Good Morning India

Think Before You Sting

By Yogendra Bali

It is sad day when the media, instead of the watchdog that it was, become a scorpion and a snake. The sting operations have reduced media to that and there urgent need to react before irreparable damage is done to the democratic and human rights of the citizens of this country. There are issues that need to be urgently attended to by the media, issues that vitally affect the life of the citizens. If need be then let there be a legislation governs the stings so that the ‘stingsters’ are made accountable.

Time was when the print media – there were no TV news channels at that time - prided itself on the investigatory story. Such an exercise in standing up for a public cause was well researched, full of facts and not bristling with barbed opinions of a wayward reporter. The principle of the fourth estate was “facts are sacred”. The reporter was taught to hold his comments and just report facts. Laying traps and planning plants and encounters was left to the questionable and wayward operators of torture and aggression within the police forces. The media growls and howls were enough to arouse the public conscience, goad the government into action and inform the thinking sections of the society about the sufferings of the common man. It was done through honest, fearless and unprejudiced reporting by journalists considered guardians of the public interests and concerns and by great cartoonists through their depiction of the common man like “Babu ji”. That was the time when media was considered the fourth estate and the watchdog of the common man.

But sadly, shockingly, and for some of us, ashamedly, we have moved from the age of media protection of the common people to the age of media prosecution and media torture of the unsuspecting citizens. The task of their own kind of plants, and fake encounters to prove that the channel is always right has been over by unscrupulous, unabashed and uncouth stringsters. They are like self-styled policemen in the media-man’s garb. The privacy of the individual, the sanctity of judiciary, the constitutional guarantee of human rights, is all subjected to their vicious string operations. They hide, hiss and quietly crawl to sting their victim when he or she is least suspecting. They are no watchdogs. They are scorpions who indulge in snaky operations. I would caution these protagonists of quick fix journalism of the electronic media variety to think before they sting.

Often sting are over publicized on the basis of doctored facts and manufactured evidence, private lives and public institutions are sought to be destroyed by those who would want journalism and media to degenerate into a commercial titillating device and sensation mongering and TV channels into bordellos rather than real gatherers and disseminators of news and nothing but the news. In these so called sting channels, views come before news. And by the time one carefully gets down to news through the labyrinth of sensational view mongering and postures by Wild West like characters passing as news anchors. One finds the news mutilated, minced and often murdered. For God’s sake, do not do that to news. What you do to others for ego, mongering and sensation pedaling, can be done to you one day and you would understand that lies hurt much more than truth. Lies in print or on audio-video networks do not become truths simply because a lot of hush-hush anchoring and morphed photography are put into the masala manufacture of sounds and visions cocktail which has not the remotest relations to news, the real news, in public interest and of public concern.

As one picked up a newspaper or turned on a TV news channel, one saw vision of rape, murder, fraud and rage, terrorism and extremism, in the garb of news presentation. The disturbing questions that arise in one’s mind were, ‘Is this news or shock therapy? Does it reflect the mind and morals of the billion strong people of India or of the microscopic obsessed with crime, nudity and moral decay as perpetrators and presenters? Why is it that a crime anchor must look and sound like Gabbar Singh of the Sholay notoriety? What is the great moral of peeping into the muck of the sex loves and aberrations of an odd man or woman? What does the society gain from such hysterical outbursts of sensationalism which raise mob furies of mindless crowds for a day, two days or three days and are then forgotten like the dust on the footpath? But the damage done by these premature outbursts of searing sensationalism is irreparable. These adventures of the society busters not only destroys the lives of their targets but also unconnected victims of mob fury and rioting, burning of busses and stoning of police stations and private and corporate properties. Has that kind of destructive adventurism to be condoned and approved?

The modern-day stingster also takes on the self-styled authority of trial by headlines, an act which serious journalists around the world had abhorred for years. In a constitutional democracy like India, none can usurp extra-judicial powers to himself be it a bureaucrat, a politician or media persons. Judiciary is the backbone of a healthy democracy. But the sting gangs have often tended to impinge on the jurisdiction of the judiciary too. They assume to be judges, prosecutors and the jury themselves. The damage they do is multilateral. They destroy a person’s life. They make those close to their victim live in trauma and shame. They pit sections of a community against one another and legitimate law enforcement agencies. Such conduct deserves to be condemned. It serves no public interest. In fact it deliberately fires public distrust and disaffection on the basis of trumped up media trials.

When a victim of such media “fake encounters”, one might call them sting operations, in rare cases, manages to prove his of her innocence, there is no retribution for the wrong doers and no recompense for the victim. Is that what should happen in a fair and democratic society? Is that what media is there for? Hunger of the millions, poverty of the millions, lack of civic amenities, extremism and insurgency in society, corruption of the politician, the secret links between some of these string gags and stringing channels and known political factions and their front men, expose them as infiltrators into the media ranks. The courts and serious sections of intelligentsia, not subservient to any political masters, have begun to take serious not of these “paper judges and juries” of the sting community. And thank God for that.

What one would like to suggest is that there should be a proper law on the so-called “sting operations” not violating the “fundamental rights” and “human rights”. I hope the Government should also set up a regulatory authority to curb the questionable activities of some of the runaway channels in the electronic world. And to my friends in the media, all I can say is “Think before you sting”. Remember, you are a watchdog not a scorpion or snake.