Digital Violence, News Channels and Hypocrisy!

It’s a case of wholesome insensitivity, amounting to zombie-like behavior on which subject we dwelt over much earlier, of nearly all of the so-called digitally conscious citizens of the country, but also nearly all the stakeholders including the national media irrespective of how you’d like to describe them. Apart from this looming post-modern characteristic, the other equally portentous factor of hypocrisy has also been rampant across, primarily, the television news channels and other stakeholders. For the last few years at least the insensitivity factor has been colossal: any kind of tragic incident happening in public places is always ravenously video-graphed along with the selfies of the ‘proud’ beholders and circulated instantly in their digital spaces, instead of trying to help the poor victims many of whom stay alive during such digital orgy. The news channels then get hold of those clips, in direct or indirect ways, and start building ‘stories’ around those while putting the clips continuously on their screens. Therefore, the insensitive and the often sadistic citizens including us have been getting used to ‘treats’ of such endless clips relating to the most horrendous cases of lynching, murders and assassinations, police torture, accidents, shootings and even crimes against women in the last few years.

 

The hypocrisy of the news channels becomes bluntly obvious when they choose to debate on a particular tragedy that they never ever fail to do actually: while the ‘conscientious’ anchor and the panelists keep on emphasizing the need to keep such dastardly clips out of social media and any other public digital platforms the channel producers keep on running the clip in an endless loop, in a prominent window created on the screen.  Till even the most sadistic viewer gets tired and switches to a different channel! Doesn’t at all matter even if you happen to watch the same on many other channels too! Some still less-scrupulous channels even watermark the inhuman visuals as ‘exclusive’ or ‘first on this channel only’ and like that. Why such mind-boggling hypocrisy? Well, very simple. They know the dominant facets of the psychology of their viewers and so would definitely like to pander to them, just to generate more ad revenues.

 

I was shocked beyond words, sad as I was to hear the news of the assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, when I found the video clip showing the cruel shooting in broad daylight and in public getting much more importance across the screens of the Indian news channels than the tragic incident itself. Some anchors even wanted to draw our attention particularly to the violent clip being shown endlessly as if to make us understand the sheer audacity of the murder. Their justification was that this involved a huge breach of security. Well, from the Indian point of view this was indeed a breach; but you have to consider Japan where such acts almost never happened and the only news that we keep on hearing about the country is that relating to earthquakes. Had it happened in the trigger-happy and abortion-unhappy US such an approach could’ve been alright; but Japan’s been always trigger-wary and guns in public hands in the country are almost a rarity.

 

However, the glorification of the violent clip just cannot be justified on any ground. Shinzo Abe is one of the most prominent visionary statesmen-politicians of the world and has been a very good friend of India since 2006-07. He’s been a friend of the former Indian PM Manmohan Singh and a closer buddy to PM Narendra Modi. The Government of India had also declared a one-day national mourning in his memory. For some personal reasons this writer, Abe being an almost household name for him as he was actively engaged in the role of a news editor in a national channel during those years,  could not give a fitting tribute to Abe in time, and so is airing his thoughts through this related piece.