Is it Really the Media?

The Evening News or the Breakfast News are nobody’s bother in today’s world, since we have channels which dedicate 24hrs for NEWS. A flip of channels and there are so many channels practically offering the same stuff, at around the same time, with only languages being different, or sometimes only headings being different.

But in this age of competition, Even News channels fight for the draw of the First Blood of almost everything, be it our country’s loss or a win in cricket, or allegations of a party at another. But a few days ago, the whole nation stopped to look at a Murder of 14 year old girl, and before we knew it, it became a Double Murder and India’s Biggest Ever Murder Mystery , even before the Sun could set for the day.

Its really surprising how hungry we were for information of that little girl, who must have lived a very simple life, but right now is more spoken about woman of the country, even before Sonia Gandhi and Pratibha Patil. Just try this, Write your name in Google search box, and hit enter and look at the results. Then, come back and write Arushi instead. IS this how you wish to be remembered? Then, what wrong did that little girl do?

And that’s where the question arises, is it really the Media? Are just TV channels and newspapers responsible for the defamation of the family and the torture they went through?
Whensoever, something new was cited, were we not inclined to leave our job at hand, and listen to what was being said? Did we ever, change the channel and say, I don’t wanna watch it? I believe, the news channels did focus on the murder so much, because they knew that the whole country would ACTUALLY wait for news that would follow. They knew that every bit of information, including her mails and Text messages, were what people wanted to look into. They knew that we were so shameless, that we would not even mind asking the police, what exactly did they mean, when they used the words, like “objectionable” “but not compromising”.
I sincerely think that it is purely because of our interests of peeking into others lives and hiding our own that a situation like this has stood up before us.

And while all this takes place, The Information and Broadcasting Minister can surely look into matters of holding the media to a line, where it knows the difference between Free Press and Privacy of the Individual.