SIGHT & SOUND
When newscasters get into a flap
Amita Malik

As disaster piles on disaster, our TV channels are increasingly being put to the test. Camerapersons, producers, reporters, newscasters are being tried and, quite often, found wanting. It is mostly a case of quantity over quality, inexperience and nerves spoiling good reporting from the studio end, and a silly reckless rat race about who gets it first.

To begin with the last point. In the past week, over six mediapersons were injured while in the line of fire in Srinagar, one of them critically. Who decides how far risks should be taken? While enthusiasm is all very well, there should be a limit to the rat race. In some situation, such as in Iraq, reporters and camerapersons have been known to pool their resources and file the same report to their respective papers or channels. There is no shame in this and one feels there should be more inter-paper and inter-channel consultations on the spot between colleagues to draw the line somewhere, rather than rush in individually where angels fear to tread. TV personnel in the field also have families and as bread-winners they also owe a duty to their kith and kin.

Then there are the self-appointed studio netas. Many like Barkha Dutt, make long statements from the studio which expect all the answers from the poor reporter in the field and leave the reporter confused with long omnibus questions which require separate answers. The ludicrous bit is that the studio neta, in an effort to score points, has already answered all the queries. Then the studio newscasters ask impossible questions of those in the field, which can only be gone into by a long-term inquiry committee. They harass the reporter to harass the police, the administration and the responsible officials on the spot.

The newscasters are worse. Jyotsna Mohan of NDTV always speaks in a romantic confidential whisper as if in a saas-bahu serial, after the reporter has spoken loud and clear so that we have to push up the volume on our sets to hear what Jyotsna is saying. Then she gives a pretty smile and we are left only with what Anasuya Roy has reported. Then there are the PT Ushas of the studio. Last week, as the worst of the crisis in Mumbai was coming through, around 8 pm the newscasters on Aaj Tak, NDTV Hindi and Zee all got so excited and nervous and spoke so fast that their items made no sense. Where calm deliberate newscasting was required, they got into a flap.

The anchors who conduct panel discussions, sometimes with a studio audience, are the worst of the bunch. Under the mistaken notion that they are TV stars who must hold centrestage, they go on babbling non-stop like "Sherry" Sidhu, who has set a bad example to all, although he may perhaps be considered as some sort of a star. The worst of the bunch last week were two young women on CNBC. The one in the dark clothes out-talked everyone, interrupting real experts on Mumbai when they were giving very important opinions on the deluge. The two went on talking non-stop at record speed while reputed Mumbai residents and experts like Gerson da Cunha sat silently in the audience.

Someone should din it into the head of these non-stop babblers that their job is to encourage others to talk, steer the discussion but never, never to imagine that they are the opinion givers who have to talk the most. What seems lacking in all these instances is good production. Does not the producer notice that Jyotsna Mohan and another whisperer, Natasha Jog, are speaking so softly and Jyotsna with a monotone, which makes no difference between cricket matches and explosions at Bombay High? Possibly not.

Channels tend to interview netas — and they are the same netas on every channel — rather than garner facts from people and analyse them with the help of genuine experts. Good disaster reporting is not about loud talking and publicity-seeking netas. The camerapersons do their best and the studio end does its best to ruin everything by wrong perspectives and a race to get their first with "exclusives" which impress no one.

The London disaster was covered at fixed intervals by the police and others at press conferences, the responsible way in which correspondents fell in line and reported with discretion and in calm, objective tones should be an example to "get there first and claim an exclusive" guys. That is what good disaster coverage is about.