Channel Surf – Times Now/ CNN IBN

Sensitivity is not something Indian television news is known for. But there are some rare moments that make it worth watching the news, even if you have to wade through the Indo-Pak debates to chance upon them.

One such moment was on Times Now last night during the debate on the treatment meted out to Pinki Pramanik. As you know, she is an Asian Games gold-medal winning athlete, who has been accused of rape and of actually being a man. Since that accusation, she has been taken into police custody and made to undergo numerous “gender tests”, one of which was shamefully circulated on the internet.

For more details on Pinki Pramanik, read our Cheat Sheet – http://www.newslaundry.com/2012/07/gender-bender/

All this has led human rights activists and the sporting community to demand better police and state treatment of her case and her. Pinki is reportedly being kept in a male prison and pictures suggest policemen were man-handling her in public.

Times Now’s Sanket Upadhyay and Anand Narsimhan, after a pointless debate on Indo-Pak affairs, took up the issue of Pramanik’s treatment in jail. The debate included Rahul Easwar – an activist, Ashwini Nachappa – former athlete, Nisha Millet – former national swimming champion and Bharati Mutssudi – human rights activist.

The said moment came when Rahul Easwar started speaking on Pramanik. He spoke first and throughout his speech kept referring to her as “he or she”. It is to the credit of Anand Narsimhan that when Easwar was done, he reminded him that in this debate they were going to refer to Pinki as “she, until proven otherwise”. With this one sentence – that Pinki is “she, until proven otherwise”- the anchor reiterated what the channel had been discussing. The need to treat Pinki with dignity. Not just in action but in thought and word too.

However, one of the offhand comments made by Ashwini Nachappa was an indicator that things may not have changed much. She was on Pinki’s side, but also made a point to mention that the alleged rape victim was a divorcee who had left her husband and child. One wonders how much “victim-blaming” has become a part of our psyche that the very person who is defending Pinki saying that she has been wrongly accused, doesn’t fail to mention the alleged rape victim’s personal life as an example of her moral failure.

Times Now wasn’t the only channel covering the issue. Soon after this debate ended, Face the Nation began at 10 pm on CNN-IBN. The host, Sagarika Ghose, took up the issue of Pinki Pramanik’s treatment and made it into a larger issue of gender-sensitivity. To her credit, her show seemed better researched than the Times Now debate and one of the panelists, a sports researcher – Payoshni Mitra, had even met Pinki a few times since her arrest.

The discussion still had some obvious flaws. For one, while the host was talking about the “complete insensitivity” shown to the athlete, the photo on the screen showed her being man-handled and almost groped by a policeman. In fact, the channel drew viewer’s attention to the visual. What struck me as utterly reprehensible, was the fact that while one one hand Sagarika was claiming that people should be more sensitive to Pinki, on the other the channel kept the visual on the screen for an inordinate amount of time. The hypocrisy and sensationalism of the moment was difficult to stomach.

The one point which Sagarika did get right was that because of Pinki’s sexual ambiguity, she is now being treated as a circus freak. That is true. And one can only hope that the media attention to her plight is not due to this factor and actually due to compassion.

As Sanket Upadhyay said in the Times Now debate – “man or woman, she is still human’.