'The Demise of Ms M.E. Dia', The Hindu's Obituary Reads The Heart Out of a Cybernaut
There have been several instances in the past, where a lot of questions have been raised on the way the media has been working and how the media as a profession has been corrupted by a few private players on the top of the hierarchy.
In the span of the previous months, the Indian media has been heavily criticised for covering a series of events in the most sensational manner ever, practising what they call it at as "Yellow Journalism" too much. This something that motivated a Twitter user to send in an obituary grieving the demise of media.
The obituary quotes-
"With profound regret, we announce the demise of Ms ME Dia, beloved daughter of Mr EE Dom (FR) and wife of Mr T Ruth in New Delhi on September 8, 2020. Mourned by friends and family,"
which translates to, Media who is a daughter of Freedom and wife of Truth is dead.
Obituaries are generally distributed in numerous papers, not so that anybody will understand or read them, but because of the expectation that some precious will review their recollections with the lost ones. The above obituary was sent by an insane Twitter user Kartik Sahni to the national daily 'The Hindu', and later with a snapshot of the obituary, he tweeted-
"Surprised, confused yet thankful that @the_hindu decided to carry my listing"
The obituary was not assumed to get distributed by the paper. Yet, it occurred. The obituary went viral on Twitter and on other media platforms where media lovers retweeted and reshared the pictures of the same expressing their dissent on the functioning of media these days. The obituary was printed in reference to the suicide case of Sushant Singh Rajput (SSR) and the controversies around Rhea Chakraborty being his legitimate murderer.
The obituary speaks the heart out of many people in our country who are not happy with the way the Indian media is reporting the news. In today’s scenario, the reporting that media is bound by has become limited to sensationalism and ‘Yellow Journalism’ and everything is done merely for TRP. To give examples of a few, regarding the SSR suicide case, Aaj Tak, a Hindi news media channel conducted an interview with Rhea which was done by a renowned journalist Padma Shri Rajdeep Sardesai, and how the interview looked entirely biased towards a single stance. Later, on the same channel, the same journalists were seen refuting their own points that they’ve said earlier, which proves that it has been a matter of great effort for the torch bearers of Indian journalism to stick to what they stood by earlier.
Another news channel Republic, owned and operated by the most gossiped journalist of the time, Arnab Goswami, saw another wave of energy where it felt like the channel is on to provide something known as the ‘MEDIA TRIAL’, which is the first amongst all the ethics taught to any journalist, that “we are no one to announce the verdict until the official bodies do.”
It has been very disheartening to see the Indian media getting concentrated on one single issue when several other legitimate reasons are standing in the to gain the coverage that they deserve. For that fact, several media governing bodies in India like PCI and PTI have condemned Indian media's partial coverage, and have even lamented about the same through the above tweet. Nobody is talking about the way the GDP of India has gone down to -23.9% or the sufferings of people in different parts of the country because of the floods in Assam and Bihar.
The way Indian media has been reporting facts has been surely corrupted thus the obituary rightly says “THE DEMISE OF MEDIA”, which is being witnessed all around.