Author: Siddharth Varadarajan
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 22, 2001
Was it serendipity or grand design
that led to President Pervez Musharraf's controversial breakfast meeting
with Indian editors last Monday being broadcast on TV soon after? Since
Gen Musharrafs televised remarks are being widely blamed for vitiating
the atmosphere at Agra and undermining the prospects for a declaration,
how they came to be broadcast is a matter of considerable interest. Although
the Vajpayee government is shocked by PTV's 'live' broadcast of the meeting
and has apparently asked the intelligence bureau to investigate the 'conspiracy',
the story about how the Pakistani General came to perpetrate, what one
commentator called, "a media Kargil" is so simple that it defies belief
Half-way through the meeting, Prannoy Roy of NDTV, one of the invitees,
noticed a PTV camera recording the entire proceedings. About 10 minutes
before the interaction ended, Mr Roy sent a note through a waiter to the
Pakistani officials at the head table asking if he could get a copy. But
he didn't get a reply or see any direction being given.
When the meeting ended at 10.50
a.m. Mr Roy went to the cameraman and asked to borrow the tape and make
a copy. The cameraman turned to a PTV official standing nearby, who gave
permission after being told it would only take "10-12 minutes". He, however,
said he would send another person along to get the original back. Tape
in hand, Mr Roy virtually ran the short distance from the Amar Vilas Hotel
to Taj Khema, where the NDTV studio was located. He was convinced someone
would realise what was going on and stop him.
Mr Roy reached his studio shortly
after 11 a.m. Within minutes, the tape was on air. Though the I&B ministry's
central monitoring station at Aya Nagar apparently reported that the PTV
broadcast was 'live', the Pakistani channel, which quickly realised Star
was running the breakfast meeting, only relayed the same feed. It was after
the two tapes finished playing an hour and 40 minutes later, that the PTV
man, who was growing increasingly impatient, was able to take them to the
DD uplinking centre at the Mughal Sheraton. Thus, it was around 1 p.m.
that PTV started sending out its own signal minus the Star logo.
But, if the Star telecast caught
the Indian delegation unawares, Pakistani officials say they were equally
baffled. "We were shocked when the unedited meeting started appearing on
Star," a senior Pakistani official recalls. "Nobody knew how it happened."
He claimed the PTV camera was there doing a "routine recording of the President's
engagement" and that no decision had been taken until then to telecast
the proceedings. "It is possible that excerpts or an edited version might
have been shown later but as far as I know, nobody had decided anything."
DD says no Pakistani official had
approached them with a request for a live uplink. "Throughout the day,
they would come with their tapes and we would uplink them," says a DD official.
"I know the breakfast recording was to be uplinked afterwards because they
had a man at our studio waiting for the tapes to arrive. But I can't say
what PTV would have done, whether they were going to show the whole thing
right away or edit it for use later."
While Pakistan would almost certainly
have used the recording in some way, it is possible Gen Musharraf was using
the fact that he forcefully presented Pakistan's views on Indian soil as
an insurance in case he returned empty-handed, the broadcast that did take
place was fortuitous. Upset at the unnecessary controversy, Mr Roy says
he only did what any other journalist would have done. "The public had
a right to know what happened at that meeting."
