When your life becomes a news tamasha for millions of screens
The circus every night. Where the entertainment is tawdry, the performers voluntarily malicious, the content meant to titillate, the purpose a very blatant intent to harm. The lines are blurred, so blurred that the audience is left to make its own conclusion. Did I just watch normal, regular people stoop that low? Have I been witness to the sinking of a moral code that was the ethos of this profession once-upon-a-long-forgotten time? Was what I saw a rendition of an avowed expression of truth while it was anything but that? Was the pontification meant to evoke a moral response so marked with facetiousness of assumption that it aroused nothing but a sense of disgust?
The questions are many that those who consider themselves decent human beings feel bothering their minds when they become the audience of that circus. The soap opera of news, analyses, debates, discussions, and judgements on television screens, night after night, otherwise knows as talk shows. Welcome to the medium that has lost its own identity while attempting in futility the so-called moral policing of a society that is too confused to comprehend what it is being served. Night after night. In a loop. Until the apparent becomes the truth. Until the damage is too deep to be repaired easily. Until the letter is singular and in scarlet. Until lives are tarnished black if not destroyed completed.
How did it become so murky, so ugly, so single-mindedly vicious? The answer is not as simple, as black-and-white, as the verdicts passed in these talk shows. Is it a “sincere” attempt to uncover the truth, equipped with nothing more than conjectures, hypotheses, pieces of highlighted reports, snippets from media reports, and statements that are shakier than a willow tree during a tornado? To turn lives of those who happen to be the sujet de jour into a ratings game has become child’s play, with the anchor and his posse looking more sinister than that little evil doll, Chucky, many children were terrified of. The doll is tiny, but it has a knife. And the tiny stabs made by the tiny doll do not kill, but they make the victim bleed. Watching your life become a tamasha on millions of TV screens, you recoil as you feel your chest tighten. How did it become so blatantly callous?
The surreal-ness of seeing your life hash-tagged by TRP-driven anchors is the stuff you watch with incredulity, then anger, and eventually, amusement. Your personal grief, the unbelievably painful loss in your life, and its aftermath is the fodder for those who need “breaking news” to remain at the top of that game where they reached trampling many values and discarding all they held sacred once upon a I-love-journalism-because-of-its-power-to-uncover-the-truth avatars ago. The latest “scoop” trumps the latest news. The dignity of guests who dare to speak against what the anchor is hell-bent on proving to be the only “truth” is shredded to bits, making their words and statements a spectacle of ridicule on national television. All who are the yes-men/women of the host/anchor/moderator are given the time to air unsubstantiated views in the guise of imparting information that is neither verifiable nor reliable. The insults dished out to those who disagree or have completely different version of the same story, sometimes even quoting the person being discussed, are told to take their truth elsewhere because, hey, the mighty host just debunked your theory, because acceptance of the same would have his entire edifice of “justice” shaking in its very flaky foundations. The truth be damned, your integrity be damned.
The vilifications, the innuendos, the slander. Where questions are insults and debates are judgements. The meeting of like-minded souls, the identically worded testimonies, the same-hued condensation, the one-toned jury, and the unanimous arbitration. In the media trial of judge so and so, I declare you guilty. Your protestations of innocence may hold some weight in a real court, that of law, but in my kangaroo court, you were guilty when I began your trial. Capisce. I will mould the statements. I will influence the jurors. I will silence the defence. I will prosecute. I will penalise. I will judge. And I will be the jailer. Your fate was sealed when I took upon myself your case. My trial will be so loud, so one-sided, so blatantly partisan, so inflexible, that for once it would be a testimony to the blindness of justice. In all its convoluted (dis)glory. Justice turned on its head.
The silence of those who don’t satiate media’s hankering for a new sound bite every day is taken as an expression of guilt. Refraining from speaking into microphones that are thrust in their faces while they go about their daily life is taken as hiding the truth. Not agreeing to media debates of their very personal – but unfortunately very public – tragedy is assumed to be their tacit involvement in the alleged crime. Their two-lined responses to the out-of-favour-with-the-ruling-party politician– whose most noteworthy claim to fame is attributing derogatory epithets to the opposing side and conjuring up murder scenarios straight from a B-grade 1980s made-in-cuckoo-land thriller - are regarded as misplaced hubris. The ongoing police investigation be damned, the TRPs and retweets-hungry anchors and politicians have them in the dock. Of the coliseum type.
There is no end to it. Just because your name is there, it is immaterial how it is exploited to further agendas of political point-scoring, of personal vendettas, of bringing down those you merely dislike. Sometimes for no reason at all. Your picture is splashed with taglines that are nothing more than an open insinuation, and a hunger to label you. Those whose personal characters are shaped by the gratuitous gossip they build their entire “literary” careers on, whose own estranged family members scorn them for their viciousness, and the hi-darlin’ socialites who, bored with their daily nightly entertainment, turn into TV analysts are the arbiters of truth, and witnesses in a case that is nothing more than a salacious drama for those who build their lives gnawing on others’ miseries.
Speaking clearly in front of a TV camera is not a certification of your veracity. Wording your theories elegantly does not make you trustworthy. Nodding to the anchor/judge/executioner’s beat is not a testimony of the honesty of your statement. It merely makes you a willing accomplice of a media trial that is discordant with all accepted norms of journalism, social behaviour, of a code of turning theories into concrete facts based on a solid legal investigation.
The truth is always there. But it is hidden to those who wish to turn the pursuit of truth into a single-minded process of breaking news/scoops, misinformation, innuendo, allegations, one-sided analyses, unproven theories into blinkered statements of fact, TRP-supremacy and partisanship. In the process, they do temporary damage to those they have in their guilty-stands, but in the end, they harm only themselves. Veritas vos liberabit. Truth certainly sets you free. But those who embark upon the mission of destruction of lives for their ulterior motives see themselves being imprisoned in the cage of their own lies, games, and power plays. Some day. Losing all that’s left of them remotely resembling traits that made them human, they become shadows of that idealistic self that faced the camera for the first time years ago. When truth was the only goal. Now it’s just a slow disintegration of who they were once upon a time.
Take a look in the mirror. It will make you cringe. But hey, that would only happen if you could speak the truth, even if it is just to yourself. Try. And open the debate with that on your show the next day. Good luck, and goodnight.