Questions can be breaking news. Note,we are not asking,can questions be breaking news? We dont need to be interrogative about whether interrogative expressions can be breaking news because such innovations are amidst us on Zee News,shots of Tahrir Square,and blinking on top of the screen,after the Breaking News logo,white (or perhaps yellow) letters on a red background: Will Mubarak resign? Yep,thats breaking news. This is a superbly liberating journalistic strategy. The possibilities are limitless. Breaking News: Will A. Raja confess all in CBI custody? Breaking News: Will CVC resign? One can lengthen the time horizon. Breaking News: Will India win the February-April cricket World Cup? Breaking News: Will Congress win the 2014 general elections? Breaking News: Will global warming end the world in 2111? Great stuff.
Now,a question,nothing so grand as those above but perhaps worth asking,where in the hierarchy of breaking news items and given a high-intensity news environment,would you situate news of newspersons facing difficulties? More than a few journalists covering Cairo faced hostile crowd responses. Thats news definitely. And how that news is placed in the days news hierarchy obviously depends on how ugly the response was. Most broadcasters,Indian and foreign,reported that their and/ or other organisations journalists were heckled,that some equipment was damaged but they didnt quite cover Cairo with this news item front and square. In terms of the geography of the TV screen,most broadcasters ran the item on the bottom of the screen scroll.
So,it was unsurprising that NDTV reported the Cairo hotel its crew was staying in had been barricaded. Was NDTVs the only news crew in that hotel? Were other hotels also barricaded? Were hotels with news crews as guests being barricaded? Its reasonable to assume,isnt it,that with scores of news crews in Cairo,pro-Mubarak mobs wont concentrate most of their energies on one team from an Indian broadcaster? If you had watched NDTVs coverage though,you might well have got confused: could only NDTV tell us how the battle for Egypts soul was going to turn out?
I use soul because NDTV used it,and when NDTV used it I knew,my soul knew,in fact,that you can take safe bets on NDTV asking the soul question in news contexts like these. The soul of Kashmir,the soul of Pakistan,the soul of India,etc, we have heard all of that.
Coming up,perhaps: the soul of Jordan,the soul of Yemen,the soul of Bahrain,etc. And,Breaking News: Will Arab countries become stable,liberal democracies?
