Media trial is the new phenomenon in New India. The Honourable Chief Justice of India, N V Ramana while speaking at the National University of Study and Research in Law at Ranchi came down heavily on media trials, (especially the electronic and social media) saying it has “zero accountability”.
He accused the media of running “Kangaroo Courts” on issues even experienced judges find it difficult to judge. He stated, “Ill-informed agenda-driven debates and biased views are being propagated by the media, which are affecting the people, weakening democracy, and harming the system. In this process, justice delivery gets adversely affected. By overstepping and breaching your responsibility, you are taking our democracy two steps backwards.”
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The CJI is not the only one with this opinion. Justice J.B. Pardiwala, shares similar views as well as the former Supreme Court judge, Justice Deepak Gupta who has gone on record to state that media trial was a “dangerous trend”.
The honourable Justice Kurian Joseph remarked “Please stop trying (cases) in the media till a case is over.”This suggestion should be taken seriously in order to stop the media from taking the law into their hands. In order to attract more viewers, the media is going all out to malign and tarnish the image of mere suspects and tagging them as guilty even before the judgments are passed by the courts. By showing only one side of a story (the one that attracts eye-balls), the media sensationalises an issue, creating public opinion to please their political masters.
Two classic examples in recent years can be illustrated to prove the point. The first case is that of Aryan Khan, son of superstar Shah Rukh Khan. A similar circus ensued at the time of the untimely death of the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. To put in short, in both the cases the media blew the case out of proportion.
The question is, are TRP ratings so important that media houses go to any extreme to malign a person without any valid proof?
As the discerning audience, we too are equally responsible for the mess, as we jump to conclusions based on the 9 pm News. We build our opinions based on these biased reporting. Why aren’t we using our common sense to understand that these news channels are here purely for TRPs and owned by business houses or funded by political parties who are trying to divert the attention from more important issues?
Today, India is ranked 150 out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index as per the 2022 edition and is in competition with countries like Sudan and Pakistan. It is the lowest the country has ever seen.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India said, “I would rather have a completely free press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed or regulated press.”
The fourth pillar has taken these spirited words in the wrong context. Hope they wake up before they cause extensive damage to lives and characters of people or communities, which cannot be undone and become a black spot in the glorious history of our great nation.
