I mimic, therefore I am. This seems to be the credo of TV anchors and news readers today. If some are bad at what they do, others are good at imitating their channel founders. If it’s not Prannoy Roy’s accent on NDTV, it’s Vinod Dua’s Hindi inflection on Aaj Tak. Will people ever find an identity of their own? What’s worse are slip-a-thons. Not a minute passes and there goes the slip. If it’s not the pronunciation, it’s the anchor’s persistent lack of knowledge. If that isn’t all, it’s their awkward pauses and grammatical errors galore.
The regional news isn’t any better. Tune in to any language channel, and you will find half-baked anchors trying to ‘fit in’. Some sport a frenchie, some speak with a heavy accent, and a few others belong to the staid Doordarshan variety – no spunk, no attitude, no nothing. This species is worse off because their credo seems to be: ‘We are like this only’. Which means, you can never expect them to improve and move with the times.
What bothers me even more is that all the good anchors on TV pretend to be Mr and Miss Know-it-alls. That’s fine, so long as there is no abject disregard to every celebrity being interviewed. After a point, the anchor’s superiority complex just gets to you. I know the dude sitting next to the anchor is known to be the most corrupt, but by turning an interview into a one-sided slang match doesn’t prove anything, does it? Can’t the anchor be more neutral and let the viewer decide who is the villain of the piece? Isn’t this a democracy? Can’t there be fair play? Take Karan Thapar’s famous court martial with advocate Ram Jethmalani. In taking on Manu Sharma’s case, has Ram Jethmalani betrayed his principles and scattered all morality and ethics to the winds? This was the premise of this interview that made for some spectacular viewing. However, there was this niggling doubt that the whole thing could well have been staged. How else can you explain Jethmalani threatening to storm out of the interview several times and not doing it? What about the super calm composure of Karan Thapar in the tensest moments during the interview? Does that mean even interviews and news chat shows are being staged in the race for maximum eyeballs? Is ‘shock and awe’ the only way to tell news today?
Just when I thought I had heard the last of it, Yahoo announces that it will soon launch a news service where the anchor will sing the news for you. Does that mean, if it’s to do with someone’s assassination attempt, the music will be hip hop? And hymns, if it’s an obituary?
If this isn’t a parody of news, what is?
PS: Perhaps we are also to be blamed for this trend of ‘shock and awe’. How else will you explain the survival of the seven-year-old nakednews.com that has its anchors shedding clothes while reading out the news?
