What is wrong with the media?

A few nights back, I happened to catch the late night snippets that Aaj Tak (one of the news channels on television for those who've never watched it). This is not a channel I usually watch, and I caught even this bit purely by accident. But what I saw appalled me, and I thought I should write about it and share it with all my friends and family who read my blog.

To begin with, the way this channel chooses to present these news snippets is pretty awful. Sensationalising the traumatic events taking place in the lives of ordinary, often impoverished, sections of India's population, what Aaj Tak aims to do is not so much garner sympathy and support as appeal to the voyuer in people, and thus increase their TRP. Anyway, this story, which the commentator related with evident relish, was about this woman from an obviously lower-middle class (according to India's class system) background. She and her husband had divorced, but had fallen in love all over again and later remarried ('bilkul filmo ki tarah', 'just like in the movies'). Only, she didn't stop seeing the man/men she had been involved with in the interim period, and one day, after an altercation with her husband, she got her lovers to beat him up. Which they did, only so thoroughly that they killed him, and that too, before their son, who's barely 4 years old. The mother then dumped the child with her in-laws and decamped with the lovers, after telling people that her husband as away on work (or something to that effect).

And now I come to the horrifying part. This small, obviously traumatised child, who'd seen his father murdered in a particularly brutal way before his eyes, was the one who had informed his grandparents of the incident, who in turn had reported the matter to the police, thus setting in motion the whole chain of events that followed. Our media, in the form of Aaj Tak, did not just report the matter with great relish, they actually brought the child before the camera and made him recount the whole grisly incident in great detail, prompting him most helpfully and asking further questions whenever he faltered. A child of barely four was made to relive the horror of his father's murder for an uncaring, soulless news channel whose primary responsibility is to their ratings.

I know it's naive in these days to presume that the media has any social responsibility or even a heart. But surely this was carrying it too far? I know, too, that this is not an isolated incident. The grandparents of the little boy could obviously be browbeaten into submission - perhaps they were told that placing their vulnerable grandchild before the camera could help bring their son justice - but is there nothing anyone can or will do? In western nations the media would never have been allowed anywhere near the child. There are child support centres who would have immdiately come into play. Is there no one who could step in in our country to prevent the media - or individuals, for that matter - from pursuing their selfish agendas with such impunity?