At a time when journalism is reduced to either fact-checking or absolute sycophancy hadn’t we become pessimistic enough to jettison that starry-eyed reporter who “fought for the truth”? This constant conscience-invoking journalist, who barges into meetings to give it back to his seniors, who calls their colleagues “cowards” for not chasing a story, who doesn’t flinch even when he is fired, is a unicorn who exists only in the movies. But here me out, I am not saying there are no truth-seeking journalists, there are, but things are not as simplistic as it is shown in Reporting Live. I had to do a massive suspension of reality when I saw a character filing an RTI application in one scene, and getting the answers in the next one.
Director: Dhruv Tripathi
Writers: Mihir Jadhav and Dhruv Tripathi
Cast: Parineeti Chopra, Deven Bhojani, Adil Hussain, Shekhar Suman, and Nassar
Streamer: Netflix
Parineeti Chopra plays Sandhya, an eager TV reporter who chases the truth with her more pragmatic cameraman Vinod (Deven Bhojani). After a bridge-collapse in a village in Maharashtra leading to the death of schoolkids, Sandhya and Vinod uncover an illegal sand mining racket being run by Golden Sky, one of the country’s biggest construction firms. They extract evidence, gather information and form a report but after it is run, their channel faces a defamation case and they themselves are threatened by goons. Even their key source is killed. The channel’s top boss Shyam (a hamming Shekhar Suman) is also giving shady glances. Their guiding torch is only their editor, played by Adil Hussain. As expected, Sandhya and Vinod are taken off the story,e even fired but they decide to continue their investigation. The truth shall prevail, come what may.
Reporting Live is a beat by beat by the book journalism thriller. It’s predictable from the get go and still trudges on. The writing is so plain and lazy that a lot of times it felt like characters existed to be just stand-ins for the audience. When Sandhya and Vinod discover the story, it seemed like they were hearing the words “illegal sand mining” for the first time (“We will be killed for…sand?”). In another scene when they are questioning a bureaucrat about it, the words illegal sand mining are repeated so many times that it seemed like the dialogue writer was doing SEO.
The characters themselves are cardboard cutouts. A fiery reporter who is single and lives with her dog, a cameraman who has a wife and a daughter who exists only to be used as a pressure nerve later by the villain, an editor who can lock the head of the company out of the newsroom to put out the “biggest story of the year.” This is journalism fantasy sans any depth or rigour. Sand mining is being shown in Maharashtra whereas it is more prominent in UP and Bihar. Everything is as basic and as cliché as a whistleblower giving top secret information in the dark of a theatre.
But even without nitpicking, Reporting Live doesn’t have the engine of a thriller. As it dragged on, I seemed to be forgetting the details of the case. There aren’t any surprises here too which will make you jump up and notice. As the film went on, with Parineeti hamming something about fighting for people’s rights, I could only enjoy the stretched meta-joke about casting Shekhar Suman as a compromised media baron. With his late-night YouTube show Shekhar Tonite, heaven knows the man has done more journalism than most TV channels combined.
