Butter Babies

On the other hand, the fuss and frenzy in the studio turns journalism into a contrived charade. As a guest on another channel, I have seen an anchorperson in acute distress, wired in both ears and straining to read his lines on the auto cue screen. The sheer hysteria involved leaves little scope for considered news analysis. Mercifully, on our show, Dua's open disregard for technical crutches and a special gift of using his own improvised lines instead of the auto cue eased tensions considerably.

There is another big difference between print and electronic journalism. While the former exists on yearly ABC circulation figures (often disputed), television programmes are relentlessly monitored every week. The TRP, or Television Rating Points, is a weekly Bible for all channels indicating viewership and determining advertisement revenue. In our case, just as the most brazenly biased newspaper television reviews were beginning to get us down, the TRP arrived with astoundingly good news. Dua, as usual, had a line to deliver. "Television is a mass medium, not a class privilege," he declared with a self-satisfied smirk.