NEW DELHI: Most will agree that life without news channels wouldn’t be half as interesting. Besides how long can one watch dubbed Tamil films and cookery shows? Of the huge void Dish TV has created in the variety of programs its audience gets to watch, only the news makers seem to care. For they toil for us.
Day in and day out there are reporters on the field gathering data both crucial and futile to fill our waking hours and give the human brain enough fodder for thought. And how long will one last with what the oppressors said and what the oppressed did? It’s not every day that one stumbles upon a scandal.
The latest scandal to hit the tube is of course, the Sheena Bora murder case. Enough has been discussed about it and this article will refrain from getting into the specifics and instead focus on the Media and the industry of news making and selling.
Since August 25, news anchors have not got enough sleep and writers have dug out almost all possible angles of this story laying out in public the personal lives of Indrani Mukherjea and all related to her. The crime has merely become a disguise, a façade almost to veil the voyeuristic intention that drives the coverage.
Something essentially similar happened not long ago, during the Arushi Talwar case. Another scandal: Teenage girl, servant - what illicit possibilities could there be! Reporters trampled on evidence and cooked up theories and gossip was the agenda of the day.
While working in a media house, I have heard colleagues discuss their days of reporting the twin murder case. “It was crazy. The entire media scene had crashed (at Arushi’s house). It was like a picnic. And no one cared what had really happened. Our boss just wanted a story. Anything would do.” says Neha about her ex-employer (name changed).
And it’s not just these big murder mysteries. It’s everywhere: Tina Munim’s live-in relationship, Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar or an RSS quote. Everything can be made scandalous. Lash out the dirt and then add a little ‘alleged’ or ‘rumored’ somewhere.
The media has consistently been on a TRP mission screaming like loud hawkers competing for the attention of audience. And it’s common knowledge that the Indian palette craves masala.
Yet it is this very Masala that has created victims out of those who are on the other side of the camera. Indrani Bora may or may not be a murderer but whether she had a live-in relationship or is ambitious are beside the point. It is also beside the point to declare a man to be a pervert without waiting for the legal system to take a legitimate action.
The media is becoming more and more like batman just that it’s financed by the Joker and driven by a passion only for profit. The only thing that’s probably to take back from this is that someday and that could be any day, it might be you or me on the other side of that camera and without giving us a chance to explain, the world is going to strip us for its entertainment.