On telly, more light, not heat, please

The friend who put the bug in my ear was a true one. He stabbed me in the front. “Why don’t you get into the prime-time TV debating circuit? That’s just the pulpit you and your ilk need to pontificate”, he counselled to keep myself going after hanging my boots. Not much of a TV viewer myself, I showed no interest. However, when the lockdown came, I watched prime time debates on national channels more to fill the vacant hours than to learn the ropes.

It’s then that one realised that a typical telly debate in India is like the Great Indian Rope Trick – a stage-managed show. One had known about the biases of the TV media but the scale of brazenness came as a shock. The anchors are not moderators but the drivers who steer the discussion in a pre-decided direction to suit the political proclivities of the TV channel owners.

Ergo, one soon got tired of all the sound and fury but not without noticing the off-putting stock expressions unique to Indian television debates.

For example, the anchors in these debates do not ask for your ‘view’ about any matter; they want your ‘take’. And when everyone has given their takes what you arrive at is not the conclusion or lesson but the ‘take away(s)’ as if it were the dish they were hashing out to take home.

A debater on TV cannot be an ‘outlier’, (for a detached outsider) he must be an expert who does not ‘consider’ but ‘factors in’ the needs of the poor in a discussion on national Economy. He does not draw attention to, he ‘flags’ a point. For him, the many shades of truth are not simply ‘versions’ but weightier ‘narratives.’ The spokesperson of a national party may not have much to offer by an argument but he should know how to give his party’s line a ‘spin’ which, for the uninitiated, is nothing but an inviting shine to a dull proposition.

Watching the debate, you would expect a participant, who has been cornered, to concede the point. But no. For, they have a handy escape route called ‘it’s not my call’. And for every attempt to make them commit to a proposition, there is always a bypass called a ‘caveat’.

One day, when a participant in a TV debate was talking something that was so utterly devoid of common sense, I waited eagerly for his rival to blast him. But when his turn came to speak, the opponent used neither a harsh tone nor word but merely said, “It’s your opinion but to me it’s counterintuitive.” Ah! What an esoteric word for ‘contrary to common sense’?

Counterintuitive indeed! I had just found the word for the verbiage which is doled out in most telly debates in our country.