The web series IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack was released on Netflix recently. (Photo: Arvind Swami/ X)
All media houses — print, television, digital, agencies — have an irreplaceable, non-negotiable entity. It is a team of editors (not to be confused with The Editor or Editor-in-Chief), starting from the trainee to those in charge of different newsroom operations. Their responsibilities are to go through news reports filed by reporters, find holes in stories and get them fixed, check for grammar and syntax, edit and rewrite, design the layout, and hold several meetings a day, to name a few. Collectively, they are called “The Desk”. There is a high chance you may not have heard of it. And who can blame you? After all, no one, filmmakers or OTT series directors, seems to get the depiction of a newsroom right. The latest case in point: The much talked about limited series on Netflix — IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack.
In the series, the media is represented by Amrita Puri playing the good-old dyed-in-the-wool print reporter Nandini Martin, and Dia Mirza playing the breaking news-chasing TV journalist Shalini Chandra. Halfway through the first episode, we are introduced to Martin, the subtitle helpfully telling viewers that she is a news reporter. For starters, no such designation exists in the newsroom, but we will let that pass. The “news reporter” gets a call from a source informing her about what is perhaps going to be the story of her lifetime — a hijack. And how does she break it to her senior Chandra? “If you are done flirting with TV, can we talk about your ex, Shalini? The news.”
In my almost decade-and-a-half experience in the industry, I have never heard news being broken like that. A few shots later, Martin begins writing the story ‘Feared militant, most important preacher…’. Clearly, the journalists she has trained under have not told her to avoid adjectives, or use words such as “allegedly”. Chandra, the editor, however, is impressed (don’t ask why) and says, “Come to TV”. Martin’s reply: “I will bring you back to print”. Not if you come up with forced, too-clever-by-half lines like these, Martin.
Cut to episode 3. It is late at night, and Chandra and Martin are alone in the dark newsroom, save for another staffer. Enter any newsroom late at night and you will know how inaccurate that scene is. Post-midnight is when a newspaper office is buzzing — there are journalists, yes, but there are also designers, art directors, a photo team, a pre-press team, the IT engineers, all at their busiest, chasing their own deadlines to meet a common goal: To send the edition out on time. Only three persons on the news floor? No, sir. A journalism school lab journal would need more people.
And then, Chandra sees the headline on a page and is shocked. She holds up the printout and asks her reporter, “What is this, Nandini?” (Which sounds more like “What is this behaviour, Pooja?” IYKYK). Martin coolly announces, “The lead story for tomorrow.” Sorry to break it to you (pun intended), but this is not how it works. A reporter, no matter how senior, can’t just write a story and get it printed on page 1 only for the editor to find out late at night. It is not a reporter’s prerogative to decide what story makes it to the front page. The stories, especially such crucial ones, go through several rounds of brainstorming, followed by a couple of rounds of editing, before it makes it to the page. As for the headline? It is a call the editors make, not the reporter.
One can flag many more such inconsistencies in the film but that would take away from the larger picture — which is that the Hindi entertainment industry does not know how a newsroom functions. Worse, it doesn’t want to find out. From Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani’s (2000) Juhi Chawla who is seen staging a rainfall to pass off as her flood coverage (fake news, I know, but about an extreme weather event? A bit much) to No One Killed Jessica’s (2011) Rani Mukerji who has an entire newsroom dropping everything to give her a standing ovation as she bashfully waves at them (trust me, no one [pun intended again] has that kind of time), the depiction of journalists could not be further from reality. Even the much-acclaimed Page 3 had the journalist calling her write-up “article” at every mention. It is a “story”, damn it!
The only Hindi film that I remember showing a journalist that somewhat resembles an actual one was the 2008 flop that went on to age well — Shaurya. Minissha Lamba plays a small-town reporter for a major newspaper who works out of a decrepit “2 by 2 ka kamra” and is forever on the quest to see the term “kshetriya samvad-daata (regional correspondent)” replaced with her byline in reports. Ah, byline. I wanted to cry after hearing the word. But it was her workstation that touched me. Journalism is perceived to be a glamorous profession with coffee-mug-holding, chiffon sari-clad journalists like Rani Chatterjee (Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani, 2023) flitting in and out of the newsroom, and this could be true also for many offices in metro cities. But at the heart of any good news operation, is its small-town journalists, working quietly out of a no-frills office, or sometimes no office, fuelled by their desire to get to the bottom of a story.
To be fair, I thoroughly enjoyed IC 814. It kept me on the edge of my seat. It kept me tripping on dialogues such as “Tea is like blind faith. Acchi hai, buri hai, chai hai!”, or watching Arvind Swamy as DRS on repeat (seriously, more of this guy, please), but the bits that showed the newsroom had me squirming in my seat.
But we learn from our mistakes, I suppose. So dear Hindi entertainment industry, if you are making a film or series with a journalist as a main character, do yourself (and us) a favour and walk into an actual newspaper office for a change. Closely watch the journey of a story — from the pitch to news gathering to editing to setting it on the page; soak in the energy, the madness of the newsroom; try to understand why journalists continue to be in the profession despite the average pay, late-night shifts, skewed work-life balance, and sometimes, toxic work environment. Perhaps you’ll catch a glint in the eye of a reporter who has landed a scoop — and come up with better lines, and headlines. “The captain could not have waited a minute longer at Amritsar” just does not cut it.
deepika.singh@expressindia.com
