NDTV Media Portrayal Indian Citizens

Diesel prices had gone up, and the input desk at NDTV in New Delhi had dispatched me to get reactions from customers at a gas station. Vox pop, they call it in the business, the voice of the people. I was interning in reporting that very hot month of June, so off I went. I picked up a memory chip for the camera from the video tape library, I arranged for a cameraperson, and I arranged for a car. We stopped outside a gas station at Nehru Place, and we decided to get reactions from the folks that would drive up to the diesel pump there. The red-and-gold OB van with NDTV written in huge letters on its sides that had accompanied us was parked right outside the gas station, and we’d uplink the footage back to the newsroom from there. Sounded simple enough.

Except that it was Saturday morning. Except this was diesel. Only a handful of people passed through the gas station for diesel that whole couple of hours, but I did speak to them and uplink their reactions back to the newsroom. The quiet cameraperson – a dark-skinned man with weather-beaten skin – and I had thought that we were done, but I received a call from the edit bay telling me that the reactions I had got were not good enough and that I’d have to get more. I can’t remember exactly what I was told was lacking in the footage, but I remember the gist of it: the people didn’t look good/educated enough for TV. They spoke Hindi too. There’s a word for that in India: ghhaati. Low class.

But it was a story about diesel. The only people who bought diesel at gas stations were truck drivers, autorickshaw drivers…and other people’s drivers in general. Weren’t these the people whose reactions you’d want in a story about diesel? They were the ones who’d be affected by the price rise, right? I didn’t understand the issue with the Hindi either. Sure, we were an English channel, but we subtitled non-English footage all the time. It was not a big deal, so what was so different this time? I’d tried explaining that to the person who’d called me from the newsroom, but I was very silkily asked to just get some English bites from better-looking people who weren’t uneducated drivers.

I got it. They wanted freshly-scrubbed white-collar reactions for the white-collar-catering Inglis channel. Didn’t matter if white-collar India didn’t care about diesel prices.

I hung up and looked at the quiet cameraman. Camerapeople remind me of Rambo sometimes with those huge machine-gun-like cameras resting on their shoulders. They also remind me of the boombox-carrying kids from the ghettoes of America. My cameraman looked bored, emotionally disconnected. Cynical even. He wore what camerapeople, who are mostly men, wear around India – loose trousers, a loose button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled-up, and heavy shoes. All of it eventually a strange shade of don’t-care. The colour of Delhi. “Kya karein (what do we do)?” I asked him. The newsroom wanted reactions from mall-going Indians. But that still didn’t change things on the ground. It was still Saturday morning, hardly anyone was coming through the gas station, and almost nobody was passing through for diesel. Nobody that was English-TV-worthy, that is.

The cameraman shrugged as much as he could shrug with Rambo’s machine gun on his shoulder, not completely unlike Jesus wincing under the weight of the crucifix on his back. He looked a bit cross. He suggested I go pull a customer from the petrol pump where all the nice sedans were rolling in with their upper-middle-class-and-higher clientele. The English-speakers of India. I felt a little ridiculous. My intelligence and integrity felt vaguely insulted, but I still went. I put my Hindi aside and put on my best American accent because I was representing an English news channel to the English-speaking persons of India. “Oh, NDTV!” they’d say with an appreciative smile, “of course, what do you need to know?” I got reactions in English from an elderly ex-army Sardar gentleman, a bearded intellectual type, and an outspoken clean-shaven polo-shirt-wearing man with a sharp haircut. I felt a bit empty standing there with my mic with the red NDTV muff on it, smiling and encouraging the people along on their performance. “Thankyousomuch,” I’d say before trotting off. I’m sure they were nice people, but that wasn’t what was bothering me. Only the previous month, when I was interning in the edit bay, had I been asked to edit vox pop footage that had come in from Kashmir about another price rise. I’d put the bites together, all of them in Hindi, and was then told by a young employee that they couldn’t put that footage on air. But why, I had asked, the bites had good content. The girl had laughed. “Have you seen their faces?” she had said, screwing up her pretty light-skinned nose at me, the poor newbie. “We can’t put such visuals on air.”

Such people? Dark-skinned people from lower-income families? But what about the content? That footage never made it on the air on our English channel, but our Hindi channel ran it all day long. So the English channel only showed the good-looking people of India? But what about content? What about what we had initially been told at NDTV about journalistic ethics and the real issues and how journalism was supposed to be a pillar of democracy, the voice of the people? Or was it the voice of certain sections of the people depending on the segment of India you were catering to? The unattractive sweaty Indian is also a part of India. In fact, he is about 90% of India. Doesn’t what he say also matter, even if he is not soothing enough to the eye of the English channel’s global audience? NDTV’s English channel is watched all over the world. At various points in my life, I have watched it in America, Canada, and Oman. The Indian diaspora feels proud to see India looking so dynamic and good on NDTV. “India is developing so fast,” they always say so proudly, “everyone speaks English so well now. It is not the India we left.” And then they proceed to daydream about a return to the homeland that never happens.

So what was this happening here??

That’s what was running through my mind at the gas station at Nehru Place that Saturday morning. Much later, after the footage had been uplinked to the newsroom (and happily approved), after we’d all returned, I was asked to isolate a short 10-second clip from the English reactions they’d decided to use. I’d been transcribing the footage, and the news editor asked me if there was anything with ‘punch’ that was said that could be used when the headlines rolled for the news bulletin. Something expressive, something emotionally-charged.

I did have something. “But does the guy look clean-cut and suave?” I was asked. I said yes. The bite was from the agitated man in the polo shirt and the short grey hair. An Indian Anderson Cooper. That’s suave, I guess. It was perfect, and his angry 10-second rant ran with the headlines all day.

Photo credit: Nishanth Anil

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Comments

← Previous Comments

By: The NRI on May 15, 2012 at 7:46 pm @Sameer – I have no idea how to post the correct link. Feel free to add it again
By: sameer on May 15, 2012 at 8:41 pm @Khadija you should see the entire video. See the complete video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwV7wbMqYWY *Thanks for the reply Mod / Peta. (There is an option in Gravatar to enable posted links, Check on that. That’s why I say enable a decent comment system in place)
By: MMdra on May 15, 2012 at 8:53 pm Great write up exposing the crooks who run NDTV. Although most self respecting Indians already know about how NDTV functions it was nice to read about it from someone who has worked with them.
By: M. Montaigne on May 16, 2012 at 12:10 am This article would be less silly if the author (who supposedly studied journalism) had proofread what she’s written. Case in point: “Doesn’t what he say also matter, even if he is not soothing enough to the eye of the English channel’s global audience?”
By: Raj on May 16, 2012 at 4:33 am Reality check on your statement “There’s a word for that in India: ghhaati”: I’m from Tanjore and have never heard of the word in my 30 years of existence. Please don’t assume that everyone in India knows Hindi. It makes you sound stupid. Otherwise I agree with your comments on NDTV. Mainstream media is too urban-centric and colour-conscious.
By: bala manian on May 16, 2012 at 6:50 am Dear Khadija Ejas, Ethics and journalism are mutual nemesis now. Preaching of ethics is done so that you are made aware not to practice it. That is the present day journalism all about. Thanks for your write up.BALA.
By: Arnab on May 16, 2012 at 7:17 am @Montaigne- …”had proofread what she’s written” qualifies for substandard and down market English too! Should have said “what she has written”. The fact is not “how” but “what” is being said. If you are too dumb to understand that, then..well, too bad!
By: NRI on May 16, 2012 at 8:35 am This is attitude across whole of the India. You go to any government office, bank, local council office and speak in local language. See poor response you get. Now ask for the same thing in English and now compare the response. Indians are the only race(rather breed) which hates its own type, hates its own mother tongue and hates its own country!
By: sameer on May 16, 2012 at 9:24 am @Raj I’ve traveled and lived most part of india,Though I agree that some part of india people are not familiar with typical local lingo or words originated because of phraseology. But trust me most of the part in india people may not be able to speak Hindi. But they DO UNDERSTAND it. People who are picking on authors English skills are proof that such cunning folks exists.
By: sameer on May 16, 2012 at 9:43 am @NRI “This is attitude across whole of the India. You go to any government office, bank, local council office and speak in local language. See poor response you get. Now ask for the same thing in English and now compare the response.” Agree “Indians are the only race(rather breed) which hates its own type, hates its own mother tongue and hates its own country!” True. But.. Applied to only 2-5% population of elite class. The thing here one need to understand that when you say 5% population that means over 5 Crore People or in American English 50 Million! that’s more then the population of some countries. And unfortunately these are the people who influence online sentiments / poll / trends which actually is generic viewpoint of only selected 2-5% of elite Indian community and in noways represents the fact or viewpoint of entire India. But newsmedia who mostly come from these elite background doesn’t understand this or simply do not care. There are few who care and in this digital age where cost of procuring communication device is getting cheaper. These few will grow in folds and possibly surpass these elites in few years. Good Luck to all of us
By: VPS on May 17, 2012 at 1:01 pm Very interesting post. I’ve been in this up-market elitist media for the last 8 years in India and have now moved to a regional channel. Your post is a perspective of someone who is seeing the English media after what it has become today. And in day-to-day `English’ TV it is almost an accepted fact. I personally think it is a reflection of not just the thinking of people who are running these channels but of those who are watching these too – Our society i mean. You put a `dirty face’ on air and do a case study and the TRP falls – that is the perception. You put an `ugly old man’ and tell his story, you lose the stickiness to your channel. Think about it, A pretty looking teenage girl’s murder alledly by her dentist dad in upmarket Noida is national news. There are a hundred Aarushi’s in our sub-urban towns and villages. “But look, that’s not our audience and therefore, not a story”! how many times as journalists have young indian reporters heard this? Countless. So, like it or not, until the next aarushi dies in an upmarket indian town, a thousand aarushi’s can die in our villages, none of which will make it to any of our `English’ Channels. Anyways, it is refreshing indeed to read this post as it suddenly makes you stop and look back over your shoulders at the mess some of us as journalists have left behind. eom/
By: Khadija on May 17, 2012 at 1:23 pm I really want to thank everyone for their comments and feedback. I thought nobody cared about these things and that I was nuts or something. Obviously not.
By: sameer on May 17, 2012 at 1:39 pm @Khadija We are thankful to you, Who has shown courage and ethics to call spade a spade and shown mirror to your own community (i.e- Journalists) We hope you’ll continue to critically evaluate the the journalists and journalism, Which will also make you a rare niche writer. You already have some fans and followers, They want to grow big and are looking at you. Good Luck
By: shiv on May 18, 2012 at 9:06 am Most discernible viewers in India know that NDTV is a Tv station run to take care of the interests of Congis.It is run by convent / christian church run educated Doon school goons gang as a propaganda machine for the ruling class especially to deride Hindu values.I am not surprised that they turn the noses on people who are from a different background from these “English” babus.All these congis funded TV stations will bite the dust when real India takes power.One correction “Ghaati” is a term used in Maharastra for people coming from western ghats.It is a demeaning term “Ghaatiwadi”. Rest of India may not understand this term.
By: AussieDesi on May 21, 2012 at 4:00 pm Khadija I’m adding this to the list of things I find distasteful about the “new media” in India. Having said that…I don’t hanker for DD either! Thanks for your concrete example.
By: Rajee Rajan on May 26, 2012 at 6:54 am Good Work Kathija. I am proud of the fact that you are perhaps the new face of young India, one, who does not shy away, from calling a spade a spade. Let these SUPERIOR BEINGS from the English Channels not forget, that, ‘but for the grace of God,’ they might well have been in the those very ‘torn shoes’.
By: Nabanita Singha Roy on May 28, 2012 at 11:30 am This is a wonderful read. I’m not one for news channels, and don’t really watch what’s happening in the world, but yes the English Indian channels do look glossy. was almost certain there’s big time manipulation, and you’ve now written it out so well.