Whatever happened to primetime news?

I am a happy man these days, or at least as happy as anyone can be in this Ram Rajya, where even 1,600 CCTVs and 400 security guards could not prevent His abode from being looted by His own bhakts.

To be clear, however, I am not happy because Mr Pradhan has resigned as education minister (he has not), or because Mr Modi has returned his AI-generated award from Seychelles (he will not), or because Kangana Ranaut has taken a vow of silence for one year (she cannot). All these are worthy objectives, but the personae involved are genetically incapable of attaining them.

So why am I in this happy frame of mind?

I am happy, dear reader, because I can once again watch television at prime time, something I had given up doing because news is no longer worth a straw (more on that later). But now that we have a veritable banquet of sport laid out before us — the Women's T20 World Cup, India's T20 tour of England, the FIFA World Cup and Wimbledon — my prime time is fully catered for, God's in his heaven, and Arnab Goswami, Navika Kumar, Padmaja Joshi et al. can go take a dump in the Ghazipur landfill or the Mithi river, for all I care.

There was a time, about a decade ago, when news channels like NDTV, Times Now and India Today did a fairly good job of covering domestic news, and one looked forward to the nightly primetime bulletin.

Now, however, these channels have become pathetic caricatures of journalism. What they share with us are paid views, not news. Their views are dictated by their corporate owners and the PMO, not by public interest. Their undisguised agenda is to praise the government and the ruling party while running down the Opposition in general, and Rahul Gandhi in particular.

The fawning and sycophancy on display every evening would, in fact, be merely sickening if they were not also so toxic and divisive, inciting bigotry and hatred in equal measure.

If one wishes to master the art of lazy journalism, one should study the methods of our English news channels. They make no attempt to deploy reporters across the states to gather news first-hand — that costs money. It is cheaper to subscribe to feeder news agencies, most of which are themselves handmaidens of the ruling dispensation.

But even those agency reports are rarely followed up or reported in depth. That would require editorial effort and journalistic ability, qualities our star anchors and news editors appear to lack. The easiest and least expensive option, therefore, is to dump the news and jump straight into a 'debate' or 'panel discussion' from the comfort of an air-conditioned studio in Noida.

The subjects for these discussions are carefully curated to ensure that no embarrassment is caused to the powers that be (which are also the powers that see, you see).

So the Cockroach Janta Party is ignored, as are Rahul Gandhi's visit to, and warnings about, the Great Nicobar project. So too are events organised by prominent civil society groups to protest government policies or practices, or indeed anything that does not show the government or its supporting entities in a favourable light.

Equally abominable is the fact that, once these overpaid anchors get their fangs into a subject, they cling to it like leeches, refusing to let go until the last morsel of propaganda has been extracted.

The whole of April went into rubbing the TMC's loss in Bengal into Mamata Banerjee's face and gloating over defections from the TMC to the BJP. May was devoted to Hormuz and refighting Operation Sindoor. June was consumed by building a narrative around the Opposition's supposed hypocrisy in condemning the Ram Mandir loot despite never having supported the construction of the temple. July, it appears, is dedicated to Mr Modi receiving yet more meaningless awards in Indonesia.

It is as though no other newsworthy event occurred during this period.

There has hardly been a mention of the three most consequential judgments delivered over the last fortnight: by the Supreme Court, a high court and a district court. These affirmed the right to walk and access footpaths as a fundamental right, held that criticism of the government is not a crime, and handed down a rare conviction of 14 gau rakshaks for the 2022 lynching of a truck driver.

Each of these judgments has the potential to empower ordinary citizens and reverse some of the rot in the system. But, for our 'news' channels, they do not merit even a mention, let alone an informed discussion.

The 'debates' themselves are modelled on the pattern of a jury trial in Russia. The topic is carefully selected to suit the propaganda narrative of the day; the verdict has already been decided and conveyed over a secure phone line to these studio mannequins.

The panellists consist of assorted political party spokespersons, BJP supporters masquerading as 'political analysts', a few journalists to impart a façade of neutrality and, in the case of Republic TV, a handful of sacrificial goats from Pakistan who can be impaled on Arnab Goswami's lance, perhaps for a few shekels.

But the clincher is the star anchor: the referee who is firmly in the saffron corner, wearing a khaki kaccha beneath that corporate outfit.

In fact, the BJP spokesperson is scarcely needed, because all the heavy lifting for the ruling party and the government is done by these anchors. They decide which questions to ask, who is allowed to speak and for how long, and whose microphone to cut off (on the Parliament model).

Instead of acting as moderators and allowing an exchange of views, these opinionated anchors monopolise most of the available airtime, assuming the role of BJP spokesperson and doing all the rebutting, answering, scolding and heckling themselves. The others do not stand a chance.

Indeed, given that these debates resemble half-encounters on the Uttar Pradesh Police model, I am left wondering why any sensible person agrees to appear on these grotesque acts of journalistic homicide.

This, in a nutshell, is the state of prime-time news in naya Bharat.

Ponder that while I return to Wimbledon to watch the indefatigable Djokovic take on the inscrutable Sinner, secure in the knowledge that the match is not rigged and the referee has not been bought.

Views are personal. More of the writer's works here

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of Holy Cows and Loose Cannons — the Duffer Zone Chronicles and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com