Making a substantive point on a news TV discussion may be among the toughest jobs in modern economies and I have often wondered whether the ones who have it the toughest in this tough job are economists. Say, you are an articulate, public policy-conversant, very bright economist and you are suddenly confronted by a slightly weird question that you take 45 seconds to understand but all you have are 120 seconds in which to comprehend the question and give an intelligent reply — can you still get across your expertise and perceptivity?

This question bothers me especially during budget coverage, as some very good economists and some very capable economic journalists try to honour the rigours of economics in a scrum of anchors, CEOs and random middle class and upper middle class interviewees TV channels insist on describing as representatives of common people.

I know, because I am familiar with their work, that these economists/economic journalists I am watching on TV can always say something intelligent in an interesting fashion — but TV doesn’t have time.

News TV will argue that it is necessary, perhaps even logical that anchors not-quite-au fait with the issues at hand can pass around a complex economic policy issue between panelists, thereby effectively wasting the expert on the panel. Thus it was that NDTV’s and CNN-IBN’s budget coverage severely underemployed economists and economic journalists the channels had invited on that day.

NDTV’s decision to have a business chamber leading light as a budget coverage co-anchor didn’t work. The co-anchor took the discussion straight to a business type and therefore NDTV lost its traditional budget day edge: starting off with a relatively uninterrupted summary of the budget’s economics that comes from the channel’s economist/economic journalist panelists.

... contd.