Switching on an emergency

It happened in the USSR, it’s been happening in Pakistan all year. TV news is fighting for liberty. That’s before Musharraf switched off the private news channels and switched on the emergency lights. We missed them; PTV visuals were deeply unsatisfying — police and cars crawling through the night, while the Supreme Court was in turmoil. You wouldn’t have imagined there was skullduggery behind the camera. Musharraf’s midnight appearance and an interminable speech that tied up his tongue in all sorts of knots, were no sleep-stoppers, either: he lacked everything in eloquence and his emphatic delivery suggested he was trying to convince himself, foremost, of his arguments for the imposition of emergency.

Our news channels picked up the microphone on behalf of their Pakistani counterparts. And the taaza khabar is that they got it right, (by and large). Breaking News was really news and developments, the coverage was unhurried, the tone sober, and the questions pertinent: no, how do you feel about the emergency. Plenty of voices from Pakistan (which only proves that you can stifle the media, but you cannot silence a people), the US and of course India.

If we have to sum up the performances, it would be thus: Musharraf was ruffled, Benazir shrill, Nawaz Sharif collected, Condoleezza Rice critically apologetic and the Indian anchors in command.

Having said that, there is nothing to beat BBC World on such occasions. Sunday night’s one hour with Lyse Doucet from Islamabad should have been essential viewing for everyone in the television business, for everyone aspiring to join the TV business and for viewers who wanted facts with perspectives without the hullabaloo. The special feature answers the question why so many of us so often despair of Indian news channels — this is how we want them to be.

It’s not about the voices — our channels get the same voices (at least some of them) — it’s about the presentation: Lyse Doucet just cocks her head a little to one side, and then in that gentle brogue sets the scene in Islamabad; then the anchor in London takes over and begins with a series of interviews that includes Nawaz Sharif, maybe Benazir and a snippet from Pakistan Prime Minister Aziz’s press conference. Moves smoothly into a studio discussion featuring BBC’s former Islamabad correspondent Owen Jones and Bilal Rana, the lawyer representing the interests of the sacked chief justice....

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views represented here are not neccesarily endorsed by www.expressindia.com and its allied websites. All messages will be moderated and no message that has inflammatory, abusive, derogatory language or any language deemed unfit for publication by the editor will be displayed. Though it will be endeavoured that as many messages as possible be displayed, there will be time lag between the submission and publication of the messages. The website reserves the right to publish or reject any message.

I agree to the terms of use.

Switching on an emergency

Related Stories: