It seems nothing can shake TV news out of its mediocrity. Not even the death of one of its own fraternity members.

Gauri Lankesh, a prominent activist and journalist, succumbed to bullets on Wednesday night. She was 55, spoke out against Hindutva, the caste system, Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi Bhakts.

In fact, she was the sort of person who would fit neatly into the pseudo-sickular category of people that anchors at Times Now and Republic would have liked to see deported along with the Rohingyas. It is amusing, then, that Arnab Goswami, the spirit animal of both these networks, sprinkled last night’s debate with ample instances of name calling directed at ‘pseudos’ who have nothing better to do than protest at Press Club and blame Modi for everything.

His prime-time goal was to get Rahul Gandhi to apologise. Of course.

But it wasn’t just Goswami who steered the news of Lankesh’s murder into mindless debating territory. News18’s Bhupendra Chaubey decided a fellow journalist’s murder was a good opportunity to focus on his own “dilemmas”. This he did by playing out the Seeta-Geeta act for his viewers with two Chaubeys: Chaubey Number 1 had a black tape on his mouth. Chaubey Number 2 berated Chaubey Number 1 for constantly indulging in whataboutery. Chaubey 1 will be silenced this time, declared Chaubey 2.

No More Whataboutery.

This was followed by moments like Chaubey 2 wondering why the murder in Karnataka happened under the Congress regimes when party spokesperson Sanjay Jha blamed Right-wing forces. When journalist Ajoy Bose asked who was abusing Gauri Lankesh on social media, Chaubey 2 replied with a “who’s using Gauri Lankesh’s death”. The conclusion Chaubey 2 comes to is something to the effect that the Left is as bad as the Right. That those who celebrate Lankesh’s death on social media are as bad as those who have been protesting against it because some of them may have a political axe to grind. At this point, Chaubey Number 1 emerges from the background and merges seamlessly into Chaubey Number 2. This did not happen. But if it had, it would have been the most insightful moment in the entire news episode.

A tale of two tweets

The standard hashtag across channels like Times Now, Republic, News18and India Today was #WhoKilledGauri. This set the tone for most debates to segue into yet another Left versus Right, BJP versus Opposition debate. Since police investigations have told us nothing about the identity of the assailants, journalists like Chaubey and Goswami took to reading Lankesh’s last few tweets.

For the two gents, these tweets that do little than elaborate her despondence with the Left hint at a sinister infighting that could have led to her murder. Her lifelong struggle against the Right, the threats she faced from Modi Bhakts, in her own words, in her lifetime weren’t considered important enough. It must be asked here if journalists playing Whodunnit on debate shows — whether they pinned the blame on the Right or Left — have done any service to the discourse on Lankesh’s death. This could have been the time to look at the safety of journalists in the country, the attack and threats they face during the course of their job, previous cases that have still not been solved and lack of organisational support, especially for the language press and freelance journalists. It could have also been a time to look at what fosters the impunity with which men on bikes can just ride up and shoot someone point-blank for doing their job. Instead, it spiralled into the same binary of Left versus Right.

If that was not enough, Lankesh’s brother Inderjit Lankesh — who once said he’d like to join the BJP and parted ways with Gauri over what seems like an ideological difference – was asked to guess who the killers may be. He resisted but stated that Naxals had been sending Gauri hate mails on NDTV’s Left, Right and Centre. On social media, these hate mails translated to death threats and we got another angle to the murder mystery.

Since the news of Lankesh’s death, politicians have politicised the issue. It isn’t their fault — it’s what they do, something about the word politician should tell us that those who go by that label are bound to politicise. But TV journalists need not and can certainly avoid falling into their trap. Of course, that is if TV debates aspire to be anything above drawing room conversations and are still in the business of informing people.

The author can be contacted at manisha.pande1110@gmail.com and on Twitter @MnshaP.