Drama in reel life

AMMA is in the saddle, and until her six months as an unelected chief minister runs out, it is bad news for journalists in her kingdom, and not just the ones who work for Sun TV. The hack pack does not like her much, but what is of greater import is that she does not like them. And as Mr. Karunanidhi is discovering, when Amma does not like you, there is no knowing what will happen to you.

We now know that Tamil Nadu is a State from which you can source skilled video editors, if you are not fussy about whom they have worked for before. What is becoming a matter of concern is, will it remain a State from which you can source independent journalists? Not only is this the only State where political parties control TV channels and make no bones about it, it is also the only state where the Chief Minister publicly gives the press short shrift and the message goes down the line to everybody, including the police. Being thwacked by a policeman is currently a more likely eventuality here for a reporter, than in other parts of the country.

The good lady has restrained her fellow ministers from talking to the press, so bureaucrats and ruling party politicians alike are going to be extremely circumspect in giving out information. Reporters will have to depend on press conferences and handouts. Jayalalitha apparently decided at the beginning of this tenure that she would have regular interactions with the press. But in the days before the Saturday arrests, journalists who turned up at a scheduled press conference got the sort of treatment that Sonia Gandhi and George Fernandes, among others, have become accustomed to. They were made to hang around for a couple of hours and then told that the press conference was cancelled.

Tamil Nadu swings every four years or so between the same two chief ministers and the same two parties. One chief minister has the press eating out of his hand because he practically woos them. Even in his time of great distress last Saturday, when a reporter pushed a notebook at him, Karunanidhi scribbled a Tamil verse on it. Jayalalitha, on the contrary, does not like journalists to become overfamiliar. She snubs them every now and then to keep them in line. So they resent her. An observer in the State says that while it was as plain as could be in the run up to the May assembly elections that Jayalalitha was coming back with a bang, it did not always show in the reports of journalists who were covering the race. If the independent media in the State has a bias, it is towards the CM who treats them better.

Last Saturday the police kept journalists at bay when the drama over the arrests was going on. They were not free to get close to the action. Just the day before a hundred or more journalists had courted arrest in an effort to get a Sun TV reporter released. He had been arrested two days earlier. Following the mass arrest the reporter was released on bail. So on one hand, being a journalist in Tamil Nadu has become an occupational hazard. You do not know whom the police are tracking.

On the other, it also means being schooled in bias. When you work for Sun TV you do so in the knowledge that your owner is partisan. Those who work here do so because of the visibility this channel gives. Last Saturday journalists on that channel were called upon to earn their spurs. So apart from the famous video footage that found its way around the world, you had anchors on the Sun News channel slipping into phraseology that completely abandoned objectivity and began hectoring viewers. They also urged people to use the telephone number Sun TV was providing to protest the arrests. It was both amazing and unprecedented.

When you work for Jaya TV you do so in the knowledge that your owner has no pretence to being anything other than partisan. Reporters for this channel are now busy doing investigative stories on the wrong doings of the earlier regime. And it was to counter one of these stories that a former Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) minister took a press party to show that the rice that had been distributed in Karunanidhi's time was not rotten as had been alleged. This was the occasion when the Sun TV reporter on this assignment was detained by the police and arrested, as mentioned earlier.

When you work for Doordarshan's Podighai channel you play safe and do not stick your neck out at all. Anyone who tuned in to this channel on the morning of Mr. Karunanidhi's arrest got studio recorded music, and then costume drama. No news flash, no running strip, nothing. It lived blissfully in cloud cuckoo land throughout that eventful weekend except for the mandatory news bulletins.

And even when you work for the section of the print media which is not allied to any party, the bias against a dictatorial Chief Minister will creep in. And grow, every time the policemen hit out and do not take care to spare reporters on the job. So as one said earlier, independent journalists will become an endangered species.

Last fortnight's Sun TV coup produced what is being hailed as a defining image of vengeful politics - an old man being hustled out of his home in the middle of the night. The lesson to be learned from it is that manipulation becomes a secondary issue when you practise it with panache and get your timing right. Like the Tehelka images, the end is seen to justify the means.

* * *

You have to hand it to Star, their ability to milk their winning programmes is unmatched by other channels. When it converged on the stars of both programmes to celebrate the dual anniversary of "Kaun Banega Crorepati" and "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi", you got Amitabh Bachchan and Mihir and Tulsi fawning over each other most of the hour, while the extended family of "Kyunki" sat on the sidelines and beamed and applauded. Furious cross-promotion of both programmes went on. In between some questions were asked and answered. Mihir was his usual bland and pretty-faced self, Tulsi felt the need to act filmi and cover her ears each time Bachchan decided whether or not the answer was correct.

One year on and the Big B is really growing into this business of playing to the gallery four times a week. He clowns on both "Crorepati Junior" and the regular one, he lays it on thick with his celebrity guests in elaborately shudh Hindi, and he actually seems to be still enjoying himself. You have to hand it to both programmes, they have made willing suckers of us all. And the producers, who get a ratings linked incentive, are laughing all the way to the bank.

SEVANTI NINAN

E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com

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