Death—ordinary, unglamourous, “smalltown” death—increasingly catches the English media on the wrong foot. Unlike “26/11″, in which almost as many people were killed in the Mangalore air crash, you do not find the television and print journalists crawling on all fours or falling over each other to get to the spot.
As if death by any cause other than “terror” is no death.
As if death in any city other than Bombay and Delhi is no death.
As if death outside of a five-star hotel or two is no death.
The wisecrack of the day comes from Pritish Nandy, former editor of the now-defunct The Illustrated Weekly of India, as if the media is doing “anonymous people” a favour by giving them airtime on a day like 22 May 2010. Otherwise, they might as well not have existed.
As if, otherwise, the media’s mandate is to merely bring home “people like us”.
Full coverage: BASTARDS WHO HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS
Who says you can’t say what tomorrow holds?
Mangalore air crash: pictures that tell the tale
CHURUMURI POLL: Plane trouble or human error?
The VIP said: ‘Ondu condolence message kottbidi“
Harshi wasn’t done becoming Harshi yet, won’t
Also read: Does death not count if it ain’t due to terrorism?
Question: what’s killed 96 people a day for 38 months?
Tags: 26/11, Churumuri, Mangalore Air Crash, Pritish Nandy, Sans Serif, Terror, The Illustrated Weekly of India, Twitter
23 May 2010 at 10:42 am
As said already life is cheap for cheap labourers and their cheap flights apart from Bombay and Delhi.
Tragedy and money / insurance on deaths is sure but not respect to life. Civilian life is abused in India.
23 May 2010 at 6:32 pm
this is exactly what I had written a few days back. Around 3500 people are killed every year on Bombay metro, the number of people killed by recklessness of KSRTC/BMTC buses is also a lot. Most of these deaths are completely avoidable by small changes in the behaviour/attitude of people/drivers. but who cares?
So goes the nice kannada saying:
ದಿನಾ ಸಾಯೋವ್ರಿಗೆ ಅಳುವವರು ಯಾರು?
23 May 2010 at 7:09 pm
Oh..maybe his cocktail party did not get coverage on Page 3
23 May 2010 at 7:30 pm
Murthy is a dead man at least for his brain is defunct for decades now. shame on such existence dude. Civilian…. do you know what it really means… you wanna have rights to everything but do ya know what is a meaning of DUTY. Grow up dude or go back to school for you need some education in every respect. Murthy Boo Boo Man.
23 May 2010 at 9:37 pm
The guy is bloody typical pseudo Bong. If anyone remembers what happened to the Ill.Weekly when he took over. He published nude photos (I remember a nude of some white female) and all other forms of titillations. There was a big cover story about J.B.Patnaik being gay – my, my how these bongs can balance titillation and their pseudo intellectual pretensions. He tried to make the most absurd Sanjay Dutt movies sound like works of Kurosawa. This guy is part Pimp (for low brow Mumbai stuff), part Amartya Sen.
24 May 2010 at 12:47 am
Anonymous doesn’t mean you’re nobody, it just means that you’re anonymous to gazillion creatures on the Earth!
Would that teenager whose twitter & blog page was dug out by you and the mainstream media, have appreciated all the media glare on her personal spaces?
It is sickening to see you journalists writing articles after articles analysing a person’s personality and her clique, relying only on a small nook on the web, that too on a social networking site!
24 May 2010 at 6:52 am
It all depends on who dies in a tragedy, an Indian or a politician of the ruling party. Another IPL!
24 May 2010 at 7:48 am
Indian media have a class bias. People who die in train accidents hardly merit their names being mentioned. Or stories done on their lives. Lost lives in bus accidents are several nothces below that. Only Eenadu (at least, their Marathi news channel) lists the names of those who die in bus mishaps.
Times of India devoted some 7-8 pages to the Mangalore crash as if war had broken out – it was carpet bombing.
Have Indian media lost – or did it ever have in recent times – their sense of proportion?
24 May 2010 at 11:30 am
It all depends on the NEWS these media people get. Let me tell you the case in Andhra. It was full of plane crash news on the ill-fated day. The next day, except for Eenadu’s ETV, every news channel went overboard in covering the death news of famous lyricist Veturi.
24 May 2010 at 3:53 pm
@div,
ದಿನಾ ಸಾಯೋವ್ರಿಗೆ ಅಳುವವರು ಯಾರು?
this was exactly my friend was told by his love. some move on toughly and some carry on weak minded.
Love and emotions……… things of past.
25 May 2010 at 7:52 am
Apart from the scale of tragedy, terror attacks (incl. five star ones), railway accidents, air crashes have a shock (for want of a better word) factor attached to them. A pedestrian or a cyclist getting knocked by an errant driver or children dying malnutrition deaths or famine or hunger deaths do not qualify as “shock factor” reportable material.
As a people, even we are thick skinned to loss of human lives. It takes a loss of a hundred lives to shake us momentarily after which we also move on. We are thankful that it is not us this time. We may not be so lucky the next time around.
The media also cashes in on this. This is the news of the moment. Savour it and move on to the next big thing. No need even to follow up on what corrective actions have been taken to avoid occurence of such tragedies again
25 May 2010 at 12:32 pm
totally insensitive from pritish
25 May 2010 at 2:40 pm
Air traveling is safest mode of transport.