Markets, Marxists and NDTV

Comrade. Comrade. Comrade. Comrade. Comrade. Comrade. Comrade.

On Tuesday, May 18 (the day Sonia Gandhi decided not to aspire for Prime Ministership), I was stunned to watch a NDTV reporter chasing Jyoti Basu (Communist Party leader and former Chief Minister of West Bengal) all the way to his car for seeking Basu's comments on Sonia's descision. The stunning part was that the reporter kept addressing Basu as "comrade" (almost 10 times) during the "chase interview".

The same day, I was - stunned again - to see NTDV's Political Editor Rajdeep Sardesai interviewing a Congress Member of Parliament outside 10 Janpath with his arm placed around the MP's shoulder!

On Monday, news anchor Vishnu Shom was acting decidedly pissed off about the stock market's dive (thanks to irresponsible statements from the rent-a-quote Sitaram Yechury and his Communist Party colleagues). Late evening on the same day, I could only tolerate a few minutes of Sardesai attempts to sugar-coat a CPI-M leader's tirade against privatization as "the left's concerns". On the next day, when I saw Shivnath Thukral filing his stock market report well away from the Bombay Stock Exchange building (from where, Shivnath said, the NDTV crew was driven away by angry protestors on Monday), I wasn't surprised.

I have heard several people criticize NDTV for its anti-BJP slant - especially for its "biased" coverage of the Gujarat riots. In fact, I've heard several people using the word "anti-National" to describe the channel. As someone whose main interest is business journalism, with only a passing interest in politics, my main views on NDTV have been limited to deep admiration for the two of their journalists: Barkha Dutt and Vikram Chandra. (Barkha's "We the People" program makes for fascinating viewing - regardless of the subject being discussed. Vikram Chandra is a superbly mature news anchor. I used to look forward to watching "Business Weekend" each Sunday when he used to anchor the program.) In fact, I had even sent NDTV an email (when CNBC went off air in Chennai thanks to CAS) suggesting that it would be good for them to introduce live stock tickers during market hours. A suggestion that they promptly heeded.

It was NDTV's coverage of the post-election drama - starring Sitaram Yechury, Sonia Gandhi and the Stock Markets - that made me realize how bad the political bias of some of NDTV's correspondents really was. And how much damage they were causing the channel.

And it is not just bias. There's poor journalism as well. Last week, I was amazed to hear NDTV's Bangalore correspondent Nupur Basu saying on air that Deva Gowda had told her "off-the-record" that he would not ally with the BJP. (If it was "off the record", why was she telling the world about it?)

This lack of focus on ethics and quality is highly unfortunate for what is a pioneering venture in TV news journalism.

Hopefully, now that NDTV is a publicly-listed company, founder Prannoy Roy and the other Directors of the company will heed the widespread criticism from viewers and media observers (like the folks at TheHoot.org ) and weed out the bad elements.

It would be good for business. And the company's stock price.