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The media slug-fest over the Tehelka sexual assault case

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Let’s get this out of the way first: if an alien visited India and only watched primetime debates on news TV, he or she might conclude that we are a civilisation based on the tenets of shouting and interrupting with snarling, red-faced hectoring humans controlling events and throwing charges at other nasty, ill-tempered members of the species.

Luckily for all of us and the alien if he or she has the courage to hang about after that nerve-wracking experience the media is not just about nightly slugfests. It can also take an active role in both, highlighting the problems of society, and shaming a nation into taking action when it must.

The current case where Tarun Tejpal, high profile editor-in-chief of the investigative newsmagazine Tehelka, has been accused of sexual assault by a young woman journalist who worked for the magazine has brought up questions of media propriety and doggedness once again.

But to understand the pursuit of Tejpal and the support for the victim, you have to go back to a year ago when a young woman was gang raped and brutalised in the national capital in December 2012. The horrors inflicted on the woman moved the nation and the relentless media pressure not only forced quick action on the case, but also forced us to face old, almost forgotten notions of patriarchy and lip service to gender issues.

But to understand that anger, you have to go back to articles on the “khap” panchayats of North India where elders pass strictures against women in their villages and encourage tacitly or openly parents and villagers to kill young people in love because they have broken some archaic local customs. If the media had not informed the nation about these khaps, nobody would have imagined that a few miles away from the national capital are areas stuck in medieval slime.

But to understand the distaste for khaps as well as notions of misused patriarchy and overused political influence, you have to go back to the Jessica Lall case where a botched investigation and turncoat witnesses allowed the murderer of a young model to go free. Her crime? She was working behind the bar at a celebrity event and refused to serve the accused a drink because the bar had closed. It was public outrage, spearheaded by the media, which made the courts reopen the case.

So yes, there is much that is wrong with the media in India. But there is much that is right. As much as the media is accused of being paid off by corporate or political parties or succumbing to the PR of glamorous people or even worse, those who aspire to glamour and would acquire it by the most foolish of means the media has also enabled victims and shamed wrongdoers.
 Even as a diehard newspaperperson, the hat has to be ungrudgingly tipped to television.

Because television is depthless and immediate, it can have an enormous impact on public opinion and on political understanding. There are situations where well-crafted editorials may read well but achieve nothing. But with tens of TV reporters and cameras clamouring outside your door, something has to give. And when the cause is strong enough, the print media acts as a foundation to television giving it heft and perspective.

No need for atonement or the penance of lacerations here.

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