Column

As the name suggests, Braking News is something that stops you dead in your tracks. You may jump off your toilet seat hearing a screaming anchor or you may decide to cancel your date. You just can’t miss the moment.

For all its mindless serialising, Braking News is actually well planned. Alpha females shout out the news; plots have multiple climaxes to freeze eyeballs; and the formula is simple — drum up and dumb down.

Of course, there’s the conspicuous K-factor: karpet-bombing. Even if the news dies down, the bombing
continues relentlessly.

Awe and shucks! If somebody asks you what India’s greatest achievement is — television channels certainly will on August 15 — I am sure you’ll say: Sensex, 123, Saral, or EMI.

But think again; you’ll realise your life revolves around Braking News. If anything, Braking News, like an Aesop’s fable, has a moral: “If words suffice not, blows must follow.” So, every channel seeks to excel in blow-by-blow non-stop coverage.

Just surf back to the past. Whenever your granddad switched to All India Radio, a general curfew was declared at home for 10 minutes.

Nobody played, nobody smiled, nobody gestured. Many years later, when your dad switched to DD, the zero-tolerance environment continued.

News was a ritual, and the Information Age had just dawned. Every bit of news, whether it arrived from Chikamagalur or Camp David, was treated with solemnity.

Now, Braking News has turned solemnity into interactivity. Not only do your folks interact with one another, they have an opinion on every news development that is serialised.

Your wife may say: “I think Manyaata is prettier than the anchor covering Sanjay’s trial.” Your nine-year-old son may add: “Hey Dad, she’s cute.”

Your 14-year-old daughter may just about stump you: “Dad, my friends and I are planning to visit Yerawada to see our hero.”

Surprised? Remember, Braking News has demystified news. News is a happening, or an event, that is reported by a pretty face, interviewed by a pretty face, anchored by a pretty face.

Everything else can be spiked. Also, news is not what happens in faraway Vidarbha; news is what happens in a studio. Add noodles, pizzazz, oomph, zing, bling to ordinary events, and you have news leaping at you from the plasma like an HDTV commercial.

Before you try to understand what’s happening, and why you have suddenly started increasing TRPs, watch Sidney Lumet’s 1976 movie Network.

Thirty-one years later, we are seeing the impact in our living rooms. Here’s what anchor Howard Beale tells his audience: “You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here, you’re beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal.

You do. Why, whatever the tube tells you, you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube…. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation.”

Well, Braking News still needs to take the final step to become the ultimate revelation. It needs to embed iJournalists or citizen reporters in its karpet-bombing. The infrastructure for all that is already available: there are millions of photophones in India, all ready to shoot and SMS.

Suppose 10 per cent of these millions of unutilised handhelds had the incentive to report. You would have neighbours covering the Dutt trial, housewives covering polls, girlfriends reporting on climate change, students investigating universities, and employees stalking bosses.

Welcome to the new world of handheld journalism. Next time you hear your wife, son, daughter, son’s boyfriend, daughter’s boyfriend saying the Prime Minister should never have signed the 123 deal, congratulate your nuclear family. They may just be ready to become reporters, anchors, or producers.

So, in her 61st year, India should be ready to salute Braking News + Citizen Journalism. It’s a news show without rituals and anchors, full of personal experiences and direct communication, liberated by screams.

You could call it Zen Journalism. In a world bombarded by fiction, it’s heartening to know that truth, or a part of it, is out there — in the news studio. If that’s not enlightening, what is?

Email: vinaykamat@dnaindia.net