Barking idiot box

Being a print journalist, I have long avoided to comment on TV news channels. Though I stopped watching them long back, I tested if I could find some interests in them regularly, and have always turned against them more bitter.

This Friday, I reached home a bit earlier and thought of watching Zee TV for the Dance India dance Little Masters but was disappointed as the grand finale was in Saturday. I must add here that the talent of little boys and girls are just unbelievable. So, scrolled down and stayed with Times Now to see what it was saying on Commonwealth Games. What I saw left me with wonder how its anchor, Arnab Goswami, got a Journalism award from the Indian Express. I always had suspicions about such awards, and now I have more.

What did I saw was that Goswami was parroting Times Now expose for everything, that he was asking the man already in dock for a long time, the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee chairman, Suresh Kalmadi. The way he was haggled in the so called interview by this TV channel, I found myself sympathising Kalmadi. Any budding journalist shall better watch out Goswami to learn how not to conduct interviews.

Then followed a short talk show, which the anchor must be regretting, after Kirti Azad tore into him. The poor chap did not get any support from the three other panelists as well, while he kept demanding from them that Kalmadi be executed right there. Watching this great barking tamasha, I recalled how Mani Shankar Aiyer had blasted the same anchor when he matched his shrillness by telling him on his face "you are a good prosecutor, but a terrible diplomat". This comment came when this anchor wanted to pass an instant judgement within seconds of the conclusion of the Islamabad Press Conference of Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers. 

Then tired of shrillness, which could even induce blood pressure among the viewers, I scrolled down further and found Nidhi Razdan on NDTV, who was nothing but completely at a loss of ideas in the company of Manish Tiwari, Swapan Dasgupta. Though she looked quite graceful, her show appeared nothing but a filler. 

  

I did not waste any more minutes to switch off the idiot box to take up a book "The Palace of Desire"  to read before I went for sleep. However, I felt a kind of headache, which I took some time to come out of to find myself engrossed in the book. In the meantime, I recalled a comment of a retired diplomat who refused to give a sound byte to an EEnglish News Channel by stating: "I will give you byte the day your channel comes anywhere near the BBC but seeing the current state it will take more than 100 years."