A law unto itself

Remember those gory visuals on television? A police officer, his right leg blown off by a bomb and his chopped fingers strewn all over the place, wreathing in pain as two ministers and nearly two dozen officials and policemen looked on helplessly on a street in Tamil Nadu?

But this piece is not about the visuals themselves, though the desirability of showing such disturbing visuals without adequate screening is in itself a serious matter for debate. It is more about what followed thereafter - the way the ministers, officials and policemen were grilled and roasted by the anchors of news channels for their cardinal failure to come to the rescue of the dying policeman. When the under-fire superintendent of police of the concerned district feebly tried to point out that everybody was stunned into inaction for a few minutes by the sheer suddenness of the incident and that it was nothing like ‘an eternity’ that the anchor was referring to, the anchor had the audacity to harangue the officer thus: “Come on, officer. The police officer was wreathing in pain and was asking for help for close to 25 minutes. The television cameras were all there. We have got footage of more than 10 minutes. What are you talking about?”

Something within me snapped at this point. I could feel my blood curdle – not at the supposedly guilty SP, but at the shrill anchor. Here was a man who was actually bragging about the fact that television crews were busy shooting the dying man for ‘over 10 minutes’ – not once thinking about leaving their cameras aside and rushing to the help of the man!!

Perhaps, there is no use blaming the anchor because an anchor is only as good (or as bad) as the channel. This particular English channel held everybody who was present on the spot guilty of insensitivity. But wasn’t its own crew (or whichever crew it borrowed the footage from) guilty of the same crime? What moral right does it have to question others when, instead of taking the crew to task, it actually tom-tommed the ‘exclusive’ footage shot by it – showing it uncensored?? Does one become some kind of a robot – devoid of all human emotion and sensitivity – the moment s/he becomes a journalist or a cameraperson???


Even a police officer needs a warrant issued by the competent authority to enter your house. But the television media needs no permission. It can barge into your home - even your bedroom – any time of the day or night if it smells the sniff of a ‘story’ there. There may be a bereavement in the family. But that would not stop the intrepid reporter from thrusting his boom in front of your face and ask blithely; “How are you feeling?”

Of late, the media – especially the television media – has arrogated to itself the sole right to ask questions of everybody. But who would question the media? Certainly not the Press Council, a toothless body with no power to take erring media houses to task. Such is the power of the media that even the seemingly all powerful politicians, bureaucrats and the judiciary dare not ask an uncomfortable question to it. If they do, the media fraternity would hit the streets crying themselves hoarse over the attempt to “gag the Press”, “throttle freedom of expression” and “rape of democracy”. So dead drunk it is of its power (and so cut-throat the race for the TRP, one might add) that it is futile to expect it to introspect and take corrective measures.

So, who will rein in the media? The only entity that has the power to take on the rampaging bull is the ‘consumer’ of news – the television news viewer, the newspaper reader and so on. When s/he makes it clear that s/he will not have this nonsense any more, the big bosses of the media are bound to sit up and take notice. From there to taking the necessary corrective steps is just a step away.