Communication & Journalism Research 5 (2) 41 Communication & Journalism Research A Primer on Prime Time 5 (2) pp 41-53 ©The Author(s) 2016 Debates of Malayalam News Reprints and Permissions: [email protected] Channels ISSN 2348 – 5663 Dr. Abdul Muneer V6 Assistant Professor of Journalism, EMEA College of Arts and Science, Kondotty, Kerala, India. Abstract The Malayalam news channels, like their counterparts elsewhere in India and other countries, report and debate latest developments in a variety of fields during non-election periods. In times of elections, particularly during the campaign period, the news and debate shows of the channels concentrate primarily on the developments on the election front concerning various political parties and their candidates, the old and new political controversies, the manifestoes of the parties as well as the views of the experts and the electorates. The main objective of this paper is to explore the style and format of the news and debate shows of Malayalam news channels. The qualitative analysis of content of prime time news based debates of four channels such as Asianet News’ News Hour, Indiavision’s News Night, People’s News N views and Manorama News’ Counter Point/ Prime Time News during 2011 Kerala Assembly polls reveals that they follow almost the same style and format and that there is much similarity and synchronicity in their topic selection and presentation style. Key Words Prime Time Debates, News and Debate Shows, Malayalam News Channels, Genre, Synchronicity. Today, elections have become grand spectacles. They are more colourful than ever. There is more noise that there ever was. More people get involved in it, and hence draw even more into it. Polls, in a way, have become the web of politics. It’s spread wide and hooks all. No wonder television, the most entertaining mass medium in action today, celebrates election seasons with pyrotechnics of all sorts. News channels run long debates that feature pundits; they beam in-your-face reports on political candidates; they produce in- depth news analysis on events that can make or break poll outcomes. Well, can they actually spell doom or bloom for political parties by influencing public opinion? That’s a question the discipline of political communication has been trying to answer for quite some time now. Political debates have different formats in different countries, and have grabbed much research focus and attention. When research on political debates is mentioned, it is usually referred to presidential debates research. Other formats of debates did not get the needed research attention. In this study, the purview of research rests on news based debates, and that is, panel discussions followed in main news bulletins, particularly prime- Correspondence: Email: [email protected] Communication & Journalism Research 5 (2) 42 time news bulletins. Like in presidential debates, it also encompasses arguments, counter arguments and makes use of all aspects of rhetoric and persuasion. In modern democracies, television has become the most powerful and influential venue for political commentaries and debates. They appear in both regular daily news bulletins and in special weekly television programmes focusing on current affairs. American writer and columnist Eric Alterman argues that “political pundit”, a special group of people who debates political opinions and forecasts, has become an indispensable factor in opinionated media societies (Nord, 2008). Today, all the news channels world wide have the genre of programmes where pundits taking to other pundits on various subjects. “To construct an impression of objectivity on these programmes, journalists and academics are frequently invited to appear or prominent liberals and conservatives are paired, to demonstrate a concern for ideological balance” (Gulati, Just and Crigler, 2004, p.243). The main research question posed by many of the pioneering studies conducted earlier was, of course, did watching the debates make any difference in people’s awareness of the issues in the campaign and the positions of the candidates on those issues? (Bishop, Oldendick, and Tuchfarber, 1978). William L. Benoit and Tamir Sheafer (2006) have documented the evolution and growth of television debates in different countries. Apart from debates centered on American Presidential elections, numerous debates have held in many other countries for the elections for their leadership such as presidents, prime ministers, senators and so on. For example, Swedish election debates had held in the year 1948, and the first political debate was telecast in Australia in the year, 1958.The other countries where debates televised include Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Israel, New Zealand, Scotland, South Korea, Poland, Taiwan, and the Ukraine. William L Benoit and Tamir Sheafer (2006) had analysed the content of those debtes. For instance, they examined the content of the five Israeli Prime Minister debates in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 and 1999 and compared them with the content of US debates. Another content analysis study was conducted by Charlette Jorgensen et al (1998). They analyzed the content of 37 televised debates conducted live before select viewers in Denmark with before and after opinion polls. The Danish Broadcasting Corporation showed those 37 one-hour debates, under the title of Town Parliament (Bytinget). The present study is also a humble attempt to analyse the content of prime time television debate shows of Malayalam news channels during the crucial Assembly polls held in Kerala in 2011. The key objective of this study is to explore the style and format of primetime television debates of Malayalam news channels. Further, it also tries to analyse the topics of debates on Malayalam channels during 2011 Kerala assembly elections so as to understand the synchronicity and similarity of the topics. The Malayalam news channels, like their counterparts elsewhere in India and other countries, report and debate latest developments in a variety of fields during non-election periods. In times of elections, particularly during the campaign period, the news and debate shows of these channels concentrate primarily on the developments on the election front concerning various political parties and their candidates, the old and new political controversies, the manifestoes of the parties as well as the views of the experts and the electorates. The debates, which involve party representatives, political experts and journalists, present an informative and absorbing fare especially to those sensitive to electoral politics. It is a part of a larger research study probing the influence of election news and debates on the voting behaviour of the viewers of Malayalam TV news channels. The qualitative analysis of content of prime time news based debates of four channels such as Communication & Journalism Research 5 (2) 43 Asianet News’ News Hour, Indiavision’s News Night, People’s News N views and Manorama News’ Counter Point/ Prime Time News, is utilized as the methodology of this paper. Therefore, the researcher watched the live debates or on the channels’ websites from February 19 to April 10, 2011. The observations of the analysis are discussed in the following segments. News and Debate Shows of Malayalam News Channels; The Genre With their sheer size and reach, news channels have the potential in shaping and at times manufacturing public opinion in the country. A reflection of their importance can be gauged from the popularity of the top-notch Indian news anchors such as Prannoy Roy of NDTV, Arnab Goswami of Times Now and M.V. Nikesh Kumar of Malayalam news channel, Reporter. While some news anchors being as popular as some of the matinee idols, the news channels often shape newspaper headlines. No wonder then that politicians today make it a point to appear on television and be seen debating key issues, and people watch news shows to keep abreast of day-to-day developments in politics and other areas. In prime time news shows telecast between 9.00 pm – 10.00 pm, the important news events of the day are summed up and one or two important issues are debated. Most regional language news channels follow the presentation style and format evolved and perfected by English news channels such as NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times Now, Headlines Today etc. This is also is the case with the four Malayalam news channels - Asianet news, Indiavision, People, and Manorama News - whose news and debate shows are at the centre of this study. These were the only news channels in Kerala during 2011 Kerala Assembly Polls. These four news channels, like their counterparts elsewhere, also re-telecast the prime time news and debate shows in the latter part of the night. The news and debate shows run for an hour which includes commercial breaks. Each show begins with the news presenter reading out the headlines of important news stories which are displayed on the screen simultaneously. Then the presenter picks the issue at debate and introduces the panel. Usually such panels have 2-5 experts excluding the presenter. As moderator, the presenter questions each panelist and provides them time to respond. When the discussants are not available in the studio, they are connected over phone and insets of their photographs are displayed along with their names and designations. All news channels compete with each other to rope in experts for debate. Usually, a political issue will be discussed by a panel including representatives from the LDF, UDF and the right-wing BJP. Often, such a cast would also include a media person or a political scientist who will give the debate an objective or neutral tilt. At times, some channels record debate shows and telecast them during prime time. The debates, obviously, see heated arguments and most panelists complain of lack of time for discussion. After ensuring that all sides of the issue are covered, the presenter concludes the debate and goes for a commercial break. After the break, the presenter reads out other important news stories.