This is a simple one. When an individual decides to slap a politician or a celebrity, can you please NOT allow the cameras to focus on the assailant?
We’ve had, in the recent past, a shoe thrown at Arvind Kejriwal, Sharad Pawar slapped, Sukh Ram slapped, Prashant Bhushan attacked, and so on.
On each occasion, the perpetrators are shown on news TV channels, ad nauseam.
And thanks to the exposure, each of them becomes instant celebrities.
The guaranteed TV attention is certainly an incentive to commit such crimes. The perpetrator is now a ‘hero’ to his peers, basking in the adulation of his peers. The perpetrator is now a role model, a model that his followers now want to emulate.
Perpetrator, like Pawar's, are heros to their peers, thanks to their coverage on TV. Reuters
And a thousand such perpetrators are born each time an assault is covered on news television.
One is not, for a moment, suggesting that the assault or slap is not newsworthy; it is. But the coverage of the perpetrator is not.
Cover the incident, but stop short of giving the perpetrator his moment in the sun; have his face pixilated (the technology is already with you); do not announce his name; do not interview him and make him more seen, heard and noticed.
The entire incident should be covered and should be made available to the police and other law enforcement authorities as and when the footage is required, but there is no justification in allowing attention-grabbers, disruptive members of society, to make a name for themselves thanks to your cameras focussing on them.
Too often, as we saw today, the assailants are chased by eager news crews, falling over each other in an effort to get an exclusive. It must be admitted that it will be some time before one knows whether the assailant is, indeed, newsworthy; till then, please, show him pixilated.
While this move will not prevent future incidents of the same kind, it’ll certainly serve as a watering down of the incentive.
Can we have a new advisory, please, now that Baby B is born?
