Talk about television

On Feb 1 Kantipur Television (KTV) launched what it called a “Lantern Bulletin”. The NEA’s load shedding schedule graced my home with lights that Tuesday and I was able to catch the premiere newscast. But after watching the show for a few minutes, rather than following the news, I was left wondering about what the station could have gone through to put up the show.

Lights! Camera! Action! The creative directors must have sweated quite some time playing around with the lights, moving the lantern around to find a suitable place in the frame, positioning ‘guests’ invited for the studio interviews, camera angles, etc. The word is that even tukis (wick lamps) were considered before they were dismissed, reflecting that television, on this day, is no longer a journalist’s tool.

Eventually, the lights were dimmed just enough to create a sense that it was the lantern that was lighting up the show, giving the set an ambience of a horror movie’s set. The station had publicized its ‘new’ bulletin a day in advance and all said, it was supposed to have been its protest against load shedding – a malaise that afflicts the entire country (and which left as it is, is also unlikely to go away for another decade) – and not a shot at publicity.

If you believed that stunts were only for the talkies, here was 21st century (tabloid) television at its best. Lovely gimmick. Thinking further, I have been convinced that the carefully orchestrated stunt was aimed less at drawing attention to the power crisis and more an obvious, in-your-face attempt to press government for concessions.

I reached the conclusion after listening in the same – first – bulletin a news, on a statement by the association of private broadcasters not just supporting the Kantipur stunt, but also demanding subsidies and a larger share of government handouts as public service advertisements for broadcasters. Now, when you get such a statement in the middle of the just-premiering bulletin one does not have to read Noam Chomsky to understand how consent can be manufactured or how media messages guised as public interest can in fact be intended for massaging purely personal (corporate) interests.

For the uninitiated, here’s how Wikipedia summarizes the idea Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky had to posit: “… corporate-owned news mass communication media — print, radio, television — are businesses subject to commercial competition for advertising revenue and profit. As such, their distortion (editorial bias) of news reportage — ie what types of news, which items, and how they are reported — is a consequence of the profit motive that requires establishing a stable, profitable business; therefore, news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, while those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail, and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings).”

The 21st century television news has become a mirror that is there for all to see rather than look into why things are as they are.

The protagonist on the premiere KTV newscast was Prakash Sharan Mahat, Minister of Energy, who was quizzed on why we’re having brownouts for 12 hours a day, and what the government was doing to stop it? He essentially said he was unable to reverse the situation even if he wanted to because there’s just not enough power to bring into the system immediately – something that Nepalis have heard since 2007 when the extended brownouts began.

Well that is what 21st century television news has become: A mirror that is there for all to see rather than look into why things are as they are, or in case of electricity, the deep-rooted structural issues that underlie the shortage. (Ratna Sansar Shrestha, a Chartered Accountant, had written about some of these issues in Kantipur on Feb 2). Rather the newscast in question chose to look inward, subliminally angling for power subsidies irrespective of the fact that even if broadcasters were to get it (particularly, television) their viewer numbers would not change.

The first few bulletins that I could watch when there was light had nothing on how, say, load shedding was affecting industries or schools and hospitals. There was also nothing on how everyone could contribute toward building an enabling environment for undertaking power generation – the crux of the problem – and how politicians and political parties should not look at power projects as a source of slush funds, and who was doing that and how.

The KTV stunt did not go unnoticed, however. Among others, there was a jolly good story on the BBC website saying the station had used “only” a kerosene lantern to light the 30-minute newscast. It said the reason for the shortage was little investment during the conflict (that was when a mid-sized Germany-supported project was built). Another background sentence talked about how badly the “destruction” of transmission lines during the Koshi floods of 2008 had affected power supply – as if that was also a reason for the brownouts. AFP and Reuters also had the story, and of them only Reuters touched upon some structural issues: A leakage of 26.5 percent electricity and tariffs that had not been raised for 19 years.

It remains to be seen how long the lantern keeps appearing on 7 O’ clock newscast because the best estimates suggest brownouts are to remain in Nepal until major hydro-projects come on line, or we start buying electricity from India via transmission lines that do not exist (and if India decides to sell what is also not in a surplus there). Further, with roughly 500 megawatts on the grid and demand growing at 10 percent per year, the supply is but likely to worsen. On Feb 1, KTV said the lantern would keep burning until load-shedding ends: It may therefore be years and many liters of kerosene before it disappears.

HONORABLE JUSTICE SAYS: REVEAL SOURCES

In perhaps the first development of its kind, the Supreme Court last week did what was rather unbecoming of an institution that has in the past been a guardian of free expression. It asked reporters and officials of Sagarmatha Television to reveal the source of a story – related to an alleged mismatch between property declared by the chief justice and what it claimed to have uncovered. The court’s letter dated Feb 2 asked the station to disclose the sources used in the story and to also furnish the names of the “reporter, editor, program producer and the broadcaster” involved with the Khoj Khabar show. As of writing this piece, Sunday, even the Federation of Nepali Journalists seemed unaware of the incident, and therefore had not commented on the incident. Therefore, here’s unsolicited advice to the station: Follow the Journalists’ Code of Conduct, Clause 2 (5) of Jan 17 1999 document that categorically states, “The journalist should not disclose the source of the news”. (This issue will be discussed further in my next column.)

patrapatrika@gmail.com