By Aditya Aamir
You will have to be in a Faraday Cage to get out of earshot of toxic journalism. Better still stop breathing. Let the lifeline flatten out on the box next to the hospital bed. Part of it is because the journalist is becoming the story. The reporter is a witness. He doesn’t spiel opinions. Ask Jim Acosta. His surname is an aptronym or aptonym, which explains his attitude, his style: aggression, accosting!
For that matter, Acosta’s perennial target POTUS Donald Trump’s surname is no less an aptronym. The guy loses the House midterms by a substantial number yet claims he came up trumps! And true to their monikers, Acosta and Trump were eyeball-to-eyeball at Trump’s post-election presser. Acosta accosted Trump and questioned his claims to victory.
Now, CNN’s Chief White House correspondent cannot step on the White House lawns, his “hard pass” revoked by the Trump White House, triggering more name-calling from mainstream American media, which are overwhelmingly anti-Trump regardless that ‘The Donald’ has delivered stunning employment numbers and the “economy booming” in his two-year rule so far.
The remaining two years promise more of the Trump-bashing and media-victimization. If it’s not Acosta, there are scores of others on the WH beat, who will carry the anti-Trump baton for him. Part of it is because Trump is not shy of taking to the podium, if only to tell his base one more time that the media is the “enemy of the people.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi will never face the Press one-on-one. Tiger Trump and Chicken Modi are unlikely chums!
And the media is relatively more evenly divided in India. If there’s a Republic TV, there is also NDTV. For a Times Now, there is an India Today TV and Indian talk-show hosts are not like MSNBC’s Racheal Maddow or CNN’s Don Lemon. Off and on Nidhi Razdan will bristle but even she will not call Modi a “racial pig” like one CNN contributor labeled Donald Trump.
But a certain dilution in reportage is there in the media in India. For example, no media has so far asked why the Kerala Police stationed a cop with a cell-phone jamming machine outside Sabarimala chief Thantri’s chamber? Isn’t that a breach of privacy, arbitrary and illegal?
The much vaunted Malayalam media failed to ask some pertinent questions regarding two incidents of crime reported during the ongoing Sabarimala stir, opting to be quite at ease with whatever explanations have been offered by the Kerala Police. Swami Sandeepanand Giri’s ashram is torched and the police give a clean-chit to Giri, despite glaring holes in the Swami’s narrative.
Similarly, Ayyappa devotee Shivdasan goes missing and the police makes his son run from pillar to post. Then the man’s body is found in a depression and the police rule it an accident. The media accepts the police version though several aspects to his death refute the accident-theory. For instance, why didn’t the moped sustain damages in the fall? And who took off Shivadasan’s shirt?
The problem with media in Kerala is that some of the best journalistic talent on display are journalists and anchors who, before they took to journalism, were student activists and members of the student-wings of political parties. They raised slogans for party and coalition and cannot be expected to change. It just doesn’t sit right on their ideology. It is impossible to take their politics out of their journalism.
Similarly, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi will never hold a Trump-like press conference, women’s right champion Republic TV is not as true to gender justice and equality after BJP president Amit Shah went to Kannur and said his piece on what the SC can deliver in terms of verdicts and what it cannot. Come 2019, Arnab will flip with the results. And come 2020, if the Democrats edge out Trump, CNN will not be sending Jim Acosta anywhere near the Democrat White House. He is and will remain an aptronym. Blame it on his name! (IPA Service)