A few months back I saw a Hindi news channel showing on tv a woman being shot dead on camera. Of course the shot did shock the viewers and should not have been shown, at least during prime time.  But the channel not only showed the women being shot but also kept repeating the shot.  In fact the programme stretched for an hour.  Let me just break this one hour programme for you.

  • First a background was established.  A jilted lover holding the gun against the woman’s head. It also established slowly that there were policemen around and that the boy had his face in a hood.  Even though the full footage lasted only 5-8 minutes, the channel spent the same number of minutes introducing the scene.  In the process the first minutes of the shot were repeated quite a few times.  The editor zoomed into each person in the frame. Each character was carefully introduced. The boy, the girl, the policemen and the bystanders.  The footage was taken from a mobile phone which meant each time the editor zoomed in, the pictures got pixellated.  But that did not stop the editor from zooming in. With first 10 minutes already over the channel planned the next 10 minutes.
  • The next 10 minutes were more or less discussions with an expert on what could have been done by the policeman.  All the while having the first few shots being repeated in the inset window.  Twenty minutes gone
  •  The next ten minutes were spent showing the reaction of the policeman.  How he readies himself to pounce on the gunman. All the while  what should have been done by the policeman continued to be discussed.  It was conveniently forgotten that the gutsy policeman actually tried to stop the event.  He may have been under trained to handle the situation, but had tried his best to save the girl putting his life in danger.  Thirty minutes gone.
  • The next ten minutes where the actual shooting footage.  Obviously, you can imagine how many times the actual shot would have been repeated. Normal speed, slow motion, zoom in etc etc… Now forty minutes gone
  • Another discussion for 10 minutes on how it happened, what triggered the immediate reaction from the culprit etc. There was of course a crucial element of where the policeman goofed up… 50 minutes over and now obviously it was too much. But the channel was not done yet with the subject. 
  • The last ten minutes was spent showing the entire sequence in one go. A discussion continued on psychology of the culprit.

Sensational events such as these are now being broken into smaller parts and discussed for hours nowadays on televsion news channels.   However, What is also obvious is there is absence of depth in many of these topics.  The above example highlights the point Imake.  

Looking at it from a TRP point of view, the footage definitely was a stunner.  It did make you stop and look at the visuals.  The footage also forced you to see it again when it was shown.  The comments did force us to think on the lines of what could have been done.  So it would have been a successful programme from the advertising point of view.  

Ethically questions would have been raised about the coverage.  I am not trying to be judgemental here and say whether this should have been done or not, but only highlighting how TV news is changing now.