Perhaps there should be an etiquette school for the media. Well, someone’s got to stop them interrupting their own guest speakers!
Watching the hysterical news debates that have become the signature style of several of our television channels, I cringe with embarrassment as I find news anchors barely able to contain themselves from getting back to doing the talking the moment a guest speaker gets all of two sentences out. It doesn’t seem to matter who the guest is, how interesting or critical what he’s saying is, or whether he’s anywhere near finished or not. Can they hold on for a moment? They’ll cut off a speaker to say “I just want to bring in our other guest here…” If they’ve got time limits can they prime their speakers instead of cutting them off rudely every few minutes?
At the end of one of their famed debates, they’ll grab the stage to draw their own conclusions and pronounce God-like judgment for the nation to lap up with gratitude.
Our channels are rude to their speakers in many other ways as well. One of their gimmicks is to pick out a sentence and replay it thrice with dramatic background music. Another horrifyingly embarrassing trick is to grab a sentence out of context and put it into a montage of some kind and have us hear it ad nauseam for months.
A promotional clip I saw today showed Arnab Goswami acting like God on Judgment Day, demanding an answer from various people. The clip is engineered so that no one gets a chance to say a thing.
But Arnab Goswami met his match in Suhel Seth here. Watch them battle it out for screen space:
Is this clip from NDTV?
No, this is from Times Now, the channel from the Times of India newspaper. There’s little to choose between these guys. Each of the channels has a hysterical TV anchor/news person.