Sight & Sound
A clash of events
Amita Malik

Usually Inde-pendence Day gets such a lead over other international and national events that lead stories, if any, take the second place. But this year August 15 meant much more than the annual ritual from the Red Fort and the President's Address to the nation. Both events whittled down to whether Manmohan Singh would make a good mass orator and if his Hindi would stand up. And everyone noticed that the President began in Hindi and then switched over to English.

But these were minor points compared to the mass hysteria over Dhananjoy's hanging, the national debate by human rights activists about capital punishment, the nation's anxiety over how Indian competitors would fare at the Olympics and, in that order, how floods were affecting the country.

For media watchers, what has been most disturbing is the way the national press and media went overboard over Dhananjoy Chatterjee's hanging and the insensitive prying into events within the prison during his last hours and the reactions of his family and the general public. It is my personal view that though it was legitimate for human rights activists and those against capital punishment to use the occasion as an appropriate time to voice their views, there were no corresponding protests, except by a few public figures like Soumitra Chatterjee, to highlight the heinousness of Dhananjoy's crime.

The right perspective in coverage of news was largely missing - one saw few front-page stories or lead stories on the electronic media on the victim and what she and her family suffered. Perhaps Hetal's school did best by reminding everyone about the brutal nature of Hetal's rape and murder, the trust betrayed by Dhananjoy, who should have been protecting her, and praying for Hetal. But, they also prayed for Dhananjoy's family. In fact, the dignified and quiet manner in which Hetal's family shunned all publicity and the way they made it clear that they are entitled to their private life was perhaps the only redeeming feature of this sorry episode.

I was interviewed by TV channels and newspapers to try and explain the hype. I have my own explanation and would like to offer it at the risk of being considered un-Bengali.

I think Bengalis are highly emotional people with a strong sense of drama. And the coverage went to town on details like Dhananjoy's last supper, the weeping hangman asking for his forgiveness (only the jail and other officials present could have leaked all this to the media) and that dreadful last photo of the dead Dhananjoy's feet sticking out of the vehicle on his last journey. In contrast, the televised confession of Mohinder Singh Kohli at Chandigarh came across as a cold-blooded account of how he raped and strangled an innocent girl.

Chandigarh and the rest of India, while horrified at the whole Kohli story, took the story in their stride. And the Press gave equal coverage to the victim's parents, who thanked the Indian media for their help in tracing Kohli. That is how such events should be covered and I may be forgiven for thinking that the sort of mawkish coverage Dhananjoy's hanging got in Kolkata would not have happened in Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai, which went to the ridiculous extent of making Dhananjoy appear to be the victim. Perhaps it is time the media took a hard look at how unhealthy competition is making it sensationalist.

Doordarshan once again enjoyed its monopoly over covering the Olympics (still pronouncing it as Oh-lum-pics, although correctly written in Hindi on the screen). Its one big improvement was its commentator in English for the opening ceremony: Joslyn Martins did an intelligent commentary and got the very difficult Greek names right.

The Hindi commentators were as usual, with large doses of Sare jehan se achchha (a clich`E9 which was certainly not applicable to India's performance) and the Hindi commentator's worst moment came when he repeatedly referred to the Dutch as Germans during the Netherlands-India hockey match, and he capped that by pronouncing Netherlands (Neetherlands to him) in such a way that it mostly sounded like Switzerland.

It is time DD built up a new team of younger commentators in Hindi. And while DD takes full advantage of its membership of the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union to get exclusive coverage, it does not get priority for Indian events so that we get to watch fencing when we would rather see Leander and Bhupati.