Idiot Box

The Power of Print
There were two high-profile cases this week. What Justice Thipsay has donefor Zaheera Sheikh in the Best Bakery case may have well shown the way for theother judges, and acted as a warning to all the turncoats in the Jessica Lalcase. While all the TV channels had programmes titled ‘Jessica kand’ and ‘manuki maya’ ‘Pulees, Insaaf aur Jessica’, ‘Fight For Jessica’, I thinkthe one headline that made you sit up and act was in one of the dailies whichsimply read: 'No One Killed Jessica'.

A Sorry Picture
From a headline to the power of pictures. Think of 'Gujaratriots', the image that comes to haunt your mind is the still-shot of a man withfolded hands pleading to be saved from the rampaging mobs. So if a picture tells a thousandwords, the moving pictures should perhaps tell far more? Now compare theresponse to two different polls conducted by ZEE TV and NDTV, which paints avery sorry picture indeed:

 Yes, I did send an SMS for Jessica.

Caught And Bowled
I always wonder how people get away with all the stupid things they say on TV. Iwould love to read and compare the transcripts of various comments on TVChannels when India wins or loses a cricket match. But thankfully, when it comesto investment advice, there is some regulation.  Take, for example, how a'securities research expert' regularly seen till recently on various TVchannels, with advice on which stocks to buy or sell, got into trouble, thanksto the transcripts posted on the channel's own website. The advice, given onCNBC, was  posted on its website, moneycontrol.com, based on which, SEBIinvestigated and this is what it had to say:

‘As a part of ongoing analysis, the recommendations given by Mathew Easow, who is the Chairman of Mathew Easow Research Securities Limited, was examined by SEBI. The recommendations given by Mr. Mathew Easow, when compared with the trading pattern of his associate companies i.e. Mathew Easow Research Securities Limited and Mathew Easow Fiscal Services Limited clearly indicate that Mathew Easow took an opposite trading position in the scrips of Kalpana Industries Ltd, CESC Ltd, Ahlcon Parenterals India Ltd and Albert David Ltd. to what he recommended to the investors at large and he also started selling the stock after giving an opposite advice to the market’.

Perhaps our 'Cricket experts' would be glad that there is no regulatory bodyfor their comments, but wouldn't it be nice to have written transcripts forvarious utterances by our politicians and political experts as well?

Live And Exclusive
This Saturday, while watching the film fare awards LIVE on Sony, I switchedchannels, only to find that almost all the news channels were detailing theawards, which hadn’t yet been announced on the 'LIVE' programme. Maybe, I gottoo carried away by the LIVE tag on Sony? But wait, I am still confused becausethe next morning I saw glimpses of the same programme, this time, 'EXCLUSIVE' onAaj Tak.

I can't wait for the next live and exclusive to report next week.

What's In A Name?
Readers can't really be interactive with the editor of a print publicationthrough the letters column, while TV channels do everything to involve theaudience, with mixed results. On being asked about Jacques Chirac, a guy,in highly accented English, was very bored: ‘Isn’t it the same French shipthat was asked to return back to France by the Supreme Court of India’?