What's a story without the human face? What's the big story without the small anecdote? The larger issue without the immediate impact?
So, on Day 2 of the airport strike, I'm hunting for the human faces to personalise our reports.
Angry, inconvenienced, affected people are found.
Anna from Waldorf (with an accent so strong I'm sure I heard her wrong): "The bathrooms were really unpleasant and there's been no help with the trolleys".
Ms. Chatterjee in from Lucknow: "I've just abandoned my car because there's no way to get out but my driver is stuck in a long line of cars with my baggage".
Vox Pop3: "I've had to walk all the way here because I couldn't find my car in the usual parking lot."
And so on. We've put them on air, "the faces behind the big story" of privatisation of two large airports.
And then two ladies come up to me (employees of the striking Airports Authority of India) screaming and asking why we haven't interviewed them, don't they have babies hungry at home, aren't they scared of losing their jobs?... And so on.
And it hits me how subjective it is, this whole "put a personal face on your story" line. Because, really, whose face will you put? The upmarket traveller agonised by her car's absence, whom your viewer can relate to, being, presumably, English-speaking as well?
Or the screaming, striking, Hindi-speaking trade union leaders whom the upmarket traveller is villainising ("These people aren't achieving anything")?
--
At about 10 a.m., ragpickers began showing up to collect the garbage. A TV crew doing an OB had pulled a dustbin into their frame to show the "overflowing garbage and dismal conditions" and when they spotted the ragpickers, quickly yanked them into the frame as well but the AAI employees watching stepped in and shooed the ragpickers away.
