Voyeur’s killjoy

Prasenjit Chowdhury Kolkata

When in 2005, Mahesh Bhatt was quizzed on his making of Zaher, his take on extra-marital relationships, he rubbished the critics who were praising his film: "I am looking for money, not praise." Explaining how the entire media industry has changed and why it was unfair to blame films alone, he said crime slots on national networks were exploring extra-marital affairs, incest and paedophilia under the guise of news. "The idea is as much to increase Television Rating Points (TRP) knowing that consumers get attracted to crime, violence and sexuality. Earlier, it wasn't the same."

Perhaps Bhatt did not say anything earth-shatteringly original. But what stands to scrutiny is Indian TV’s pretence in exposing crime, that too selectively, to sensationalise its audience. The social purpose gets submerged by the commercial purpose. Does the telly depict crime to raise an alarm in the civil society or does it revel in the killjoy?

CNN-IBN’s chief Rajdeep Sardesai once drew reference to Sir Robin Day, the BBC broadcaster, who said, ‘Television is a tabloid medium, at its best when there is war, violence and disaster.” He was at pains to show how the most powerful images are often those that have a touch of drama, like how a stone thrown at a bus is always more dramatic visual image than an empty street during a bandh. “The rise of crime reportage… reflects just how TRPs have come to govern editorial decisions in TV newsrooms, especially in Hindi news channels, where the competition is even more maddening, and decision-making, as a result, even more skewed,” said Sardesai.

As instance of the tadloidisation of the medium, the staple of Senecan horror — murder, rape, paedophilia, incest, serial killing, arson, and banditry et al — really scores.

Consider how poor old Bollywood villain Shakti Kapoor was in the news for all the wrong reasons after Rajat Sharma's India TV channel decided to take its TRPs ahead by planting a young female journalist as a moll in Kapoor's ‘libidinous’ existence. Instead of genuine investigative journalism in public interest, to scoop out cases of corruption at high places or in public life, clinching a defence deal for flesh or lucre, bribery, casting couch etc, sting operations — acting mostly on the human tendency to greed and thus through entrapment — become a voyeur’s delight and in turn, an easy titillation to boost viewership.

Even murderers these days are not averse to broadcast their two minutes of infamy. The alleged murderer of Meerut teacher Kavita Rani (in which powerful politicians are reported to be involved) not only decided to turn himself to the police, but oddly enough, he chose a TV studio to enact his surrender.

Think of another first for Indian TV — that has lately seen enough of slush money changing hands and hidden cameras in the bedroom — when in October, 2005, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad was attacked at Sasaram in Bihar. The attacker was nearly lynched to death by irate BJP activists. News channels blithely telecast the macabre scenes of mob fury.

Only a few years ago, the famous crime-busting show India's Most Wanted, was thought to be specially helpful to the Delhi police and said to have actually helped the public to easily recognise the criminals, when initially it was hosted by Suhaib Ilyasi. CID Special Bureau helped people shore up their confidence in the cops, taking an emotional approach to unsolved cases where the families of the victims are forced to go through the haunting agony of losing there loved ones and not getting justice. The ‘Special Bureau’ team takes on the uphill task of “digging through the layers of time and reach the core of the crimes”.

This new fad of in-your-face crime reporting does not take on the real organised crime syndicates. It is not apparently interested in stories, for instance, on how illegal coal mining in Asansol and Ranigunj in West Bengal for more than 30 years has become a virtual reason for the Delhi-Howrah Grand-Chord line almost going to bust and bringing an entire city on the brink of subsidence. Endless crimes are taking place all the time at a micro-level, gnawing at the nation. But then, ‘petty’ crimes such as adulteration of food, mid-day meal scams, deaths in hospitals or in epidemics, brazen corruption after natural disasters in government schemes for the poor, State-sponsored genocides or riots, political killings and custodial excesses do not really shoot the simulated graph of TRPs. So who cares?