Apathy of The Media

A calm quite day in college turned out to be a bloody Friday for the students on Villa Marie Degree College Hyderabad on the 5th of November 2009 as Anusha a Final Year B.Com Computers student jumped from the 4th floor of the college building to her death. The incident occurred at around 9:30 am during college hours, naturally there was panic and the news channels got there within no time. Thankfully one of the lecturers Mr. Anil Kumar had the presence of mind to rush her to a hospital immediately and therefore the News Channels only did a voice over or just flashed the incident on the ticker. The rushing to the hospital prevented the media from taking pictures of the girl who lay in a pool of blood after jumping.


Unfortunately that is the only restraining factor in the coverage of the event. Suicide is a condemnable act and a huge burden for surviving family members to bear, losing a child is never easy but since this a college popular for the “Trendy and Chic” girls that attend it, and this was another media circus for the electronic media, who rushed to the spot to get eyewitness accounts and some blood and gore. The fact that the college is also in the heart of the city also helps. When there was no blood, they shifted over the Yashoda Hospital, where the victim was taken and shot her mother and her relatives sobbing inconsolably over the body in the ambulance being taken home. No blurring out the victims face, no form if restraint or compassion shown towards the sobbing mother when she was constantly being questioned about why this happened.


In this day and age it is expected of a hyper sensational and overly active electronic media, where reporters are instruct to show why the person is dying before trying to save their life, unfortunately this is a staple part of the “Training” they receive. The Hindustan Times has an advertisement campaign where the camera person hits the reporter on the head with a rolled up newspaper after she asks the question “Aap ko kaisa lag raha hai?” (How do you feel now?). This of course was shamelessly done by all the electronic news crews there but what is appalling were the newspapers on November 6th the day after, where most dailies across languages published a picture of the mother crying over her child’s body and all the newspapers reported the incident, but this was not the end as all newspapers reported that the incident occurred because the girl was ostracised by her group of friends over her mother chiding them for not letting her come home on time, this got her depressed and she took the extreme step. The police registered a case against those friends of her for abetting suicide and all the newspapers and electronic media reported this but some shockingly mentioned and printed the names of the accused, that too on the front page.

The electronic media went as far as to take the mother’s statement mentioning the names and airing it over and over as “Breaking News”. Such events in public and at an educational institution may cause post traumatic stress to just the observers as these are after all young impressionable teenagers. To mention the names of the girls or to let the general public know how many girls the case was registered against will make life hellish for those accused. Everyone in the college will know and they will be the object of some much unwanted attention from the students, teachers and the college management alike. They did not realise that they were losing a friend to suicide, which in itself is a traumatic event and now they have to deal with the prying and judgmental eyes of everyone in their social circle, where is the sense in that? What if one of these girls attempts and succeeds in suicide, who will be held responsible, definitely not the media. At least their pictures were not flashed over the news or printed in the papers.

The media really need to pull their socks up or face some draconian regulation sometime soon. Though as an afterthought some of the dailies did talk about the lack of counselors in educational institutions and the lack of responsibility shown by private colleges towards the society but that was relegated to the back pages. As a media instructor at the same institution I had a difficult time expalining as to why media ethics should be followed and why there needed to be less regualtion to lessen control and let media be free, but we seem to be past that point now, sometimes forced regulation may be the only option. No use crying hoarse over freedom of speech.