Media in times of anarchy | |
This is the kind of event that brings back the debate about the nature of Indian democracy and the role media can play in it. The case of encounter killings in Andhra Pradesh and the polarity of opinion reflected in the media.... | |
Posted on The Hoot on Sunday, Dec 21 21:51:54, 2008 | |
The dust still hasn't settled on the Mumbai attack and its aftermath. But life goes on and Telugu media are on to another round of shocking events. This time it is terror against young women. According to reports in media, Shakamuri Srinivasa Rao (25), Potharaju Hari Krishna (24) and Bajjuri Sanjay (22), degree students of This is the kind of event that brings back the debate about the nature of Indian democracy and the role media can play in it. Unfortunate as the whole sequence of events is, the electronic media launched into their saturation coverage: at the homes of the girls who are the original victims and later the homes and encounter site of the men killed by the police. One got to see public filing past the dead men's bodies at the encounter site, with the police standing by. ETV2, TV5 and TV9 gave sound bites of the police, interviews with politicians, coverage of scenes at the homes and neighborhoods of the affected, and sound bites of the human rights activists. Each of the groups was deeply conscious of the importance of media in taking their views to the larger constituency. Quickly within minutes of the encounter killings, a polarity of opinion emerged. One, that of people who believed in the rule of law and more importantly, the duty of the state agencies to respect the rule of law; the other, man-on-the-street reactions from the friends of the victimized girls, which began to praise the swift closure the police brought to the crimes against the girls. The channels also showed people burning crackers and offering pedas to the police in celebration of the 'encounters'. Now, what are the media expected to do in instances of this kind? It is their job to reflect public opinion that is baying for blood and revenge, and it is also their responsibility to give adequate play to the voices of sanity - that of human rights activists like Dr Balagopal and Lok Satta chief, Dr Jayaprakash Narayan. For a change, the channels have shown remarkable maturity by highlighting the various dimensions of the issue in equal measure. The media after all need to reflect what they see on the ground to the viewer. The problem in such instances is with what they see on the ground: ... They see a terrified family which did not get any help after repeated requests; the local police who chose to ally with the local goons; when public opinion turned in an election year, the state that allowed the police to kill the arrested men with impunity, therefore allowing the rule of law to be undermined, and in the process covering up their complicity in the original crimes against the young women; the police that emerged once again as a deeply criminalized force that has the complete support and protection of our lumpen polity; the usual noises about enquiries that are being made; a state minister who is courageous enough to say that the 'encounter' satisfies public sentiment; a home minister who is challenging those who question to prove wrong-doing on part of the police. The media have done their job bringing all this and more to us, blow-by-blow. Only the nature of packaging sometimes puts different kinds of emphasis on different items. For instance, every time the theme begins, they will have a gory graphic splashed in red/yellow/orange, recapping the events in detail to the accompaniment of filmy music. Dead bodies are repeatedly shown satisfying the prurient curiosity of the viewer. Screaming, posturing kin gesticulating to the cameras complete the picture in a gut-wrenching display of the uncontrolled passions ruling our society. What more can one want? It's like watching a hit Telugu film. Paisa vasool. As an add-on, ETV2 got a large number of girl students to roundly applaud the encounters. While the other channels did show similar bites in brief, the ETV2 anchor concluded that 'whatever anyone has to say, a large number of people wanted the men put to death'. The highlight was, of course, the grievously injured girl (from her hospital bed) expressing satisfaction that the men are killed by the police. First a graphic account of her intense suffering and then her endorsement of the police action, in her own words. In contrast, the sane voices of the human rights activists pale before the drama of the rest of the coverage. We, the so-called civil society, tolerated anarchy and absence of rule of law that we see today when it hit political groups beyond the pale, like the Naxalites. The systematic rigging of evidence and falsification of encounters is ok if the police label someone as an extremist through the media. No further evidence is necessary. It satisfies public sentiment. According to television news reports shown on the day, in a horrifyingly primitive manner, the same Warangal police in an earlier encounter put the severed head of a man on display at a public place to make an 'example' of him. One would not have believed that the 'law and order' machinery of the state could do this, in 21st century India that has ambitions of being the next superpower on the world stage, if one did not see the footage. Dare we even claim to be a democracy? Somewhere along the way, the state institutions in Andhra Pradesh, with active collusion of the media built a consensus against the views of human rights activists. It is anti-national to question the abuses of state power. Today there is a pervasive environment of abuse of state power that appears to be beyond anyone's control. The political leadership itself is from among lumpen elements who don't set much store by democratic ideals. In large parts of the state of Andhra Pradesh, under successive governments, anarchy was allowed to thrive. The state machinery has been systematically abused and corrupted by the criminalized polity for its own gain, to the neglect of the day-to-day needs of the law-abiding citizen. More specifically, Andhra Pradesh leads the country in the number of crimes committed against women and ranks second in the country for cognizable offences against women, as per the 2007 statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau. Over the years, there have been several sensational cases (Pratyusha, Balakrishna, Ayesha) involving film stars and other powerful people where media have given extensive coverage but ended up without any outcome. Media coverage or not, netas stood watch to ensure that their kin are protected from any answerability to law. Today, some of the worthies involved in those cases are either leading political campaigns or are supporting political parties. The electronic media avidly follow their careers and their twirling of mustaches and slapping of thighs in challenge at roadshows. Rarely does one see the electronic media revisiting the past of the netas who want to rule us come next election. True, without electronic media one would not get to put a face to the victim and to the bluster and falsehoods of authority. But will this daily display of the powerful getting away with murder not erode our faith in democracy? In this case, the state swung from complete dereliction of duty to complete violation of human rights and the public opinion swung from antipathy to hero worship of the police. The coverage in this instance appeared to be balanced, but the 'public opinion' showcased on television chose to applaud the lawlessness of the state. If true, this is a classic case of Gramscian hegemony at work where the victim voluntarily accepts what is detrimental to him/her. When a complex web of influences are tearing apart the social fabric, can television news alone be blamed for holding a mirror to it? May be not. But television news certainly can use the events to stir the civic consciousness of the viewer by providing well-calibrated coverage for greater social good. In this instance, perhaps by refraining from embellishing the news with additional packaging, curtailing live coverage of unbridled responses and sobering the tone of coverage to give the saner voices a chance. Interestingly, a day after the encounters, two channels, TV5 and TV9, turned off the heat completely and moved on to other stories. It is ETV2 that is doing follow ups. ETV2 is doing follow ups on the story, but it is the sudden silence of the other channels that is strange. | |
Sunday 6 December 2009
Media in times of anarchy
