Public sphere invariably receives and absorbs public communication arrived through emotional route more comfortably than those reaching it through rational route. Members of the public crowd this sphere and media echo their cheers, jeers, and sneers through media stories. Media does it some times truthfully and at times twisting and turning the story for impact. What do you do when such twists and turns in the intended communication lead to public backlash? The lesson drawn for a communicator whenever a communication driven through an emotional route goes wrong, it can be corrected or navigated to a desired direction only by following another creatively crafted emotional route. It needs to be borne in mind that if the route of communication problem sprouts out of emotional imagery rather than rational ground, the effective way to tackle such imagery problem is to adopt an equally emotive response. Let me cite few real-life examples to substantiate my argument. The recent example is of the Samajwadi Party...

Friday it was. The top TV news channels were offering prayers. Some offered it for a favourable TRP, whereas others for the position number one. Lucky that week was India TV-hitherto perceived as the Manohar Kahanian of Indian news channels among literati. The TRP that fateful Friday shattered the habitual perception of invincibility of sabse tej news channel, overtaken as it was in its weekly race for number one. The villain-de-piece was TV rating points (TRP) for its umpire's role. Luck kissing story for the new king channel was Arushi's murder case. The old king Aaj Tak was ironically cursing the same system, which helped facilitate its empire building through ads collection all these years. It chose to hit back when stung by an adverse rating. It questioned TV rating methodology, its sampling, its representative character and what have you. Understandably, no one took these arguments seriously because they originated out of an interested party. While it may be a conventional wisdom...

How the media reported about a new transport idea in Delhi. Delhi-based English newspapers wrote understandably a common script on the trials and tribulations of their target readers when they covered BRT corridor issue. English speaking journalists of varying hues-Oxbridge bred, public school kind, and government school type-unanimously sang the hate song on BRT in chorus since it based both on the faith and experience of their own and of their car-using constituents. Two newspapers undertook the close-to the-mike role while singing. Reportedly, personal and advertising interests of these tune-leaders added salt to their wounds. Dutiful to their own experience and of their readers, they set the tone and tenor of their coverage ranging from anguish to frustration to helplessness. Blame it all was the style and rubbishing wisdom of experts as arm-chairish was the strategy. Some even attributed vested motives to the government stubbornly sticking to the project and to the originating institutions of the experts for not buckling to the...