By Ranjona Banerji
How does one look back at this year in the media? Surprise, surprise, I’ve even found a high point. I know, I know you’ve collapsed while wondering which alien has body-snatched me.
Through the pandemic however there has been a dedicated band of health reporters, spread across a series of newspapers and news sites, who have worked hard to bring us stories of the spread of Covid-19, official obfuscations and the toll on healthcare workers. They have questioned and broken through governmental bumf, they have revealed what has been kept hidden from the public.
We learnt about under-testing, we learnt that hospitals were, on government instructions, under-reporting Covid19 deaths attributing them to comorbidities, we learnt that fake Covid negative certificates were being openly sold, we learnt how medical associations and government agencies were at loggerheads, we learnt how daily government briefings were full of lies. We also learnt of the terrible toll this pandemic has taken on patients and their families, on medical professionals and healthcare workers, on ancillary services and the police.
In a normal world, all this would have been the main news all the time. But ahem, this is Modi’s India with his media lapdogs well at heel for six years.
As millions of migrant workers – the backbone of India walked home in the middle of a pandemic and the middle of summer – it was only small sections of the media that adequately responded. Barkha Dutt’s newly launched Mojo Story was on the streets with the migrants. So were several other reporters as the march of desperation continued. But did it enrage the nation? Of course not. The evening prime time debates were still stuck in their hate-spreading sectarian games.
But so much for these small sparks of journalists actually doing their jobs. Here endeth the good news bulletin. If the pre-Covid19 year was spent with the media trying to downplay and twist the anger, protests and pain over the Modi Government’s unconstitutional citizenship acts, in June, the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput took us to a new low. Yes, we went even lower.
Almost half the year was spent in the most despicable unedifying spectacle of TV anchors frothing at the mouth, screaming for “justice” for Rajput, who died by suicide according to medical and police reports. But no. Rajput died in Maharashtra. He was from Bihar. Maharashtra was a renegade state as far as the BJP was concerned and Bihar had an assembly election due. And thus the death was twisted in as many cynical and macabre ways as possible.
Justice of SSR was the cry. But in fact it became a witch hunt. Against anyone who had not given SSR a film role, anyone who had given him a bad review, anyone who hadn’t smiled at him in the corridor. All this was amplified by actress Kangana Ranaut who had no actual connection to Rajput but decided to abuse his death to settle her own scores.
And finally the rabid hounds settled on his girlfriend, Rhea Chakraborty. This became one of the most vicious character assassinations ever, a complete vilification and destruction of a person egged on by television channel blood lust.
Look how shameless we are, we’ve practically forgotten all about it. Those TV channels don’t go back there. The Bihar elections were won by the BJP. There was no case at all and small paras on the inside pages of newspapers tell you the CBI, Narcotics Bureau and Enforcement Directorate found no evidence of murder, drug peddling and monetary fraud.
The people may have forgotten. But what about us?
What indeed. This is Us. Despicable. Destructive. Unacceptable.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. Her views here are personal