Trial by Media and its loopholes

Welcome to the latest court of law in India. The jury members are: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, regional and national news (?) television channels. 1 like/ share/ retweet is equivalent to an evidence point and if the picture/video starts #trending and goes viral, you’re sentenced. This is the Media Court.

Take the recent example of a video of the ‘Rohtak brave hearts’ which has taken the internet by storm. Or, the image of our ‘aam aadmi’, Arvind Kejriwal travelling via business class. The science is simple, show the public what it likes to see, allow your viewers/readers to passively make up a convenient mind set and your content for tonight’s segment is ready.

Media today plays such a mammoth of a role in our daily lives that it is no surprise seeing us so driven by it. It’s the magic bullet theory and the spiral of silence all in practical application in India today. What is trending is assumed to be right. What is most shared/viewed is blindly accepted as the fact. All this in the backdrop citizen journalism and the web explosion. It is funny that how being ‘different’ has become so necessary that its ‘regular’ now.

While the media trial is a tough judicial procedure, there are a victorious few who have swept the media jury off their feet.

How to do it? Well, it’s simple.

A little dash of ‘mainstream feminism’, sprinkle some ‘rural development’, pour in a few ml about ‘eradicating poverty’ and the last and most overused tried and tested formula of ‘women empowerment’ and don’t forget to garnish it with ‘the ideal son/daughter’ edge. There, the recipe’s out there. Go, make your carefully crafted media approved video/ appearance. After all, it did give us a very important elected-representive, didn’t it?