Boo hoo who, Ashutosh?

A hardened TV anchor and a journalist for more than two decades, Ashutosh must have seen worse but YET he broke down because he couldn’t take the guilt of having not been able to save Gajendra Singh? Seems a bit hard to digest. Let’s just go over the reasons for being cynical:

• Ashutosh has been in journalism and at the forefront of tabloid like TV that passes for journalism in India, where sensationalising an issue is part of the job description. Having covered innumerable deaths, accidents and bloodshed Ashutosh knows the futile and unjust nature of how life and politics works. But by training he also knows exactly how to make a splash of it for maximum viewer impact.

• The timing of the "breakdown" is also suspect – not too early in the day for other news events or analysis to take away the impact before evening prime time hits on TV. Not too late in the day for it to not being able to create enough buzz across social media and word of mouth. Ashutosh also knows very well that editorial meetings at news TV stations are held around midday so doing it at 1pm would mean that editors are still in the process of firming up the plan for primetime.

• The choice of platform – Ashutosh for his "breakdown" to have maximum impact needed a platform that was Live and had a good reach. He needed a live situation so that in the second window Gajendra’s daughter could be there for the viewers to see. If Ashutosh had shown remorse at a press conference or during an interview to a wire service, the story might have been carried by every channel, but emotion tugging would not have been possible without the presence of Gajendra’s daughter sharing screen space with his crying visage.

• Why Aaj Tak? Ashutosh has primarily worked with two stations during his decade and half stint in TV - Aaj Tak and IBN 7 and with IBN being seen as funded by BJP backers the choice had to be Aaj Tak the No 1 news channel in terms of viewership in India. The spinoffs were also promising – if he goes crying live on Aaj Tak the sister channel Headlines Today would also cut to the show – bringing in the English audience and so will Delhi Aaj Tak, which is the leading local channel in Delhi - AAP’s core constituency.

• Ashutosh has had practice before – while anchoring on IBN 7 during a news broadcast of the Delhi gang rape, he sniffled and seemed about to break down. His commentary at that point displayed the beginnings of a politician’s hyperbole. Not long after that he quit journalism and joined the AAP.

• Ashutosh’s party the AAP and its think-tank are past masters at playing the media to their advantage. The timing, the emotions and the effect are all too pat to be actually believable.

To sum up this curious case of a politician's crocodile tears, I would say that if and when a normal someone, like an aam aadmi, becomes emotionally distraught, the first reflex is to move away, leave the spot, shun people and seek solitude or some loved one's shoulders to cry on. But we are talking not about an aam aadmi but about an Aam Aadmi Party politician and he, of course, does the opposite, he does not move away from camera, he does not tear the mike off, he does not seek solitude, what he does instead is to bawl away and make gestures of supplication, at the same time taking care not to block his microphone so that his words are not lost or garbled.

Ashutosh knows how to get the most out of TV news because he knows how it works and how to make it work to his advantage.