News hounds

It takes a lot for a zealous free speech advocate to turn pro-censorship. My own conversion took place as I watched our electronic media gorge themselves on the personal tragedy in the Mahajan family.

It takes a lot for a zealous free speech advocate to turn pro-censorship. My own conversion took place as I watched our electronic media gorge themselves on the personal, and what surely ought to have remained private, tragedy in the Mahajan family. My initial sense of faint outrage turned to full-fledged disgust as I flicked from one channel to another, hoping to find respite from the intrusive reportage. Every news channel without exception chose to adopt the bizarre, dual role of Sherlock Holmes meets Judge Judy.

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We had anchors licking their vulture-like lips, as they postured about the significance of the mysterious white powder ad nauseum. An seriously, the complete lack of consideration shown to the families was downright shameful. You do not thrust a camera in front of bereaved parents and question them about their son’s lifestyle. What on earth do you expect to discover? That a mother who has lost her son will make more sense of the devastation because he died snorting? The news coverage consisted of one abominable invasion of privacy after another. Little wonder I found myself praying for a Kashmiresque media blackout.

Is Rahul Mahajan a deviant, drug addled hedonist who went overboard with the snorting? Or is he a mentally fragile, grieving son on Prozac? I don’t know. And more importantly, it isn’t anyone’s (with the exception of his family and doctors) business to find out. It’s highly odd that the very same media that pooh poohs the moral policing of the Shiv Sena is more than happy to lay asunder the private lives of individuals and cast judgment on them, once they cloak their voyeurism in the guise of investigative journalism.

The whole ‘he’s a public figure so we have a right to know’ crap doesn’t cut either. Rahul might have been on the verge of jumping on to the BJP bandwagon, but he hadn’t as of June 2, 2006. He is an ordinary, albeit supremely privileged, private citizen. At the very worst, he’s broken a law or two with his alleged passion for the ‘stuff’. I wonder if the Roys, Puries and Sardesais would welcome similar media scrutiny into their own children’s partying habits. They, too, after all are the sons and daughters of famous men.

Looking back, I can see why Rahul needed to binge on the bubbly. If my own father had been murdered by his brother, I’d be hitting the bottle from dawn to dusk in order to numb the pain, anger and sheer horror. Drug taking, if there was any, is irresponsible behaviour, but it surely does not warrant crucifixion by the media. You can certainly argue that he needs to be punished for breaking the law. Leave that to the courts.

Mahajan should be grateful he survived that night. Thanks to our friends in the media, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s wishing he were dead. It just might do our newshounds well to get off their advertising and junket fattened posteriors and go out to grab some real news. It’d make a nice change.