SIGHT & SOUND
Crime sells, on TV
Amita Malik

The media, and sometimes people, seem to forget that all media, particularly the electronic, are there for community service and not just to entertain and titillate, like a little cinema at home. The media have a public responsibility to make life more safe, meaningful and comfortable for citizens.

Taking one instance, I am sure the polio campaign would not have been a success without TV and without Amitabh Bachchan. It was a powerful form of advertising a highly important cause. Similarly, rape cases, the terrible case of an activist having her hand chopped off for trying to stop child marriages and the truly horrible cases of people being run over by errant bus drivers or drunken stars have a powerful impact on the public.

The way criminals cover their faces on TV shows the effect public exposure has on them. They are made to feel their shame. Very few criminals like to be seen and only a few brazen it out with false bravado. Of course the media can also go too far. The case of a Bengali sentenced to death for raping and killing an innocent girl in Kolkata was covered in such a way that they made a hero out of a brutal criminal. He was interviewed about what he was eating, how he felt, his last walk to the gallows was almost seen to the last stop and ultimately his feet were shown peeping out of the vehicle in which his body was being taken for cremation after hanging.

His relatives were interviewed, so were his jailors and the whole thing became such a melodrama that the media hype almost obliterated the fact that a brutal rapist and killer was getting just punishment after his plea for mercy had been rejected even by the president. Strangely, his hangman was interviewed and made to feel so guilty that he swore he would retire after this last hanging.

The point I am trying to make is that if the media have a responsibility to expose wrongdoing and social injustice, it is equally obligatory on them to keep things in perspective, to get their social values right and to protect the rights of the citizen. Glamorising crime and outdoing other channels by sensationalising evil acts is not in the public interest and does little credit to the media. Which is why it is dismaying that every channel now has a crime slot at night, with very high ratings. And so carried away are some presenters, that they start glam-acting, rolling their eyes and raising their voices and acting more like filmi villains than sober reporters. As channels multiply and competition increases, we should throw the rats out from the rat race, surely.

I have no idea of the professional antecedents and credentials of Nupur Tiwari, who is covering the Cannes Film Festival for NDTV, except that she evidently had gone from Paris to do so. In which case, her effort to pronounce well-known French names should have been better. It would have been far better for her to be modest and describe the top award as The Golden Palm than to mis-pronounce it as Paal-may, for it is pronounced as palm also in French. Her interviewing was nothing short of dismal. Some sample questions to juror Nandita Das: "Why did they choose you for the jury" and "How do you judge films". Silly questions which Nandita tackled with humour and dignity. There was little of professional comment on the films in competition and the many other sections. Perhaps it was beyond Tiwari’s capabilities. But to devote a whole five-minute interview with Nandita to ask her what clothes she was wearing, and why, was the height of trivial reporting. I am surprised that both in its news bulletins at home and in its coverage of prestigious film events at home and abroad, a channel like NDTV gets out-of-depth staff reporters or people at large to do substandard coverage when even at Cannes, some of India’s best cinema critics, such as Saibal Chatterjee and Gautam Bhaskaran are around, hopefully for the asking.