When Factual Becomes Sensational: Misogny And Titillation In Reporting Of Women Involved In Crime

Headlines such as “2G Queenpin: Radia’s Secret Role in Spectrum Loot” from India Today, “Did Rhea Drive Sushant to Suicide with Black Magic?” aired on Aaj Tak and “Rhea Chakraborty—The Femme Fatale Behind Sushant’s Demise?” published by Hindustan Times scarcely resemble newspaper reports. They could easily have appeared in lurid magazines trading in sex, scandal and sensation. Yet, all of them were published by mainstream media organisations.

The same pattern is visible in headlines such as “Indrani’s Jail Diary: Botox, Affairs, and Daughter’s Ghost” from NDTV, “Mommy Dearest Strangled Daughter in Car for Stepson Lover!” in The Times of India, or “Mini-Skirt Sadhvi: Radhe Maa’s Bedroom Darshan Scandal!” aired by Times Now. Sexualisation, moral judgement and voyeurism dominate these narratives, displacing evidence-based reporting.

Journalist and editor Kalpana Sharma argues that contemporary reporting is not accidental but the result of a commercialised media economy. Since the 1990s, she notes, news has increasingly functioned as a market product, where what sold mattered more than what informed. In this shift, women’s bodies became a key selling point, and sensational crime gained prominence because it attracted voyeuristic interest, particularly in urban markets.

Sharma observes that crime reporting began to be “elaborated with illustrations and dramatic detail… television channels further intensified this trend. Stories were chosen based on TRPs, not news value.” Verification weakened and journalism increasingly gave way to performance. Sensationalism existed earlier, she acknowledges, but its scale and function changed.

“Though women have committed serious crimes across history, the criminal justice system—police, judiciary, and society at large—have yet to accept them for merely the crime they are alleged to have committed, observes Bhupen Patel, Metro Editor of the Mumbai Mirror. He notes that they are still considered the nurturing gender. “So, every time a woman pops up as a suspect, in any case, it attracts a lot of curiosity and attention.”

Readers often form emotional connections, seeing women as mothers, sisters or partners, which can lead to disbelief that a woman could participate in such heinous acts. “This emotional resonance could help explain why these stories attract attention,” suggests Patel.

Maitrayee Chaudhuri, former JNU professor of Sociology and former President of the Indian Sociological Society, argues that societies are deeply gendered. Men, women and trans people are seen differently and treated unequally, reflecting how social structures are organised. Norms and ideas are shaped by those who occupy privileged positions and the news media is part of this structure. Privilege operates through class and caste, race and gender, influencing both individual perspectives and dominant social beliefs. As a result, a person may experience inequality and still hold patriarchal views.

These dominant ideas are embedded in culture itself and appear in everyday language and proverbs. Take the phrase “henpecked husband”—it cannot be reversed without losing meaning. Women are routinely described as hysterical or lacking control, while men are portrayed as calm and rational. Such stereotypes are not produced in newsrooms alone; they are carried into them from society at large.

“This leads to a second issue: the news value of sexism. In the past, advertising often relied on images of scantily clad women. Today, crimes against women are frequently sexualised in news coverage. Such reporting is often designed to titillate rather than to condemn, serving as an additional means of boosting viewership and TRPs,” adds Chaudhuri.

As Sharma puts it succinctly: “Sensationalism is central to this shift”. It brings eyeballs, clicks, and revenue. The stereotyping of women persists not only because it sells, but because misogyny remains deeply embedded in society. Repeated invocations of “traditional values” reinforce the idea that a woman’s place is predetermined, and it is women who bear the consequences.

When women commit crimes, they are portrayed as violating what is seen as the natural order. Women are expected to be passive and to act as custodians of norms within the family, society, and even the nation. Those who transgress these expectations are often depicted as unnatural or threatening, sometimes even likened to witches. “These representations reveal how deeply gendered assumptions shape not only society, but also the production and consumption of news,” says Chaudhuri.

Discussion of gender and the portrayal of women cannot be separated from ideology and power. Language plays a central role in shaping reality. Linguist Peggy Mohan explains: “At heart, this is about who controls the point of view. In crime reporting, filmmaking, literature, in fact, everything, what matters is whose eyes we are asked to see through.”

In film, she notes, point of view determines meaning: who looks, who is acted upon and whose experience counts. The same applies to stories about violence, sex, crime, or power. Mohan is clear that “patriarchy, despite how uncomfortable the word makes many men, is not an insult but a political system”. It determines which perspectives are treated as neutral and which are dismissed as emotional or biased. Even women are often compelled to frame stories through male eyes because narratives are considered legitimate only when men are centred.

This explains why terms such as “seductress”, “over-emotional”, “manipulative” or “cold” continue to circulate in the media. They are not neutral descriptors but instruments of control. When such language becomes common, it reveals which perspective dominates. Mohan also observes that gaslighting operates in the same way: power is reframed as instability, resistance as manipulation. Even attractiveness becomes leverage. Women are expected to conform or be punished socially. This conditioning begins early and shapes behaviour long before adulthood.

“There can be no debate about the judicious use of words in reference to any accused—irrespective of gender,” says Patel. He points out that many journalists often get carried away, but that’s what good journalism is all about: to be objective and never let personal views and emotions overpower, and to use all one’s might to not follow the herd.

The real question, then, is not whether such language is harmful, which is obvious, but who decides what is normal. Media, law and culture are shaped by a relatively small group that presents itself as the majority. History shows that dominance has never depended on numbers alone, but on control, explained Mohan.

When crimes or alleged wrongdoing by women such as Niira Radia, Nupur Talwar, Rhea Chakraborty or Indrani Mukerjea come to light, it is their character rather than the crime that dominates coverage. Sexuality, appearance, emotional conduct and morality take precedence. Women are judged by standards rarely applied to men accused of similar offences.

The Talwar case illustrates this starkly. The media did not wait for judicial outcomes before declaring Nupur and her husband, Rajesh, guilty of murdering their daughter, Aarushi. Senior police officials floated theories of honour killing and extramarital affairs, which were broadcast uncritically. Headlines such as “Dr Nupur Talwar: Grieving or guilty in Aarushi slaughter?” framed suspicion as fact.

Commentary relied heavily on gendered expectations of emotion. Shobhaa De wrote on her blog that Nupur appeared “cold” and “unnatural”, questioning how a grieving mother ought to behave and implying moral deviance. The absence of visible emotion was treated as incriminating.

In the case of Chakraborty, they ran headlines such as “Sushant par Rhea ka kaala jaadu”, “Love, Sex aur Dhokha”. Sections of the media and society were so invested in seeing her behind bars that they forgot that she was arrested on charges unrelated to the main investigation into the suicide of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Eventually, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed a closure report to suggest that the late actor was “illegally confined, threatened, or provoked/abetted to commit suicide” by her. The agency also found no proof that she had embezzled his money or belongings.

The numbers themselves rarely drive narratives. Spin does. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) recorded over 4.45 lakh crimes against women in 2022. It does not maintain a separate category for crimes committed by women because their numbers are comparatively low. Yet, when women do commit serious offences, the impact is magnified far beyond scale.

While the language used now may have taken a downward turn, it was no better in the 90s or 2000s. In the 1990s, Bollywood actress Rekha was blamed for the suicide death of her husband Mukesh Aggarwal. Magazines like Showtime and Cine Blitz called her “The Black Widow”.

Too often, journalists appear to identify a culprit before fully examining the crime. Reporting slips into rigid moral binaries rather than engaging with complexity. Middle-class morality intrudes where professional distance is required. Journalism should focus on actions, evidence and context, not character judgement.

When the Radia tapes emerged, media attention focused disproportionately on Radia’s relationship with Ratan Tata rather than on corporate lobbying or the media’s own role in enabling it. Institutional failure was personalised. Radia was cast as the sole corrupter, even though she merely exploited a system that journalists were already complicit in, driven by proximity to power.

There are no formal guidelines, says Patel, for reporting crimes involving women, though newsrooms rely on “case-by-case discretion”. Drawing on over two decades of crime reporting, he adds that his organisation prioritises reporting facts over manufacturing drama. While he concedes that sensationalism has seeped into contemporary journalism, he calls it “an intrinsic part of news reporting” and goes on to add that the “sooner we overcome this blot in the name of one of the most respected and powerful professions, the better it will be for the tribe”.

Outrage-driven sex scandals involving celebrities serve another function: they bring public figures down to size, making them appear more ordinary and flawed. This dynamic is not accidental. Journalists often operate close to power and fame without fully belonging to it and scandal becomes a way to level that imbalance.

Certain individuals, such as Mukerjea, understand how to use the media effectively. They arrive with ready-made personas, and the media often fails to ask basic questions of credibility because the narrative fits what it wants to sell. In doing so, points out Sharma, the media not only constructs public figures but enables them to manipulate that construction. Despite evidence against Mukerjea in the killing of her daughter Sheena Bora, she has been able to use the same platforms to skew the narrative. She feeds into her myth.

A superficial engagement with gender does little to challenge these patterns. Sharma underscores that market logic dictates which crimes are pursued. Reports of missing women appear regularly across states but are rarely followed up, as they require sustained fieldwork. Instead, high-profile fixers or godwomen are favoured as these are stories that can be produced quickly from desks.

Meanwhile, the most common site of violence against women, which is the home, receives limited sustained coverage, despite clear statistical evidence.

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the editors. As Sharma argues, the buck does not stop with the reporter or the sub-editor, but with those who decide what is pursued, how it is framed, and why it is published. What appears in headlines is only the surface. Beneath it lies a vast structure shaping value, morality, and truth. Language is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Ashlin Mathew is senior associate editor, Outlook. She is based in Delhi.

This article is part of Outlook's March 11 issue Femme Fatale which looks at how popular media has shaped narratives of violence against women over the years and rewrites the language of male gaze in media which commodifies and condemns the women who make headlines.