Bloodied Ethics and Misadventures in Photojournalism

Like many other Indian institutions, Indian media are yet to recognize that there is something called privacy and the same shall be respected as the right of both the living and dead. Last few days saw Indian media touching another nadir.The privacy of the living and dead victims of the bomb blasts in Hyderabad were violated by the senseless and unprofessional acts of The Hindu and The Deccan Chronicle. The two dailies splashed pictures of two mothers grieving over the bodies of their young daughters. In the case of The Hindu, its foray into unethical photojournalism was made much worse by slotting the picture on a scale befitting the overarching bleeds in the tabloids of UK. These pictures would have certainly traumatized scores of readers as much as the families of the victims and, in particular, the mothers in the pictures, if they had also, unfortunately, chanced upon the pictures that were parading their personal emotions and private moments of mourning in public. Such misadventures in photojournalism can not be condoned as they add a multiplier effect to the tragedies that strike terror victims and their families.In the present round of misadventures, what is also evident is the spiralling effect of the culture of bloodied ethics Tamil newspapers and magazines have honed for decades under the damning and often condescending views of their elitist cousins (English newspapers)in Tamil Nadu.

During the last few days, the Indian news channels were also running like headless chicken (to paraphrase Ronen Sen's infamous remark) with their coverage of the inhuman act perpetrated by the police and public on a chain snatcher in Bihar. The endless looping of the footage by CNN IBN and other channels, showing a cop's bike dragging the bare chested chain snatcher, with his face down on the gravel of the road, is more heinous than crime committed by the cops themselves.

With every passing day, ethics and fairness in media are bloodied as much as the scores of victims who are being victimised by sources ranging from terrorists, antisocial elements and even law enforcement agencies. This is not surprising in a country where ethics and fairness rule the roost only in the speeches of the editors and veteran journalists, but rarely get their dues in the air time and news columns of media.