SIGHT & SOUND
In times of crises
Amita Malik

Perhaps the biggest international news in recent weeks is the sentence of death on President Saddam Hussein. There have been very mixed feelings around the world, well reflected in the electronic media, with the only smug reaction being that of President George Bush and his cronies in the White House and in Iraq. Like all conquerors and invaders, the Americans have split Iraq into two antagonistic communities.

While political parties everywhere are making diplomatic statements on TV, common people everywhere, speaking from common sense, are asking what business Bush had to invade a sovereign country based on false statements on weapons of mass destruction. I think the latest figures of American soldiers killed are still in low three figures, while the number of Iraqis runs into lakhs, mostly innocent civilians. Here the media has done a splendid job, not least of all the American media. And the advent of al-Jazeera, an independent Arabic channel, which Rajat Sharma’s India channel carries in our country, has been one of the big media pluses of the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, nearer home, shopkeepers have been protesting against the sealing of their premises with the two rival political parties, the Congress and the BJP, big rivals in Delhi politics, equally involved in an embarrassing situation. Kudos to our reporters on reporting with neutrality.

But the big debate on the media last week has been on whether the media is interfering too much in the judicial process as stated by the Chief Justice. And, indeed, the question raised was whether trial by media should not soon become contempt of court. It was interesting to hear some older editors, notably Vinod Mehta of Outlook, saying frankly that these court cases have been mostly covered by young reporters in their twenties, who are inexperienced and eager to win the rat race with the aid of irresponsibility. The older generation of journalists said firmly that only experienced older reporters should do such investigations so that the whole coverage of important cases does not become frivolous. A point worth considering.

Meanwhile, the talk shows with studio audiences have brought forth some surprises and not ended in the usual suspects voicing the usual opinions. Of particular interest was We The People (of which I was getting a bit tired) in which Barkha Dutt initiated a debate on whether the burqa was justified. It was amazing to see the number of women participants who actually turned up in burqas, including a fierce supporter of the burqa from Srinagar whose eyes were barely visible through layers of black veil. There were women with less thick veils, and some very modern, who exercised their right to dress as they liked. There were men politicians, religious leaders from Islam who spoke both for and against. And even if the debate ended in a draw, as such debates always do, at least we heard several different points of view from unexpected quarters.

I think all of us felt sorry that the West Indies/Australia final did not turn out to be as competitive as we had hoped and it was interesting to see how Indian spectators were solidly cheering for Lara and his boys.

Here’s a finale to my comments on how Extraaa Innings has made cricket into a filmi-cum-fashion show, with the cricket experts being given less time than Mandira, Charu and Rohit, who are only too eager to talk cricket for some reason. What appalled me was when a giggling Aishwarya Rai and a super-confident "Krrish" came into the studios. Cricket experts, notably the foreign ones, asked polite questions of the stars, but the stars did not find the humility or the curiosity to ask the cricket stars, some famous players, any questions on cricket. The fault lies clearly at the door of Mandira Bedi, whose knowledge of stars is rather more than that of cricket.

She was so anxious to show off her yaar-dosts from the cinema that she forgot the stars from cricket in the studio. This shows how superficial is her new-found tendency to take the floor first when a match is over, and give her own analyses before the cricket experts get a chance.