Media’s journey from a ‘WatchDog’ to a ‘Pet Dog’ of TRP and Politics

 

By - Ashi Gupta

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Media always played an important role in transferring information throughout the world since ages. Media is responsible for covering the incidents moreover to be called as the first draft of information, apart from this media could also be used to spread awareness regarding anything that could be helpful for the audience be it government's new policies, a newly discovered disease or a particular event that requires social participation. Media could be considered anything that could be used to spread information i.e., newspapers, radio, letters, journals, news channels and nowadays, social media.

India’s first newspaper was published in 1780 and since then almost 1.5 Lac different newspapers have been published in more than 30 languages. Though a very  large section of the Indian population has shifted to social media or the internet for information, a large number of the rural population still depends on the news channels and newspapers for information.

In Zahira Habibullah Sheikh v. State of Gujarat ( https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1067991/) , the Supreme Court explained that a "fair trial obviously would mean a trial before an impartial Judge, a fair prosecutor and atmosphere of judicial calm. Fair trial means a trial in which bias or prejudice for or against the accused, the witnesses, or the cause which is being tried is eliminated."

The Indian judiciary is capable of serving justice to all the citizens who have been exploited in one or other ways. But in a country of 1.34 million people how can all the cases be in notice of the courts. In such conditions, the media plays an important role in dragging the attention of the government bodies towards the various incidents.

During the discussion of the contempt liability issue, i.e., to re-interpret the contempt law with reference to publications of the cases made from the stage of filing an FIR in criminal cases may be subject to contempt liability. The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, shelters the publications under free trials against contempt of court proceedings. However, if any publication interferes or hinders or tends to hinder any Judicial proceeding, of civil or criminal matter, and, which is actually a pending proceeding, amounts to contempt of court. An example of this immunity can be seen in the case of Aarushi Talwar's Murder (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-41591524), 2013, in which the media declared the judgement of guilty and not guilty even before the beginning of actual proceedings. The media was immune to this type of publication earlier. However, the interference of the legislature was not acknowledged.

The same could be observed in the JESSICA LAL MURDER CASE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jessica_Lal), in this case the witnesses were influenced and the culprit was not punished. But when the culprit was released, the case got noticed by the journalist who tried her level best to unveil the truth. She conducted several sting operations on the witnesses and finally justice was served. The victim's family had given up on the case, but the media never gave up on the case which  resulted in Justice for the victim.

As the time passes by, the media has shifted from being a watchdog to a pet dog of politics and TRP. Nowadays the attention of Indian media has been shifted to the topics that could just grab the attention of audience under the influence of either terror or insecurities. Nowadays, the media reports that were supposed to be the first drafts of the events have become the line-by-line commentary of a play. In Order to make it more like an interesting movie rather than information.

Especially in a country like India where people are full of insecurities and love to gossip about the incidents and bad events in the life of others. Every year plane crashes make Breaking News on the television but car crashes that kill far more people every year don't even come in the notice of the Media. Because one can avoid travelling in a plane due to terror but no one is going to stop travelling in a car. Similarly, a bombing becomes a topic of debate and discussion for months but people never talk about pollution that kills thousands of people every year. Media never works on normalising the topics that require help and attention.

Instead of circulating the right information about the bill at the time of CAA and NRC protests the media was observed spreading more and more hatred amongst the people and it was busy telecasting the fake protests of the students. In the era of social media where a single image circulated can become a reason for a lot of riots, Media is the one which  should hold the responsibility of providing the right information to the audience as a large number of people rely on the information which they provide to the people. But we could see it covers  the violent protests of the students rather than the silent ones, because they involve more killings and it grabs the attention of all the people which increases their TRP. They never realised that as far as they are spreading the information, they are creating more agitation on both sides. They never realise the reason behind turning off social media at the time of such incidents. The protests were initially started peacefully but eventually they turned into harmful and disgusting riots that took the life of thousands of innocent individuals. The list of news channels could be classified into two sections. This is where we could see the media portraying their personal opinions rather than information. There was a separate section of news channels that supported the decision of the government and there was another list of news channels who were against the decision and continuous telecast of protests and encouragement towards violence was circulated. Amongst the two sides there was no news channel that was circulating the reality behind the citizen amendment act of 2020.

We could also observe the hypocrisy of media at the time of Sushant Singh Rajput's death ( a famous bollywood actor) when he committed suicide because of the depression he suffered due to the nepotism in the industry. The headlines of the news channels were heart huntingly nasty and distasteful for the family of the victim. The images of the dead body of the victim were circulated like gossip on social media. The media personnel putting mics on the faces of the victim's family asking them " aapka beta mar gaya, aapko kaisa lag raha hai ''. we could see the creative visualization of the act of suicide saying " hare rang ke kapde se banaya fanda". When the issue demanded sympathies for their family, we could only see questions being asked to them. The headlines were "kyu huge sushant hit wicket" "Bihar ka Sushant Mumbai mein fail Kyu ''. The issue could be handled in a way better situation by spreading awareness about depression among the society. In a country like India, it is okay to talk about black magic, superstitions that don't even have scientific existence but it is a joke to talk about mental health. Most of the famous meme pages and youtubers used Sushant's case as an opportunity to gain popularity. Instead of promoting the idea to boycott the films that had bad content, there were people encouraging the boycott of the movies of star kids. They don't understand that there are still many other hard-working individuals in the same movie. Instead, these ideas make them more popular.

Soon the media channels turned into a daily soap drama after the involvement of Rhea Chakraborty in the case. No wonder how they were keen to observe and include the angle of black magic in the case. There were headlines that resembled the opinions of nasty jobless individuals like "Sushant par rhea ka kaala jadoo" "Dil diya jaan Le" etc. Even during the interrogation of Rhea Chakraborty, we could see media personnel violating the privacy of the actress by putting mics all over her body. We saw a new face of the media after the involvement of NCB in the case. Apart from the genuine interviews and facts we could see horrible gossip circulating on social media just to increase their TRP.

In the duration of the complete case a lot of sensitive events took place in our country but they got no media attention over this case. There were a lot of people suffering from covid that time, there was a shortage of oxygen in many hospitals, many people died of covid but no one was mourning for them. Be it Assam floods, Palghar Incident, Indo - China war, public health system during the pandemic etc. They had no importance to the media as compared to the case of Sushant. The government of India passed three new laws about the farmers and it could affect around 85% of the population but there was no reporting of the protests. Neither interviews nor debates were conducted on news channels.

Conclusion

To conclude this, it appears just and proper to state that though the media is considered as the fourth pillar of democracy, this pillar is somewhat getting biassed by the rust of TRP.

As an audience we all could promote the information that is 100% GENUINE. Apart from this we have the biggest organs with us that is our own intellect. As an audience we should never make these distasteful and bitter lines affect opinions. As nowadays the media is focusing on their TRP rather than providing justice to the victims, providing the right amount of information to the audience. That's why we should learn to decide the difference between real information and gossip.