By Ahamed Ansar for TwoCircles.net
It was six in the evening on Tuesday and I was watching YouTube videos of Puthiya Thalaimurai news channel, one of the leading names in Tamil media.
After going through some public video bytes on the ongoing currency demonetisation in India, I spotted a weird thumbnail link that attracted me to go and watch the news.
The headline of the video ran as ‘Four terrorists believed to be involved in the bomb attack in Malappuram arrested’ (the link had now been made as private view from public watch setting after I exposed the graphic cook up). Try to watch it here:
The headline itself was on the wrong one, for not including the endangered verb ‘suspected’ before four ‘terrorists’ in that video’s title.
Oh come on, ‘suspected or alleged’ is not the matter I was concerned about. It’s an out of fashion accusation by “Indian Mullahs” aka Muslims right? You can see many news organisations in India still make such insinuating claims without bothering about the boring boredom media ethics.
The news reader briefed about the main news content, followed by the scene of the bomb blast. I was stunned: the scene that the news channel had used in its video report actually belongs to the producer of Malayalam film Anwar (2010) starring Aiyyaa fame actor Prithviraj. See Anwar film’s scene that has been sequenced in Puthiya Thalaimurai news channel: (from 01:26 – 01:56)
I took to Twitter in a slightly harsh but abuse-free tone to oppose the apparent media trial unleashed by PT TV. If those who watched the video other than me, they would also find that it was an open hatred to heat up the news against in what Indian media famously call “certain community”.
To my surprise, the Managing Editor of PT TV, Karthigai Chelvan himself addressed my complaint on Twitter immediately. He advised his web news desk colleagues to correct the error. In less than an hour, at least the video had been made as private view if not permanently deleted from the TV’s YouTube channel, at least till the moment this article was published.
However I would still appreciate Editor Chelvan’s honest and prompt action to correct his institution’s mistake. Being an observer of Hindi television news channels, for me the fact that he admitted his mistake was unbelievable. In this jingoistic television news era in India, aam aadmi viewers became Jesus (Peace Be Upon Him) to pardon anchors who cook GPS chips in currency notes while “Mullah” Muslim television audience end up watching demonising #EcoFriendlyEid hashtag campaign.
In October, Listening Post, a weekly programme in Al Jazeera English that monitors world media did an analysis about Indian and Pakistani media’s hyper-nationalistic coverage post Uri attacks. And when Richard Gizbert, the show presenter was discussing about India’s growing war room television journalism featuring India Today TV’s superstar anchor Gaurav Sawant, I hung my head in shame.
For me, the fact that this Indian anchor was getting humiliated by foreign media was not something to be cheerful about.
But apart from facing international criticisms, I feel we have reached an alarming stage of mockery from global news audience who are keen on watching Indian news channels.
Unless and until our respected editor-in-chiefs sitting in Lutyen’s Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai etc realize this seriousness, we are heading for a big credibility disaster.
In his goodbye speech at Times Now studio in Mumbai, Arnab Goswami might have sounded like a ‘pessimist for a time being’ for predicting that the future is ‘independent journalism’. But I still have hope if media in India does a periodical self regulation exercise. If television fails, options are still in digital and mobile platforms.
TwoCircles is yet to hear from Puthiya Thalaimurai’s Editor Karthigai Chelvan on this issue. We will update the story once we get responded. Ahamed Ansar is an independent writer based in Dubai and a former Tamil television journalist