finally, something familiar!

I stumbled across another incredible opportunity that weekend at the temple, after spotting a TV crew filming a procession at the temple. For those who might not know much about me, I’ll be finishing my Broadcast Journalism BA with French and Global Studies minors in May, and I’ll be starting a two-year Masters degree in Global Media and Communications in the fall. I also worked for a TV station in Sioux Falls for a little over two years, completing my reporting internship there as well, and had the (unrelated) opportunity this past summer/fall to follow a group from SDSU to Poland and shoot and edit my own documentary. So I’m very interested in learning about the development of Indian media, with its youth and newfound freedoms. So I walked up to the crew and introduced myself, and became particularly interested upon learning they were a 24-hour news network broadcast in Hindi, Urdu and English, and had a special programming department as well. They invited me to come to the station (HY TV) on Tuesday, which turned out to be in Banjara Hills—the ritzy part of Hyderabad and a short 30-min cab ride away. So I rented a cab on Tuesday (a safer option, as opposed to trying to rickshaw it back, by myself, in the dark) and spent the evening there. I was extremely impressed, first with their facilities: several floors of newsrooms equipped with Macs and Final Cut Pro editing suites, a couple different studios, a closet full of new camera equipment, and their graphics departments and directors’ booths looked brand-new. I also got to sit in on a recording of a new special program they’re piloting, where an astrologer gives predictions for the week and answers letters from viewers. Through a book I’m reading and from talking to people, I’m learning a little about the importance of astrology here; when an Indian is born, an astrologer comes to create the child’s astrology chart and help the parents choose a name based on the chart. Many Hindus look to these predictions for guidance and the station has been getting great feedback on the test broadcasts.

I also got to sit in on a live sports broadcast, meet a couple reporters and sit down with a couple of the news directors over tea. The unique atmosphere of an Indian news room makes it impossible to predict where they’ll be in 10-20 years. To begin with, the sacrificial devotion that broadcast news requires anywhere is magnified in India; news-people work seven days a week without batting an eye, staying 8 hours a day minimum. In discussing media ethics with one director, we got on the subject of dharma, and I learned that there is no set of regulations or restrictions for their news stations; each producer makes his decisions on the principle of dharma—this underlying, unwritten code of ethics in the heart of Indian people. I had previously been unable to put a finger on this bizarre feeling you get everywhere you go—how everything seems strangely connected and homogenous in nature, even though India and its people couldn’t be more diverse. This dharma, I learned, is also what guides media at the moment—a fascinating concept. If it’s existed for thousands of years, how will it be affected by an increasingly globalized media? And will this globalization affect the dharma itself? Is anything powerful enough to do so?

Once again, the kindness of the two men who led me around and introduced me to everyone and the willingness of the director to sit and talk with me for a good 30-40 minutes was overwhelming.