CAPITALISING ON DEATH

Leftist intellectual M N Vijayan is dead. Front page news on Malayala Manorama Thursday morning. There are four pictures splashed across the page. The first shows Vijayan feeling uneasy while holding a press conference in Thrissur. The second - Vijayan is drinking water. the third - Vijayan is back to the mike, all smiles. And the fourth and final picture - Vijayan is collapsing - eyes and mouth wide open as he helplessly slips into death.

A shocker of a picture to start the morning. Was the fourth picture necessary? Is the market the newspaper believes it is pandering to completely insensitive? I am told Malayalam news channels were careful with the visuals but India TV, a Hindi news channel which normally doesn't give too hoots for a story from Kerala in the distant south, played up the visuals over and over again. The entire sequence of Vijayan's collapse was played out, with an 'exclusive' tag to boot. A lesson in how to grab eyeballs out of a tragic death.

This was pure shock value and not even about social outrage, which is invoked by visuals of somebody being lynched to death or mob fury. In such cases too it's about getting there first and creating the maximum impact, with hardly a thought about what images could be disturbing.

And when it comes to breaking news of a bomb blast (Delhi 2005, Mumbai 2006 or Hyderabad 2007) things go haywire. The pressure to show visuals as soon as possible ensures caution is thrown to the winds more often than not. Contrast this with the extra-careful way the American media covered 9/11.

It's no justification but TV news is still evolving in India and there is no maturity or consolidation yet, with so many players competing for their slice in the pie (as well as expanding the pie). But what about pillars of the print media who've been around for ages? Are they falling prey to the sensationalism and shock value encouraged by TV? The market may be king but we could do with a little more sensitivity.