Why does India’s media cover some rapes extensively and ignore others?

 This is a new fortnightly column that will now appear on the website newslaundry.com.


BROKEN NEWS

 

Published December 4, 2019

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2019/12/04/indian-media-rape-coverage-journalism

Does the media contribute directly, or indirectly, to distorting our
understanding of the reasons for the increasing violence against women?

I ask this question against the background of the horrific rape and
murder of a 26-year-old veterinarian in Hyderabad on the evening of
November 27. Her charred remains were found the next day after her
parents managed, after several failed attempts, to get the police to file a
missing person report.

All media ran with the story – print, TV, digital. It had all the elements
of horror. It happened not in a desolate, distant area but near a toll
booth in a metropolitan city. And it reminded us of the everydayness of
violence: a working woman, waiting to go home, could be abducted,
raped and murdered within shouting distance of a toll booth.

There was outrage, as expected. Demonstrations, young women holding
placards that asked “Am I next?” These were mostly in Hyderabad, with
a few protests in other cities.

The public demonstration of anger and the media coverage was enough
to push the state government to act. Within days, the police
apprehended four young men who apparently confessed to the crime.
The government promised to “fast-track” the case. And the policemen
who had delayed noting the complaint by her parents were suspended.

At the same time, there was a show of competitive concern, especially
amongst politicians. As “Hang the Rapists” was a slogan that was past its
expiry date, as the death penalty for rape was already in the statute after
the 2012 gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, what else could
they demand to be noticed above the anger on the street?

Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan won that competition hands down
when she declared in Parliament (the place where laws are made) that
rapists should be lynched in public. In other words, the public should
take the law into its own hands. This in a country where public lynchings
of defenceless Muslim men have been conducted in the name of
protecting cows, with the full knowledge that there will be little or no
punishment for the crime.

Given the recent history of lynchings in India, Bachchan’s remarks are
even more ominous. In the Hyderabad case, the names of the four
accused were leaked even before the police held a press conference. One
of the accused is Muslim. That was enough for the Hindutva army on
social media, as AltNews reported, to dive straight into a communal war
of their own creation, painting dire scenarios of what could happen in
the future. As the article rightly points out, “A disturbing phenomenon is
observed in recent times where crimes as heinous as rape are
communalised. The trend is not only true in the case of social media but
for also prominent individuals in the government and media outlets
capable of shaping public opinion. Since the brutal incident was
reported, the police had identified all the four accused. But a social
media campaign attempted to paint a communal picture. Irresponsible
media reports, with clickbaity headlines, furthered the misleading
narrative instead of dousing the hate.”

The question for the media, given the growing atmosphere of hate,
compounded now by politicians suggesting rapists should be lynched, is
whether the photographs of the accused should be printed.

These are men against whom the police claim they have a case. But a
chargesheet has not been filed. Do they not have the right to a fair trial?
How many men have been accused and imprisoned for years on terror
charges, for instance, before being acquitted by the courts? Given our
dysfunctional criminal justice system, is it not incumbent on the media
to err on the side of caution, rather than encourage, and even join, the
lynch mobs? Is it not the duty of the media to aid justice rather than
perpetuate injustice? These are questions we must ask.

There are other questions. The name and identity of the woman were
used in practically all media in the immediate aftermath of the crime.
This happened despite a 2018 Supreme Court ruling, in the context of
the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua, Jammu, that the
media cannot name a rape victim even if she dies. Yet, the same mistake
was repeated. By the time some media houses realised their mistake, her
name and photograph were all over social media and even today come
up when you do an internet search.

Linked to this is the norm that any respectable media house ought to
follow: that even reporting on the locality where the victim lives, or
giving away the identity of her parents and family, is equivalent to
revealing her identity. Yet, this too continues to be violated. Not
surprisingly, the residents of the colony in Hyderabad where the
woman’s parents live locked the gates and put up a notice that read, “No
Media, No Police, No Outsiders - No sympathy, only action, justice”.

Finally, there is the question of the selective amplification of crimes
against women. How does the media choose which ones to report on
extensively? Convenience, proximity, scale of the crime are some criteria.
But also class, caste, locale – biases that are so routine they go
unnoticed.

A few days before the rape in Hyderabad, a Dalit woman who sold
utensils and balloons was raped and murdered in a village in Telangana,
129 km from Adilabad. The Deccan Chronicle carried a story about her
husband complaining that the state government did not respond,
perhaps because they were poor and Dalit, nor did the civil society. Nor
did the media, I might add.

The lack of interest in the media about crimes away from regular beats
and metropolitan areas has a direct impact on our understanding of the
extent of violence against women, especially poor and marginalised
women, and the reasons for it. In fact, in the week before and after the
Hyderabad rape, several such horrific incidents were reported from
different parts of the country. But only one was pursued by the media.

Such selective reporting reinforces the belief that public spaces are
unsafe for women. Instead of our society questioning why any woman
should be afraid to step out, women are asked to take precautions.

In fact, within days of the Hyderabad rape, the city’s police
commissioner came out with 14 recommendations on what women
should do to be safe. Many women were outraged by his advisory.

One of them wrote on Twitter, "We are raped by men so for heaven’s
sake issue a damn advisory for men to NOT RAPE us. Why the hell are
we paying the penalty for men who are monsters? This is the problem,
tell your men to NOT RAPE WOMEN! Keep your
damn safety advisory to yourself.”

The other side of selective focus on some crimes against women is that
people forget that over 90 per cent of sexual assaults on women take
place in their homes, in their neighbourhoods, by men known to them.
By constantly reporting only on crimes in public spaces, this reality gets
obscured.

Although one could argue that the media cannot report every crime
committed against every woman, it is evident that reporting crimes
against women is a selling proposition. The media thrives on crime,
controversy and crises. The media can generate the latter two when they
are in short supply. But as there is no shortage of crime, the media sets out
to pick and choose the crime stories that sell.

In doing so, despite the debates, the judicial rulings, the protests from
the afflicted, the media continues to fail women victims of crime and to
create false narratives on an issue like violence against women.

Calling a crime by its name

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, July 22, 2012

How safe are our public spaces for women? Photo: Arunangsu Roy 

 

Can we stop talking about the horrific incident in Guwahati on the night of July 9 as the “Guwahati molestation”? To molest, according to the dictionary, means “to pester or harass, typically in an aggressive or persistent manner.” What happened that night on Guwahati’s busy G.S. Road was a “sexual assault” on a young girl. So before we even begin talking about it, let us call a crime by its real name.

The full story of what happened that night is still unspooling. But enough is known to raise several crucial questions; ones that relate to women, to our society, to the media and to the law enforcing agencies. The incident might have occurred in what is usually considered a remote part of India. But its fallout affects all of us, including those who live in what people in the Northeast call the “mainland”.

 

Displays of insensitivity

Much has already been written about the July 9 sexual assault. Not without reason has the representative of the National Commission for Women, Alka Lamba, been asked to step down. In an astounding display of insensitivity, she revealed the identity of the young woman to the media. The Chief Minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, outdid her by getting his office to send photographs of himself with the girl to the entire media, and retracting after the pictures had already been circulated. So much for protecting the survivor’s identity.

The question of the media’s role is the subject of much debate. The Assam government has conveniently blamed the journalist who claimed credit for making the story public. It is possible that this journalist is culpable. Or he might have followed the example of many others, journalists who stood by and recorded horrific events without making any effort to intervene.

But journalists are also citizens. Even if there were only two of them against a mob, they had no business to go on filming for a full half hour without doing anything to stop the participants. In fact, when you watch the video, you realise that the attackers are enjoying being filmed. At the same time, the Assam government cannot absolve itself of all responsibility by blaming the journalist.

No one is surprised at the actions, or rather lack of them, of the Guwahati police. Why did they take so long to respond? Why did they not arrest many more on the spot? Did they have to wait to see the footage to identify the attackers? If they had acted with alacrity, would the main assaulter, seen grinning at the camera, have escaped? We end up asking these same questions repeatedly. When poor people demonstrate for their rights, hundreds of them are rounded up and taken to the lock-up. But if members of a political party go around vandalising and beating up helpless people — as they do with regularity in Mumbai, for instance — or when such incidents of sexual assault occur in a public place, the police sit on their hands and wait. Not just women but everyone has to be worried at this mockery of what is called “the law and order machinery”.

 

Chilling indifference

And what can we say about the “aam janata”? Anyone who has been to Guwahati will tell you that G.S. Road, or Guwahati Shillong Road, is a main arterial road. The pub where the girl was attacked is not in some isolated part of the city. Hundreds of vehicles ply on that road, as they did that night. Hence her ability to find an autorickshaw which she was about to take to go home. One of the most chilling sequences in the video is watching the girl running on the road, begging people to stop and help her. No one did until one man, another journalist, came to her rescue and stayed with her until she was handed over to the police. Why did no one help? Why do people not care, not want to be involved, to extend themselves for another person? This is one more example of the callous indifference that has infected urban life in India.

As for what this means for women, not just in Guwahati but all over India, particularly urban India, the message is clear. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Women might believe that they now have more rights, that they have access to public space, that they can make choices. The reality is that a patriarchal society will not accept that women should have these rights, that it will try and teach those who make choices “a lesson” and that violence is the currency that will be used to teach these lessons.

Depressing, I know, but sadly true. As a young reader from Guwahati wrote to me after this incident: “Some of us have the tendency to break things or bash up some objects when we were furious or angry. But nowadays we find that women have become potential objects capable of replacing inanimate objects to suit the whims and fancies of the diehard chauvinists of the country.” 

(To read the original, click here.)