Journalism in Bollywood

Journalism is not a highly sought after career in Bollywood. Hence, even when movies about journalism were flourishing in Hollywood, Bollywood didn’t show much of a concern for it. Most Bollywood protagonists choose to be business magnets, singers/dancers or rather a student than a journalist. Rarely are they concerned about something other than their love affairs, family feuds and property rights. Hence, journalists are a rare species in Bollywood.
Though traditional Indian society still doesn’t allow women to work outside their houses, most journalists in Bollywood are females. They are usually the most versatile sort - often extremely glamorous - who do everything but journalism. Sridevi in Mr India spends her time singing, dancing, pouting, throwing tantrums and fantasising about her invisible hero. Preity Zinta in Mission Kashmir does everything from giving dance performances to counseling a tortured hero to deciphering top-secret terrorist plans and yet finds time to run ‘Srinagar TV’ almost single-handedly! Other examples are Madhuri Dixit in Wajood and Meenakshi Sheshadri in Sache Ka Bol Bala who preferred breaking into a song and dance to breaking a story.
Another major purpose of our female journalist is to fall in love with the brave hero who takes her along to fight the underworld, where she does some sort of spy work singing, dancing and charming the villain. Sridevi’s ‘Hawa Hawai’ in Mr. India and Raveena Tandon’s ‘Mei cheez badi hoon’ in Mohra are examples of such performances –item numbers, as they are popularly known. However, her attempts to divert attention from the hero often goes in vain and becomes herself a prisoner whom the hero has to rescue ultimately. Amisha Patel in Ealan did follow the hero in his hunt of the evil, but brought in a change by taking up the gun instead of dancing.
Male journalists are not very common in Bollywood. A popular category is the star reporter for whom, scoops are readily available all the time. He falls in love, sings and dances, fights the baddies and plays savior to the poor. Aamir Khan played such a smart scribe in Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin, who gallantly overcomes all the odds in his path to fulfill the noble mission of taking the heroine safely home to daddy. In his spare moments, he thought up ground-breaking stories about poor little rich girls, who run away from home. The heroine here is just a subject of news for the talented reporter at the beginning, but later turns out to be his sweetheart. The hero of Rain is a reporter who interviews a blind writer, but later falls in love with his subject. In Dil Se the reporter falls in love with a human bomb, a member of the terrorist group on which he is investigating. In all these cases, the reporter ends up as the hero of a sensational love story.
These are just the cases when a prominent actor plays a journalist. But most often we find journalists in Bollywood when a group of them swarm around celebrities with their ‘silly’ questions. In such cases they are often considered troublemakers and irrelevant characters. They are often disdainfully shrugged off with retorts.
This doesn’t mean that the daring and the adventurous have no role in Bollywood. The most common category of journalists in Bollywood is the crusading type who finds out the truth but often loses his/her life. Examples are Madan Jain in Pratibandh who is killed inside a car, Shekhar Suman in Tridev who is poisoned and Dimple Kapadia in Krantiveer who is raped. Then there are the ones who are idealistic. Jesse Randhawa’s fearless TV reporter in Chot is an attempt to reveal the Hindi film heroine as the workingwoman in her post-domestic avatar. Anil Kapoor in Nayak is that kind of journalist who doesn’t lose the courage and temper during an adverse situation and takes up any challenge –even if it is to become the chief minister for a day.
Only a few offbeat films have shown journalists as they are — corruptible, vulnerable or partisan: Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, for instance. Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla as two wily, smooth talking and street-smart television reporters, constantly engaged in a game of one-upmanship with each other, offered an interesting glimpse into the ‘channel eats channel’ world of television news. Both exclaimed "I’m the best" while hunting frantically for scoops, but ultimately joined hands to save an innocent man from the gallows.
The most prominent movie in this category is the recent Page 3, which charts the troubled journey of a reporter, played by Konkana Sen Sharma, covering the metro party culture. Enthusiastic and still unversed in the ways of the wicked world, she yearns to work on meaningful stories. She gets her chance, uncovers a child abuse racket involving the mighty of the society, only to be mercilessly dismissed by her employers. Life comes full circle when she joins another newspaper, once again as a Page 3 correspondent, realizing painfully that there is no place for a crusader in the world of ridiculously commercial journalism.
Editors in Bollywood, unlike reporters are usually down to earth and sometimes revolutionary if we set apart Tiku Talsania in Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin, Anu Kapoor in Mr India and Dev Anand in Sache Ka Bol Bala. In Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, a tabloid editor uses two struggling photographers to get evidence against corrupt officials. Gripping New Delhi Times painted a credible picture of the futile struggle of an editor to publish the murky truth. Shashi Kapoor, in New Delhi Times depicted the external and internal pressures faced by an editor while exposing a criminal-politician nexus quite authentically. Boman Irani in Page 3 is the editor who emotionally supports the reporter, but dismisses her due to commercial pressure. Jeetendra in New Delhi depicted the ways in which press can be misused for personal reasons of the editor.
There are some movies that revealed the usual popularity tricks. Juhi Chawla in Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani acts out a fake reporting of a cyclone and its effects, live from the spot, which is actually being shot in the studio under a fake cyclone. The protagonists intentionally create a bad impression of the other so as to popularize their shows. Shabana Azmi made immortal the opportunistic columnist who creates a ‘man of the masses’ to increase the circulation in Main Azaad Hoon.
There are very few journalists in Bollywood who were designed after a real life character or incident. Preity Zinta in Lakshya is a take on Barkha Dutt of NDTV, who reported live from the warfront in Kargil. Many others were associated with sting operations. Kamla is a movie based on a real sting operation executed by an Indian Express reporter to reveal a flesh trade racket. He pretended as a customer to buy a tribal girl from the racket and thus exposed it. Priyanka Chopra plays a bubbly investigative journalist in the forthcoming Krrish; a role inspired by India TV sting girl Ruchi.
Cinema captures the activities of the press usually when there is something interesting happening or when it does exceedingly well. As per the standards of Bollywood, the plot requires enormous drama and a love story mixed up with it to succeed in the box office. But there aren’t many such instances in the history of Indian press that could capture the attention of a lay audience. This may be one reason Bollywood couldn’t do much in bringing out journalism as a prominent theme.
However, Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani has proven that even journalism can interest Indian audience if the necessary ingredients like song and dance is properly mixed with it. In future, sting operations seems to have the potential to become the darlings of Bollywood since many media houses in India have now started to adopt it as a means of exposing top level corruption. The success of Page 3 is clearly a good sign.