Daily Post 1404
INVESTIGATION AND THE MEDIA
That investigative journalism has been given a quiet burial would be stating the obvious. When a crime opens the vistas of conjecture, the media is at its best, getting on its bandwagon and make a super success out of it – the TRP and the consequential advertising revenue. When they get a police provided lead or contradictions in a case, they fan out like Sherlock Holmes, giving substantiated / unsubstantiated versions with impunity. It’s not the battle for truth, it is the battle for survival. The media cut throat competition fuels hunger for such content. We have reached a level where hard facts, cut and dry, trained by our media, we find most difficult to digest. With responsibility and accountability already out their rule book, it’s making hay as long as the sun shines.
At least one channel openly claims to know better investigation than the police. Even a fraction of their tenor and approach, if applied by the investigative agencies, investigation would remain a task permanently unaccomplished. The instant case is that of the suicide of Sushant Sight Rajput. For any investigation to be full and complete takes time, with it energy & effort and also inclination to reach to the truth. Investigation cannot and should not taken as a sarkari task to be just delivered. One investigation can make or mar the prospects of the people concerned, Bollywood film industry and the future of the potential artists who want to try their luck in their dream world.
Suicides has always been enigmatic. The suspected ones even further. The abetment to suicide can turn out to be tricky, the subjectivity can be killing and so can be the conclusions. That stress is directly proportional to cut throat competition you are subjected to, is what we have all experienced. The different contending causes for the suicide will have to be evaluated with surgical precision to come to the final story. The role of depression in his final decision to take life has to corroborated or otherwise. If so who were the accentuating personas at the personal, intimate life level or the unseen strangle of the Bollywood ecosystem . The media which is talking endlessly about the case now had no inkling of the Bollywood lobby, if it so exists. Media has become a post mortem expert is a given.
One suicide. Two cases, two investigative agencies, each seemingly going against each other, one country, one law, can force anyone to think. Can a death change all social equations which were generally being accepted? We find this in dowry death cases, everything is hushed up, till the disaster hits and then it is a no holds barred mudslinging match. Money and broken relationships are a part of any complex human relationship. How and if the money laundering gets connected to the untimely death of the actor is to be seen? The pressure to depose exerted in favour of the Patna investigation angle has also surfaced. One life has many lives we live simultaneously, each being unravelled by different investigative agencies, and media providing the relentless filler, may take some time before the final word is said. But when it happens, let objectivity and empirical evidence prevail.
INVESTIGATION AND MEDIA ARE TOUGH TO HANDLE SIMULTANEOUSLY.