The TV channels had already decided that Rakhi was on a publicity hunt. So, they proceeded to ignore the most basic principles of fair reportage and went on to paint her as a publicity-hungry starlet of dubious credibility.
How many of you watched television recently and thought that Rakhi Sawant
was making a complete fool of herself? Saw her acting post-facto indignant
about something that looked -- from the images shown -- like some consensual
party high jinks? I confess, I did. I shrugged my shoulders and damned both
her and the TV channels for blowing up what seemed a private non-issue.
That was until a friend of mine in Mumbai e-mailed me some pictures that
had appeared in Mumbai Mirror of the actual "kiss" that Rakhi was
objecting to. The images clearly show Mika in the middle of a crowd of
laughing friends grabbing Rakhi and kissing her violently on the mouth.
Rakhi has clearly been taken by surprise and is seen struggling
ineffectually, the surrounding crowd laughing. Was Mika overtaken by a
moment of ungovernable passion? That would, however unforgivable, still have
been understandable. No – the worst excess is this – Mika is looking
into the cameras and making sure they get the best angles of him humiliating
Rakhi.
That Rakhi is demanding just a public apology from the man is big of her,
really big. I would have wanted the man horse-whipped. Mika's expression,
his body language, his manner – they scream of just that attitude that
allows policemen in our country to rape a girl because she is there and she
is alone.
Our TV channels, in their now common style of embarrassing excess,
covered the incident ad nauseam. But here's the catch – they had already
decided that Rakhi was on a publicity hunt. So, they proceeded to ignore the
most basic principles of fair reportage and went on to paint her as a
publicity-hungry starlet of dubious credibility. They repeatedly broadcast
images that only showed Mika kissing Rakhi in a fairly unobjectionable
manner and Rakhi then proceeding to feed him birthday cake… BUT not once
was it mentioned that this was not the incident that Rakhi was
objecting to; that there was a later incident that clearly shows that the
woman did indeed have cause for complaint.
Of course, this righteous anger on Rakhi's behalf might be totally
gratuitous. Rakhi and Mika could well have engineered the whole episode for
publicity. If that is the case, why not simply deny them the publicity by
ignoring the incident? Many of our serious newspapers did not cover it. If
the TV channels felt the need to blow it up the way they did by pretending
it was a piece of serious news, then it behooves them to say it the way it
is. Show viewers all the pictures, not select ones that prop up a
pre-decided story angle.
Unfortunately for Rakhi, she is not an articulate woman, a fact the
channels exploited. An eminently supercilious Rajdeep Sardesai chose to
pillory the woman on his show. Not directly – which one could have
respected -- but by insinuation, by implication, and leading questions for
which Rakhi was no match. Worse, he again showed the wrong pictures.
And oh the hypocrisy: even as he proceeded to milk the incident for
all it was worth, a smug Sardesai kept hinting at how truly low he was
stooping to cover it on his superior show.
Within the space of that one show – and several other similar ones –
the TV channels managed to imply several incredibly unjust things: that
Rakhi deserved to be humiliated in public at a friend's birthday bash
because of her reputation, the way she dresses, because she chooses to party
and have boyfriends. This is the same media that waxes eloquent when some
political parties ban Valentine's Day or the lunatic Right fringe targets
couples romancing in parks. My question: just how different is this from
what the channels did last week?
More important: whether the Rakhis of the world are publicity-hungry or
not, it is up to the media to choose how to treat a particular piece of
news. We can't have TV anchors bleating about how they have been used –
when they can clearly opt not to be.
At best, the TV channels don't exactly cover themselves in glory. The
sight of them falling like a pack of hyenas on every morsel of almost-news
is nauseating. But if they are going to add distortion to their shrillness,
then we have a serious problem.