The media is the message

And a new TV series brings it home with style

 

I don’t know if you will have seen the new Netflix show, Scoop, by the time you read this (and just in case you haven’t I will post no spoilers – though the story it is based on made the headlines decades ago). Having binged on it over the last few days I must confess that rarely have I seen a TV show in which India’s print media is portrayed in a more realistic and balanced manner.

 

So much so that it made me nostalgic for the days when I worked in the newsrooms of yore, where everyone would muck in on getting the magazine or newspaper together, tussle over which stories should be pitched to the editor, what would work best on the front page, edit page or the back of the book, and bicker about everything from new age cinema to who would get to cover the next election rally.

 

It is possible that I am needlessly romanticizing that period of my life but in my recollection it is marked by a sense of common purpose, a camaraderie shot through with competition and a feeling – perhaps misguided – that we were serving some higher purpose as we put together stories on such varied topics as the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, the Harshad Mehta scandal or the IC 814 hijacking.

 

It is that atmosphere that director Hansal Mehta has recreated so beautifully in Scoop. The newsrooms in this series have a certain authenticity to them. There is banter (both good-natured and not), there is staff rivalry along with a sense of collegial noblesse oblige. But every character comes in shades of grey. And the vast spectrum that comprises the Indian media scene is depicted in a nuanced way, all the way from the shouty TV news channels to tabloid newspapers to respected and respectable broadsheets.

 

But for me, the revelation in Scoop was the portrayal of Jagruti Pathak (Karishma Tanna), a character based on real-life reporter, Jigna Vora (the series is based on her book Behind Bars in Byculla). Finally, we have a female journalist who is depicted as a fully-formed human being, a single mother with a young son, and a loving extended family that helps her look after him. Mehta doesn’t feel the need to make Jagruti seem ‘liberated’ by making her spout Hindi gaalis in every second sentence – the default setting of most series on streaming services these days. 

 

The scenes that resonate the most are set in prison, where Jagruti spends eight months as an undertrial, coming up against a system that tries its best to break her, both in body and in spirit. But it’s not just the prison system that is the problem here; the legal system and the police system are just as much to blame. Chargesheets are filed on the basis of no real evidence, court dates keep getting pushed back, legal expenses pile up. In other words, just like in real life, the process is the punishment.

 

I did say in the beginning that I would post no spoilers. But it seems relevant here to point out that while Jagruti’s legal problems are resolved in the series, in real life Jigna Vora could not (or perhaps did not want to) make it back in journalism. Today, she is an astrologer, a tarot card reader and a healer. Which, I guess, is a happy ending of its own kind.