When the story is big, when it plays out for hours but real, hard information comes in dribbles, news TV can keep the story on the front-burner and keep coming back to it and get on with other news. Hoping this happens figures in the short list of things I want from life that I know are unlikely to happen.

When Pramod Mahajan was in hospital, there was at least a hospital for TV crews to stand in front of and provide updates. It didn’t, of course, make for pretty viewing. But when even the comfort of stationing news crews at what news TV so fondly calls ground zero is denied, which is what happened when the story on YSR’s missing helicopter broke, news TV poses a formidable challenge to news consumers.

How many times can you listen to anchors mentioning Nallamalla forest and Naxals? At which point do you flinch when the graphic showing green forest cover comes up on the screen again? What do you make of Jayanti Natarajan saying it would be preferable if YSR is in Naxalite custody because then we will know what has happened — I mean, you know what she’s trying to say but you wonder whether she should have said that at all. You wonder whether politicians would have said stuff like this had news TV not had the luxury of hours to fill when the story is not developing? What do you make of stories that say YSR’s helicopter was not airworthy (CNN-IBN and Times Now) — the info comes from an apparently non-updated DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) website but no one seems to have checked with DGCA before running the story? How do you respond to CNN-IBN quoting sources declaring YSR is safe? Journalists, all of us, make mistakes. But some errors are so avoidable that you wonder whether news TV reporters and editors would do themselves a favour if they take a break from a story that’s not breaking any more.

... contd.