Good, bad or ugly? How media turned Hema Malini's Dausa accident into raging TRPs

Last week, a road accident hit the headlines and then dug its heels into the breaking news cycle over the following days. A Mercedes Benz had crashed into an Alto, leaving one person dead. It’s not the kind of news that has the potential to shock the daylights out of India. In the last recorded data the government has, 1,37, 572 people had died in various road accidents in 2013, 1,38,258 had died in 2012. By the simple rule of average, that’s more than 375 people dying in the country ever day in road accidents. However, this incident dominated the news for several days because it involved a celebrity - actor and BJP MP Hema Malini. Obviously, it was ‘big news’ for most media outlets, which turned it into a debate with little interest in basic facts pertaining to the case. As soon as the news wore out, questions surfaced over the actor-turned-politician’s sense of responsibility. While some news channels ran tickers accusing Hema Malini of failing to help the other party involved in the accident, others had panels discussing whether or not she should have helped the family immediately. Some pointed at her responsibility as an MP, others said it would have been impossible for her to help the family out immediately. Soon, like most debates being played out to a Twitter-happy audience, this debate too was reduced to the black and white argument, probing whether Hema was an evil MP or just a hapless bleeding victim. [caption id=“attachment_2329410” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Hema Malini after the accident. (The picture has been blurred) PTI[/caption] The internet was flooded with high resolution pictures of Hema Malini from after the accident. Streams of blood crawling down her face, her saree wet with blood, the actor is seen being escorted out of a car in Jaipur. Jaipur is approximately 62 kilometres away from Dausa, the site of the accident. It clearly made little difference to either the mini mob outside the hospital or the shutterbugs who were happy clicking pictures of the injured actor, the flash blazing right at her bloodied face. The voyeuristic interest in clicking even an injured celebrity embodies all that is wrong with the country’s sense of responsibility. It was never about the accident really, it was about Hema Malini being in an accident. So, the natural next step for TV channels was to turn it into a raging debate-with-hashtag about what Hema Malini should have done. But in this mad rush, most TV channels and commentators on social media ignored the need for facts to bolster their argument. If they were in Hema Malini’s shoes, bleeding and shell-shocked, what would they have done? No one questioned who the ‘doctor’ was who drove the actor to the Jaipur hospital. Did Malini’s team get in touch with the doctor who then drove her to the hospital? Or was he a passerby, who stopped at the site and then gave the actor a lift? In either case could he have also driven the grievously injured child to the Dausa hospital first? “Hema Malini was taken to a hospital in Dausa by a doctor immediately after the incident. He then took her to Fortis hospital while Sonam was lying at the spot for 15-20 minutes. Nobody asked about her,” the victim’s uncle told the media. However, arguing over this would need some knowledge about the preliminary autopsy report which must have been prepared following the child’s death. That would be a crucial document for analysing the events that followed the accident. But everyone was happy to judge and pronounce sentences without bothering to refer to the autopsy or wait for it. In some instances, the kin of the victim seemed like they were being led on for the sole purpose of fuelling this eyeball-grabbing debate. For example, one widely cited clip has the victim’s father lament that maybe his daughter could have been saved if she was taken to the doctor by Hema Malini. We should remember here that the man had just lost his daughter and his statements are coloured with grief. Moreover, the clip begins with him saying these things and also admitting that he had lost consciousness. One can only guess what question may have prompted this response from him. On the face of it, the child was so grievously injured that she may have died on the way to the hospital. Her father, according to various reports, has said that the girl died in her mother’s lap . Which means, it was perhaps the practical thing to do to take her to the nearest hospital instead of Jaipur. In this video , where the victim’s father is seen speaking from his hospital bed, you can hear the reporter  exhorting a relative to say that Hema Malini was guilty of ignoring the family. “Do you think that Hema Malini and her entourage is guilty. They took her to Fortis, but left the child there,” the reporter says. To which the grieving relative says, ‘Yes’. The nature of Indian reportage can be extremely manipulative and exploitative at times. The Hema Malini incident just showed its disregard for facts, when TRPs can be generated through turning the accident into fodder for moral outrage. From hashtags to vox pop on television channels to online votes,  every bit of potential in the incident was milked. In the rush to make a raging debate out of the issue, most media houses forgot to report the facts that would have clearly established if Hema Malini was responsible in any way for the child’s death. And on social media, led on my TV channel hashtags, the cacophony was held up by a lot of conclusions which were not drawn on the back of facts. In fact, no one even asked the crucial questions that would have very clearly enumerated whether or not the celebrity acted irresponsibly, or whether she was being unfairly targeted for being a celebrity.