“If it bleeds, it leads,” has been an adage in the newsroom. Unfortunately, the fact that it has to come with filters of propriety, decency and ethics attached is being overlooked almost regularly by Indian broadcast journalism. >The latest example is Nepal , where the earthquake and its tragic aftermath have been exploited to the hilt by television cameras in an appalling race for TRPs. The role of the media during disasters is an important one. Before a catastrophe, they can warn a population and prepare it. Afterwards, with continued reportage, they can ensure that no survivor is forgotten or left out of the aid network. But it is during the disaster that their role is quite vital. They can be effective conduits of information about help lines, aid-distribution camps, emergency phone numbers, or the kind of supplies required. They can help scotch rumours and prevent panic by quickly disseminating the right facts and figures. Their coverage helps mobilise help from outside the disaster area, in the form of money, supplies and volunteers. And finally, the focus of the media on a disaster helps increase its visibility, thus forcing governments to upgrade it on their agenda. While India’s television crews did most of this, they were overstepping the boundaries so often and so dramatically that the Nepalese people finally turned against them and virtually asked them to leave.
This was unfortunate, given that Indian rescue teams were indeed the first to reach Nepal and have played a stellar role there, as did the media in sending out some of the first images of the calamity. But it is imperative that television revisits the basic rules of journalistic ethics during disaster reporting. Regardless of how important they imagine it is to wring an emotional response from audiences, they must refrain from sticking microphones in the faces of survivors who may have just lost everything. ‘People’s right to know’ just does not apply here. Nobody has a right to know how much anyone else is grieving. Instead, it is the survivor who has an absolute right to privacy. The only right way to get a human angle to the reporting is to ask for consent, make a full disclosure of how and where it will be aired, keep the questions brief, and not push for emotional outbursts. Also, when rescue choppers landed, survivors were dismayed to find TV crews taking up space they believed should have been left for relief material. In a disaster, relief must take primacy over media privilege. Indeed, it must be seen to take precedence. A disaster of this magnitude leaves in its wake traumatised families that have lost everything in one fell swoop. Ethical journalism must place humanity above professional urgency.
