How can human lives matter less than party politics?
This morning, Thursday, 21 November, the news headlines are all about the voter turnout in Maharashtra and Jharkhand and the exit poll predictions.
On Wednesday, TV news channels spent the entire day in Maharashtra, showing us riveting footage of politicians at polling booths—and Bollywood stars with voting ink on their forefingers. Come evening, TV news anchors took over to announce their exit poll results. Will they get it right this time, after their inaccurate predictions for the Lok Sabha and Haryana elections? Wait until 23 November when the counting takes place.
The Maharashtra poll campaign has been the main news story on most news channels since the election dates were announced on 15 October. So much so that they forgot—or chose to underplay—some very bad things happening around us.
Consider just three:
*Television news tells us that there’s an ‘Airpocalypse’ in North India, as people ‘gasp’ for clean air. On Monday, 18 November, it said India’s capital city is ‘choking’ in a ‘gas chamber’ of ‘poison,’ with the worst pollution levels across the world.
*Last week, 10 alleged militants were killed in Manipur; this week, the bodies of six people missing from a relief camp have been recovered while capital Imphal has seen violent protests and attacks on homes of MLAs.
*On 15 November, at least 10 newborn babies died in a neonatal hospital fire in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh.
These are terrible news: for people in North India, Delhi, Manipur, and the families of the infants who died.
And yet, the election campaigns in Maharashtra and Jharkhand remained the rolling story, day in and day out. For instance, even as their own reporters were gasping and choking on an AQI of 500 in Delhi on 18 November, many news channels devoted more time to the ‘poisonous politics’ between the BJP and the Congress after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge compared the ruling party and the RSS to “poisonous snakes”.
The resignation of AAP minister Kailash Gahlot was Page 1 news on Monday, ahead of Delhi’s ‘severe plus’ pollution levels.
TV news lavished more attention on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Adani attack on the BJP’s ‘Ek Hain Toh Safe Hain’ than the very real health emergency caused by breathing in the ‘toxic’ pollutants—which was all but forgotten.
Sure, the AQI levels make daily headlines; sure, there are visuals of reporters at India Gate unable to see Rashtrapati Bhavan because of the milky grey smog; sure, there are the occasional TV debates—on Times Now and CNN News 18, for example—but even then, the politics of pollution in the tussle between Delhi’s AAP government and the BJP-led NDA at the Centre is what remains the focus, instead of outrage over the pollution problem itself.
Mainline English newspapers wrote editorials on the air crisis but shouldn’t there be sustained coverage—even a media campaign—to continuously highlight this health hazard?
If election campaigns and voter turnouts or exits polls can receive non-stop coverage, why not a threat to human life? News channels such as NDTV 24×7 and Mirror Now reported in depth, daily on what Hindustan Times called the “toxic cesspit”—so too could other news channels, if they wanted to.
Jhansi coverage for a day
The heartbreaking death of babies in the Jhansi hospital was major news—for one day. While most TV news channels quickly forgot about it by Sunday, newspapers and news websites carried stories about the human tragedy. For instance, The Times of India Sunday edition had the story ‘Jhansi hosp fire: Young dad saved many babies but lost his twin girls’ on Page 1. The Hindustan Times and The Hindu wrote editorials on the tragic loss of life, but there was little follow-up.
Recall that in May, seven babies died in a Delhi hospital following a similar short-circuit blaze. You would think such horrific incidents would be enough for the news media to take a deep and questioning look at safety standards and the quality of care at neonatal hospitals across India. Instead, after Covid subsided, healthcare isn’t TV news any longer.
Instead, TV news went on about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s and Home Minister Amit Shah’s praise for the film The Sabarmati Report. Times Now Navbharat told us that the film depicts the “truth… of a conspiracy” against Hindus. And there were interviews with the producer Ekta Kapoor…
Also read: Manipur clashes coverage was ThePrint’s most important journalism in 2023
The Manipur blackout on TV
Manipur.
In the Northeastern state caught in a seemingly unending crisis, the first violent protests occurred on 3 May 2023. Since then, there have been sporadic followed by continuous ethnic clashes—about 250 people have died so far, and tens of thousands have been displaced.
And yet, television has barely touched upon the Manipur conflict. It sticks to the political developments—Chief Minister N Biren Singh’s pronouncements, Home Minister Amit Shah’s meetings, and protests by citizens, etc—almost entirely avoiding the human tragedy.
Where are the TV news correspondents reporting from the ground in Manipur? Why, they’re all in Maharashtra or Jharkhand or any other state that might be going to the polls. Anywhere but Manipur. Prime time TV debates prefer not to go there, either.
This is inexplicable: the rape and murder of a medical intern at a Kolkata hospital received 24×7 coverage for days on end; Manipur often doesn’t get a headline.
By contrast, newspapers have been full of news about the latest developments in the state and the conflict’s impact on families. It’s often been the lead story in papers such as The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express or The Hindu.
This is so sad: We know how effective TV news, in particular, can be in swaying public opinion and influencing authorities, when it wants to: recall the carpet coverage of the Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement of the mid-2000s or the campaign for justice in the 2012 Delhi rape and murder of a woman in a moving bus.
Isn’t it time for another such media movement?
(Edited by Prashant)
Papa don’t preach!
Why don’t you and your reporters visit Manipur in person and report on the situation? Why ask others to risk their lives?
Do it yourself and set a precedent for others to follow.
and do what ? pour kerosene over already inflamed ethnic tensions which have a history of tens of decades ? the author seems to have too much of a false confidence in Indian journos having the depth of understanding to even sit through a 30 minute discussion such a issue leave alone discussing it over days. more so when the journos are more concerned with showing one or the other side as evil or conspirators. The writer cleverly skirts the origin of the problem and expects other journos to do the work ?