March 30: Long before a collective gasp was audible in drawing rooms, the shockwave made its presence felt on the studio floor itself. The screen filled with the image of a panellist cringing and covering her face with both hands - an extraordinary expression of disgust on live television.

Last Sunday morning, broadcast journalism in Kerala - never a shrinking violet when it comes to scandals but adept in the craft of telling the story without being crass - yanked away the fig leaf.

Little was left to imagination as an audio clip played itself out on Mangalam TV on its very first day of full-fledged operation. A voice resembling that of the state transport minister - a septuagenarian - was making a call to a woman who had apparently approached him for help.

The content of the tape was described as "a lewd call" - but it was little less than phone sex. The channel broadcast every graphic detail - at least twice without any masking aids such as beeps or cuts. The anchor did warn parents to keep children away from the television screen.

This was uncharted territory, even for the take-no-prisoner corps of Malayalam television journalism. The small but politically livewire state has more than 10 highly competitive news television channels that make mincemeat of politicians hapless enough to find themselves in the camera crosshairs.

It is into this cutthroat world that Mangalam TV has stepped in with the raw audiotape. The broadcast cost the minister A.K. Saseendran, 71, his job within hours and left the CPM-led government squirming in discomfiture.

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If Mangalam TV thought so, it was in for a surprise. A furious debate has broken out in Kerala on whether the channel had gone too far, undermined journalistic ethics and violated the rights of a citizen.

What began as a question whether the channel should have broadcast the full tape has now snowballed into a far bigger controversy.

Suggestions were made that the channel, at its inception stage itself, had put together a team to entrap some ministers. It is also being alleged that a receptionist was deployed as a reporter to befriend the transport minister and "honeytrap" him.

Late tonight, Mangalam TV tendered an apology and admitted that the woman was not a homemaker as claimed by the channel at the time of telecasting the phone call. The channel also described it as a sting operation carried out by its editorial team.

The controversy has already led to the resignation of two young journalists in the channel.

While Al Neema Ashraf quit yesterday from the Mangalam head office in Kottayam, Nithin Ambujan, a reporter based in Thrissur, resigned today. Both have openly decried the channel for playing the audio.

The channel is insisting that all it wanted to do was expose the way the minister treated a woman in a state that has of late witnessed a series of gut-wrenching atrocities on girls and children.

R. Ajith Kumar, the managing director and editor-in-chief of Mangalam TV, has conceded a technical mistake in not beeping out some of the more graphic details. Otherwise, the journalist with 33 years of experience in print media had stoutly defended the "scoop" till this evening, saying public figures must be held accountable for their behaviour in private, too.

But the channel has found itself on a sticky wicket on why it muted the woman's conversation with the minister. The broadcast version features only the breathless monologue of the minister.

Al Neema, one of the journalists who quit the channel, posted on Facebook: "Who was that woman? With what complaint did she approach the transport minister? Why was the woman's voice muted (by the channel)?"

Women journalists affiliated to the Network of Women in Media, India, had complained that they were facing a "disgraceful" situation following allegations that one of them had a role to play in the incident.

Whatever the motive of the channel, the way the controversy is playing itself out can have significant consequences for the brash media in Kerala.

Initially diffident, the Left government - the channel was inaugurated by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan who had wondered how it would attract viewers and advised honest journalism - had announced a judicial probe.

However, sensing that the public mood might be turning against the channel following the honeytrap allegations, the state government has set up a special police team to get to the bottom of the episode. Two FIRs have also been registered.

The nature of a police investigation will be dramatically different from that of a judicial inquiry. It remains to be seen if such a police probe would set precedents that can be used to intimidate the media.

The channel's decision to broadcast the graphic details has drawn the maximum flak.

Sashi Kumar, the founder of the country's first regional satellite television channel, Asianet, termed it "news pornography".

"This is a new low and I am shocked and distressed to see this," Sashi Kumar, who is known outside Kerala more as a popular news reader on Doordarshan in the 1980s, told The Telegraph. Sashi Kumar, no longer associated with Asianet whose bouquet includes the state's leading news channel, is now the chairman of the Asian College of Journalism.

He objected to the manner in which the news was treated by Mangalam TV. "We don't even know who was at the other end," he said, describing it as a case of invasion of privacy and an example of "highhanded arrogance of the media".

"This whole salacious and voyeuristic thing has been there in Kerala media - take the Sarita case or any gang rape and see how they are reported," he said. He was referring to the solar panel scam in 2013, allegedly masterminded by Sarita Nair, who duped influential people of Rs 7 crore through a fraudulent company and by flaunting her alleged connections to those in power, including the then chief minister and Congress veteran Oommen Chandy.

Sensational stories about Sarita and her business partner as well as a small-time TV actress were common on news channels and in some sections of the print media. But Sashi Kumar said the latest instance of the audio tape was a new low.

"Ideally, they should have edited the more sleazy portions and cautioned viewers much before it was played as children would have been exposed to the smut they aired," Sashi Kumar said, referring to the Mangalam TV broadcast.

In a sense, the Malayalam television space is experiencing what magazines did in Kerala in the 1990s. Mangalam TV belongs to the Mangalam media group that had given the giant, the Manorama group, a run for its money in the 1980s by popularising pulp fiction.

Such was the competition between Manorama and Mangalam weeklies that it led to the coinage "Ma publications", meaning popular fiction with somewhat titillating illustrations and racy storylines at affordable prices. When cultural icons had complained that such weeklies were devaluing literature, the "M publications" had struck back by saying they are ensuring that neo-literates stay literate - an undeniable claim in a state with a high literacy rate.

Ajith Kumar, the editor-in-chief of Mangalam TV, rebutted the allegations and said viewers had been warned in advance. "Our anchor did caution viewers well before playing the audio, which was a two-minute clip of an hour-long recording," he said. Subsequent news bulletins had a sanitised version minus the explicit content.

Ajith Kumar added: "We are talking about a minister. So where is this issue of over-stepping media ethics? I can understand if he was talking to his wife or even a girlfriend. But here is clear evidence of this minister abusing his power to sexually harass an innocent housewife." (Ajith Kumar had spoken to this newspaper before the channel clarified that the woman was not a homemaker.)

"There is nothing unethical about telling the people of Kerala that here we have a minister who has indulged in such blatant violation of all moral values," the editor-in-chief said.

Ajith Kumar contended that the anchor had repeatedly apologised to the viewers and the panellists who were visibly upset when the audio was played.

The anchor, Lakshmi Mohan, told this newspaper: "I too am a woman and I know how all women would have felt. But I just did my job as a professional media person."

Mohan had to face a barrage of criticism on the social media. "It is sad that people on the social media are targeting me for presenting the news. I was only doing my job," she said.

She echoed the views of her boss and insisted that she did warn viewers well before playing the audio. "I had apologised to the panellists and my viewers but we had to play it as it involved a minister," she added.

Noted Malayalam writer and columnist N.S. Madhavan differed with the channel's justification and termed the "expose" "blackmail journalism". "The media, per se, is under a tremendous credibility crisis. But this is the pits," he said.

Madhavan said the channel had merely attempted to create sensationalism by invading an individual's privacy. "The minister could have been more careful. But having said that, his personal life is no one's business as long as there isn't a genuine complaint from the woman," he said.

Another question is whether a public figure can claim the right to privacy. "He certainly can, if it was a consensual act. But if he was coercing some woman, he doesn't enjoy any privacy rights as he is a public figure," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based research organisation Centre for Internet and Society.

Tweaking WikiLeaks chief editor Julian Assange's remark that "transparency is directly proportionate to power", Abraham said: "Privacy protection must be inversely proportionate to power."

"There cannot be privacy rights if a politician has homicidal tendencies. But he is entitled to his privacy if he's a diabetic as it doesn't cause any harm to society," Abraham said, adding the same logic would apply to the Saseendran "expose".

Abraham said he would rather wait for the judicial probe to find out if Saseendran had coerced the woman. "If he harassed her, he cannot take the cover of privacy," Abraham said.

Lost in the din is a little detail: multiple versions of the uploaded tape on the Net have already clocked more than 8 lakh "views".