hero*. The whole "thing" took on the proportions of reality TV, only it wasn’t quite reality TV - which reminds of Jean Baudrillard's famous premonition that the simulacrum becomes more real than the real.
And it isn’t just the english-speaking urban middle-class who has the luxury of this fare. Elsewhere, a hindi news channel wanes eloquent to rural hindi-speaking India through an impromptu news program titled "Mahajan ghayal(injured)".
But let me not demonize Glam News for the wrong reasons - the emotion these news-deskers are exuding seems borne out of a certain bonhomie that they share with this very press-friendly politician who has graced quite a few studio shows. Reading news from the desk must really be tedious and uninspiring - 20 dead from heat wave, farmers and weavers commit suicide again, et al. It does raise eyebrows when your favorite TV politician gets a bullet or three.
Meanwhile a Malayalam channel obliviously does a keen report on how aiswarya rai fell off a bicycle while shooting on her next film and got a blood clot on her knee.
Indian news channels all seem to have lost all conviction. News might as well be classified as genre of entertainment in Journalism schools here.
*I personally consider Pramod Mahajan a fundamentalist freak who's good at realpolitik. I've seen footage of him belligerently touting the cause of "hindutva" during a BJP rally in one of Anand Patwardhan's documentaries.
p.s. the BBC seems to be the only world news organization which has a certain ethic regards qualifying news value. there was quite an interesting and candid program today on the failings of the recent EU summit.
p.p.s. which makes me wonder if a CNN or Fox News would give a minute-by-minute medical condition report if Bush were to fall off his horse at his ranch and break his nose.
Side sory: My search for Baudrillard's context led me to this interesting academic link on the hyperreality of Wikipedia.
In other news: I bought 30 DVD movies today!!
Edit: List of films bought included below on sat2's request.
Film
Director (s)
Diabolique
Henri George Clouzot
The Bride wore Black
Francois Truffaut
Hoffa
Danny DeVito
The death of a salesman
Volker Schlondorff
Southern Comfort
Kate Davis
Smalltime Crooks
Woody Allen
M
Fritz Lang
The Color of Pomegranates
Sergei Paradjanov
Tango
Carlos Saura
Monsieur Verdoux
Charlie Chaplin
Ten
Abbas Kiarostami
All About Eve
Joseph Makiewicz
Kadosh
Amos Gitai
Driving Miss Daisy
Bruce Beresford
Wings of desire
Wim Wenders
The Scar
K. Kieslowski
A Short film about Killing
K. Kieslowski
A Short film about Love
K. Kieslowski
Together
Chen Kaige
Father and Son
Alexander Sokhurov
A Woman is a Woman
Jean Luc Godard
The killing of a Chinese Bookie
John Cassavetes
The Sun
Alexander Sokhurov
Oedipus Rex
PP Pasolini
Turtles can Fly
Bahman Ghobadi
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring
Kim Di-Duk
A Year of the Quiet Sun
K. Zanussi
American Splendor
Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini
The Big Lebowski
The Coen Bros