You would have all seen it. The watermark, as it is called, of the news channels appearing right in the middle of the screens. Not the channel logo, mind you, which appears in a corner of the screens, but an enlarged translucent version of it, placed dead centre of the screen.
Why do they do that? Well, to ensure no one steals their footage and passes it off as their own. Would another channel go to the extent of stealing earthquake footage? Surely that’s being a little too cautious, isn’t it? Read below for the incident that started this trend in the local media.
*****
Some of the events that the news media covers are seminal. But some of them are seminal, not in their effect on the world, but the way the media covers events from thereon.
Consider the Robert Budd Dwyer affair. A politician in the US state of Pennsylvania, he went on to become the State Treasurer. Without going into too much detail, he was accused (falsely, it later turned out) of some financial wrongdoing and the public consensus seemed to be against him. Frustrated, he held a press conference on the 22nd of January, 1987, and after giving a speech, he took a .357 calibre revolver out of a bag and shot himself dead. There was pandemonium in the hall.
But the channels had broadcast this event live. Subsequent news packages in the evening news obviously edited this footage, but those who were watching the event live (children included) did, in fact, see it.
The consequence: television channels in the US stopped airing true “live” footage but started including a lag of several seconds, just in case something goes wrong.
In Pakistan, the FM radio stations also started introducing a lag of several seconds in their live call-in shows when – there are gentlemen and then there are boys – some callers uttered certain objectionable statements on air.
To segue to the issue at hand: back in 2009, as we all know, the visiting Sri Lankan team was attacked at Liberty Chowk in Lahore. Well, as fate would have it, the Samaa TV office was in one of the buildings surrounding the chowk. Therefore, they got some exclusive footage which no other channel managed to get.
They started airing the stuff, only for other channels to simply rip it off and airing it themselves. Thus, started the policy of always having a watermark on exclusive footage.
Fair enough. But then, the overkill started. For instance, coverage of earthquake damage is, by no way, exclusive. Especially if it comes in the generic destroyed buildings category.
In fact, as one watches the coverage of the earthquake’s destruction, the watermark, coupled with the glee (there is no other word for it) the channels announce one sab se pehle hum ne… after the other, the footage has come to resemble “disaster porn”.
The channels falling over themselves in order to claim either being the first or as purveyors of something exclusive have resulted in a perverse rat race.
And the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a…