Sight & Sound
Posers for Question Time
Amita Malik

For media buffs like your columnist, who looked on him as some sort of a guru, the most touching and elevating programme of last week, and indeed decades, was the final programme by the one and only Alistair Cooke.

His Letter from America, the longest running programme on radio, was a model of its kind for us when we were starting off on our media career. Discerning, witty, never malicious, always with a wealth of detail, it was recognised in the media world as unique. And last week, the BBC was wise enough to repeat twice over the weekend, what was Alistair Cooke’s last broadcast. He was gasping, but in full control of his voice, and after his familiar "Good Night," he signed off forever, because he died within days.

The programme – I did not catch its title – was about violence in the US. He took apart with ruthless efficiency the assassinations of J.F.Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the anti-Black police officers who resisted Blacks going to White schools, the trigger-happy racist killers of innocent women and children in Vietnam and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. It was a masterly performance. Goodbye, Alistair. And thank you for reminding us what a good broadcast should have: clarity and elegance of speech, lack of bias, sympathy or at least pity for those who forget human values and no
hatred.

Question Time India (and now Pakistan) is one of the BBC’s long-running programmes intended for the subcontinent. It started off with a bang with Prannoy Roy as anchor. In recent months, with a change in production, it has lost a lot of its style as far as chairing goes and audiences also seem less carefully chosen. I watched last week’s edition of Question Time and I’m afraid I was less than happy with the chairing by Sagarika Ghose.

Ghose tried very hard, too hard in fact. And it showed up her lacunae in two vital basics: her lack of experience in television and her lack of experience in chairmanship. She was jumpy all the time, and when she was not looking at her notes, she was waving her pencil in the air, waiting to pounce on someone in mid sentence.

A chairperson can interrupt subtly, seizing a magic moment. Also Ghose spoke too much, too fast. A chairperson’s job is to keep the discussion going between panelists, backed up by questions from the audience.

In her eagerness, Ghose started mistaking herself to be a panelist and took up large chunks of time with her own detailed views and interpolations, some time introducing topics not really relevant. This cluttered up the whole approach of Question Time.

That experience of TV and chairing is essential (chairpersons are made and not born) has been proved by two women who have been highly successful in Question Time. The first is Mrinal Pande, who was outstanding. The chairperson in Question Time Pakistan is also calm, chairs with spirit as well as authority. I have gone at length into Ghose’s performance in order to be constructive and guide her in her early days. It is always a pleasure to watch an enthusiastic novice blossom with experience into a mature TV professional.

Good luck, Sagarika.