I will not rant about television. Because it's my New Year's Resolution not to. And because, well, it's sort of in bad taste to take home a happy pay packet and then moan about your job, right? But one last rant, just one, and then I'll get on with it.
Say there's been a murder early in the morning. Let's say a man has been found in a highly upmarket part of Delhi. Let's say he had a bullet shot through his chest. Let's say crime reporters had to "rush to the spot".
So they do. Large OB vans with sparkling signs and overpowering colour schemes are parked outside "the spot" at 9 am. Police cars have just pulled out. The body has just been taken to the mortuary. Neighbours are still lurking in their doorframes.
What's the first thing you do when you turn up there? You notice the police markings, check for blood splatters and then... well, and then, you ASK around, right?
What did people see, hear, remember? You ask the neighbours; the women with their toothbrushes, the men buttoning up their winter coats.
But this morning, outside Lodhi Estate where a young man was found with a bullet wound what happened was quite different. Yes, OB vans. Yes, reporters. Yes, live chats.
The procedure is simple enough. You show up at the crime spot, quickly check the marking and then even more quickly button on your lapel mike. Then you clear your throat, shoo away the neighbours and begin your "walkabout" as they call it in TVspeak.
"This is the exact spot where a man was found brutally murdered," say the TV reporters, "here in this VIP, high security area, behind Renuka Chowdhary's house was this shocking security lapse..." and so on. And on.
So I show up and I'm watching this, sort of intrigued since I've never seen crime covered like this before, and I wonder why no one's talking to neighbours or anyone. I talk to some people, they tell me how they saw him, thought he was a drunk sleeping man... and then, as we walk away toward our car, another reporter takes her cue from us. She walks up to the neighbours, and begins talking to them. All AFTER her little walkabout which has probably been sent by the live OB already anyway. Strange are the ways of the television world.
Mangs' Crime Tip (Bonus): But, if you've showed up too late, you might want to discount some of the "eyewitness accounts" since by that time, people have begun watching television obsessively, and they're likely to repackage what they watched on TV as what they saw in real life.
For instance, "He was lying with one shoe on, wearing a brown jacket and blue jeans, right here by the side of the road over there," said one woman, loudly, somewhat emotionally. And then, in a mutter of an aside, "Atleast that's what TV said."
So.
