NL Hafta

In this episode of NL Hafta, our in-house team of Madhu Trehan, Abhinandan Sekhri, Anand Vardhan, Raman Kirpal and Manisha Pande is joined by NDTV news editor Madhusudan Srinivas. The team discusses the grisly case of rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in Jammu and another case of rape in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao in which a Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Legislative Assembly is accused. Manisha, while pointing at the chilling details of the charge sheet in the Kathua case, says the case was reported by local media since January but took time to reach Delhi TV news studios. Raman Kirpal says, “The national media picked it up really late. If you see the local newspapers in Jammu, they were talking about it. they had been reporting since January. But not the national media.” Attempting to explain why that happened, Abhinandan says, “I think the national media actually took notice of it when a bunch of lawyers chanting Jai Sri Ram prevented a charge-sheet from being filed. That, I think, was the trigger.” Anand speaks on the scary statistics on child rape in India. Being the son of a police officer, he says, he has read up many police diaries that detail the horrific nature of crime in India. “All these cases have horrific details. It is just that we only know few.” Moving on, the team speaks on Mark Zuckerberg’s apology and how unaware the senators questioning him seemed to be. Madhu details how closely the media reported the scene -- focusing on the cushion Zuckerberg sat on, the clothes he wore, the way he drank water, when he smiled and when he smirked. Moving on, our panel talks of violence against journalists in West Bengal while covering Panchayat elections. Journalists from the Times of India and The Indian Express were assaulted, and one was even forcibly undressed. Prompted by a subscriber’s letter, the panel then ventures into a discussion on ‘generalisations’ and wonders if there’s any truth to them. Abhinandan says, "Every sort of humour device rests heavily on generalisations." Anand says that the important thing about generalisations is that they are always done by others. Abhinandan takes the discussion forward by talking about the Cauvery protest in Tamil Nadu. Anand says there is guilt at play on part of the media: “The whole year you don't report about farmers issues. IPL comes and then you juxtapose corporate jazz, owning IPL times.” Madhusudhan points out, "Even Rajnikanth didn't say I am at the gate, stop the damn thing. He just said it would be a nice idea to stop the IPL.” Talking about the fast held by the Congress, Madhu considers it as psychological manipulation. "Psychological trip of you not eating, really people should not care. It might be good at the British times but now its misuse has become ridiculous,” she says. All this and more in this episode of NL Hafta. Listen up.