#OPSvsSasikala: How Primetime News Got Its Groove Back

India Today and CNN-News 18 rose to the occasion last night, when AIADMK found itself (and Tamil Nadu) hurtling towards a crisis.

WrittenBy:Deepanjana Pal
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There are two words for caretaker Chief Minister O Panneerselvam’s spectacular performance last night: meticulous planning. A little before 9pm, a cavalcade left O Panneerselvam’s home in Chennai and headed for former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s memorial at Marina Beach. No one was prepared for his arrival. The police hastily set up barricades just minutes before he landed up and the press rushed to set up cameras and talking heads (all the while wondering, no doubt, whether OPS could beat the Yadav family on the drama scale. By the power of Rajinikanth, yes he can).

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Panneerselvam, known as OPS, arrived at the memorial a little after 9. He sat before Jayalalithaa’s photograph and we’re told he meditated. For approximately 45 minutes, OPS stayed still and silent, as though there was no momentum building up outside. Through the translucent white material of his shirt pocket – no doubt All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) male members are required to wear shirts that ensure any photograph kept in the pocket is visible – you could see a photo of Jayalalithaa.

Conveniently, the time that Jayalalithaa’s spirit was tapping into its Casper-The-Friendly-Ghost side and communicating with OPS, proved to be just the amount of time needed for a crowd to gather outside. By the time OPS emerged, having wiped away tears and pranaam-ed Amma, the press was in position, microphones were extended and supporters had started raising slogans wishing for his long life. Panneerselvam said that Amma’s atma (soul) had spoken to him and then, he proceeded to devastate Sasikala’s campaign to become CM of Tamil Nadu.

It’s no surprise that the media has played a key role in the way the narrative has unfolded in Tamil Nadu since Jayalalithaa’s demise. Decades ago, Jayalalithaa used the press elegantly after MG Ramachandran died, to establish herself as a leader who was being unfairly victimised. In her reign, the press was kept on a tight leash. She served scraps to them from time to time, and directed how she and her administration would be covered.

Sasikala had tried to follow in the former CM’s footsteps. Right after her name was put forward by the AIADMK for the position of CM and Panneerselvam – who is still the caretaker CM – tendered his resignation, a press conference was organised by the state government in which doctors who treated Jayalalithaa at Apollo Hospital finally spoke to the press. The next thing we saw was Sasikala at the balcony of the Poes Garden residence that Jayalalithaa has made iconic. From the colour of her sari to the way she flashed the victory sign and then folded her hands in a namaste, Sasikala was replicating the image that Jayalalithaa has presented to the media. It was an obvious attempt to create a sense of recall.  

What Panneerselvam did last night, however, was surprising because of the way he used the media. Instead of obviously trying to impose a narrative, as Sasikala has, he made the press feel like a partner in his endeavour. While Sasikala had so far been seen high up, looking down at the press the way Jayalalithaa did, Panneerselvam was on the same ground. It was as though he was confiding in the press with his tales of woe. This morning, Panneerselvam has spoken to a wide variety of news media, which indicates an openness towards the media that is alien to AIADMK.

Widely known for being reticent, the caretaker CM spoke to the press for almost 30 minutes, after coming out of his session with Amma’s atma. He presented an intelligently-worded statement that simultaneously established his capabilities as an administrator, savagely criticised Sasikala and pulled the heartstrings at regular intervals with strategically-placed mentions of Amma. It was Amma’s spirit that wanted him to tell the “truth”, she was the one guiding him, he said. He said his hard work of organising relief after Cyclone Vardah was not appreciated, that he had been sidelined by Sasikala and her associates, and that he had been forced to resign. “I never asked to be made CM, but you made me CM and insulted me again and again,” he said.

It seemed candid, which is why news anchors across English news channels spent the first few minutes discussing whether Panneerselvam had acted ‘spontaneously’ or whether this was a planned strategy. Over the course of the night, OPS would appear repeatedly, to greet supporters and speak a few words. At one point, a little before 11pm, journalists and cameramen were told that they could go inside OPS’s residence and he would make an appearance.

Sasikala did the same soon after. They key words here are ‘soon after’. The woman who would have the public see her as Jayalalithaa-incarnate was a few steps behind Panneerselvam all night. In an effort to control the narrative, one imagines she as the general secretary of AIADMK played a key role in Jaya TV Plus’s decision to not show OPS meditating at Marina Beach. Jaya TV Plus, widely known to be AIADMK’s mouthpiece, and run by party members and Jayalalithaa’s associates, did not telecast Panneerselvam’s press conference, despite the channel’s microphone being visible in the swarm of microphones that clustered around OPS at Marina Beach. The channel continues to pretend as though the caretaker CM has not made news. It has, however, shown Sasikala’s press conference this morning.

While Panneerselvam’s moves were carefully timed to coincide with prime-time news on TV and just in time for newspapers to feature it prominently on their front pages, Sasikala lagged behind. She finally made an appearance at 1.25 am to roundly criticise Panneerselvam – by which time it was too late for even late editions of newspapers and the bulk of the TV-watching crowd had tuned out. The only news from the Sasikala camp that made it out in good time was the party decision to sack OPS from his party positions. This didn’t make the impact Sasikala would have hoped because OPS told the press soon after that Jayalalithaa had brought him into AIADMK and she was the only one who could kick him out. Images of Sasikala flashing the victory sign (in yet another Jayalalithaa-esque green sari) would be on television in the morning while the news was still about OPS, since he’d organised an interview with Puthiyathalamurai at 8am. In it, he accused Sasikala of being power hungry and keeping him away from Jayalalithaa when the latter was hospitalised

Last night offered TV news junkies one of the most thrilling nights that we’ve seen in recent times because they were chasing the news (literally at some points). It also offered the viewer a glimpse of how journalism’s wheels rumble and the challenges facing the media today. That OPS might pull off something spectacular appears to have been broken by phone messages rather than on ground reporting. Among the early tweeters was The Economic Times’s Vasudha Venugopal who tweeted this at 8.50pm:

She would continue to tweet snippets about how AIADMK was responding to OPS’s gauntlet over the course of the night – while sitting in Uttar Pradesh. India Today claimed Rajdeep Sardesai, consulting editor at TV Today Network, was the first to break the news.   

Since Sunday, The Newsminute’s team, including journalist Anna Isaac and Editor-in-chief Dhanya Rajendran, has presented perhaps the most comprehensive coverage of Tamil Nadu’s unravelling crisis. They used social media – Twitter updates, Facebook Live – smartly and were quick to file updates on their website too. No surprise that at least one Twitter user has suggested Rajendran for CM of Tamil Nadu.

On India Today’s primetime show Newsroom, Sardesai provided rapid-fire updates from his sources – Panneerselvam was expected to hold another press conference, opposition party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) was likely to support Panneerselvam in the event of a floor test at the state legislative assembly, Jayalalithaa’s niece Deepa Jayakumar was on Panneerselvam’s side. Kanwal’s moment of triumph came early on, when AIADMK’s Durai Pandian did an about-turn on the show and declared that he was with Panneerselvam, and not on Team Sasikala.

In conjunction with the channel’s seven reporters in Chennai, India Today presented the best coverage of last night’s dramatic developments. If the jovial one-upmanship in the studio between Managing Editor of India Today Rahul Kanwal and Sardesai made for crackling TV, the wealth of knowledge that former NDTV-journalist TS Sudhir brought, lifted India Today’s coverage well above what its competitors offered. Not only does Sudhir have a keen understanding of how Tamil Nadu politics works, he also has a wealth of trivia. Did you know that OPS, like Narendra Modi, was once a chaiwallah? “Never mess with a tea seller,” he said at one point, with his face deadpan and a twinkle in his eye.

Times Now was woefully behind the curve, largely because it didn’t have enough people on the ground and its studio anchors could offer little by way of insight. Its contribution to the conversation was a dismal hashtag (#PanneerPrimetimeRevolt). This morning, it’s claiming to have the most reporters on the ground and how this will improve their coverage remains to be seen. NDTV’s coverage had even less energy to it although they did offer viewers comprehensive recaps this morning. Both these channels seem to have expected Uttar Pradesh to yield more breaking news.

The one channel that did give a little competition to India Today was CNN-News 18. They struggled because they didn’t have as many reporters in Chennai, but in terms of providing commentary and keeping pace with the developments, CNN-News 18 did well. For instance, when Panneerselvam began speaking to the press the first time, at Marina Beach, Zakka Jacob provided immediate and superb translations. The channel also provided translations while airing OPS’s interview (in Tamil) with Puthiyathalamurai, which no other channel seemed to be able to do. Whether this is because there’s a severe shortage of Tamil-speakers in Delhi and Mumbai-based newsrooms or because it just didn’t strike anyone else that a translation may be helpful, we’ll never know.

In an ideal world, we’d have a channel that combined the back-end skills and desk work of CNN-News 18 with the reporting that India Today has done on the OPS versus Sasikala issue. This is true not just for television news, but for new media too. With reporters being axed from organisations, there’s a danger of losing the insights that come from having spent years reporting in the field. It’s not just about a question of access (though that too is important, especially when it comes to political reportage) but the perspective and understanding that comes from being experienced in the field. At the same time, it’s also important to craft a narrative out of different elements and highlight the important details in a story – which is what editors and those on the desk do. Intelligent commentary is not easy to pull off, especially when one it’s about breaking news. India Today’s desk is evidently not the sharpest. It struggled to keep up with its reporters (and even managed to confuse Sardesai with editor Shiv Aroor). CNN-News 18, on the other hand, was on point with its behind-the-scenes work, but sorely missed having more reporters in Chennai.

Much like Sardesai and Sudhir had suggested last night, Sasikala this morning has said that Panneerselvam is acting upon the instructions of another political party. While Sardesai and Sudhir were pointing fingers at BJP, Sasikala is accusing the DMK of trying to break AIADMK. For the next month, while Panneerselvam tries to prove he’s got enough backers to remain CM, the attention will be on Tamil Nadu. Will news channels keep their reporters in Tamil Nadu? Can they afford to while four other states go to polls?

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