COVID–19 second wave in India and devolution of news media into voyeurism

The news about COVID–19 should be covered in as much detail and as critically as possible. The center & state governments, agencies, and individuals that failed to plan for and respond to the crisis should be held accountable. Given India’s healthcare system and the large population, the challenges during the second wave and beyond would be harsher. That’s a nobrainer and is incontrovertible. But can the media resist using a dead body for the dramatic effect or live-telecasting the dying?

In 2020, during the first wave, New York in particular and the US, in general, was reeling under record-setting COVID–19 cases, hospitals were running out of beds and oxygen, dead bodies were being stored in trucks, mass graves on Hart Island became a pragmatic option to bury the piling bodies, funeral homes were overwhelmed, nursing homes deaths were ignored, doctors and nurses were begging for N95 masks and PPE kits on social media – similar tragedies were unfolding in Italy and England – yet largely, the news media did not start fear-mongering, invade funeral homes or shove recorders in the faces of grieving families, pose in front of caskets as props, or generally sell human grief as a commodity for mass consumption. It reported on the grave situation while using the language of caution, compassion, dignity, and hope. It also amplified what average citizens could do to help.

In contrast, as the second wave hit India much harder, the western media and the Indian media that sees India through a western lens (the term media/western media in this article include both these groups), couldn’t wait to get a piece of the tragedy. Within hours multiple pieces were published with images of burning pyres, corpses, and grieving families, and certainty of an impending apocalypse or an Armageddon. Yes, the situation on the ground is challenging, but treating Hindu and Sikh funerals as some bizarre or exotic entity for western consumption is repulsive. There's always a certain gloat and sadism in the western media about any deaths in India & since last year, it's well-nigh been craving for it! Top journos got the light right for the funeral wood behind them, framing the shots so the wailing kin could provide the background noise albeit not too close to risk drowning their

While thousands in India and the Indian community abroad have stepped up to help, it is ignored as no stories of hope, compassion, and solidarity can ever be accorded to India even during a crisis. For the most part, the media is not even making any effort to squash misinformation about vaccines or inform the public about resources in the community.

When called out for voyeurism, the typical response is to label it trolling by the right-wing/ nationalists. It’s the laziest counter to any criticism and keeps folks endorsed in echo chambers. Such ignorance is second only to the comfort in that ignorance. Many journalists as ‘micro-celebrities,’ feel validated based on the numbers of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets.’

Call it misery-porn, pandemicporn, or anything else, banally, media will cash in on tragedies and then make a documentary about saving a girl child in some corner of South Asia or Africa and pat itself on the back. Even pre-COVID, umpteen western tourists routinely intrude on families performing last rites in Varanasi or toss coins up in the air for the poor to catch, and take pictures. It takes an unparalleled level of emotional vacuity and moral hypocrisy to treat death, grief, and misery as exotic entities as they happen in other cultures. If this is how folks feel better about themselves or gain some relevance, it’s tough to imagine what deep dark abyss defines their core. Indeed, there’s a long history of such unbridled social voyeurism and little emphasis on humanizing the harm especially about victims in ‘other’ settings and cultures. One could set guidelines to protect victims in India, but it won’t work as there’s no lucrative reason for media to be civil and humane about life and death in India.

On the COVID front, things are bad and may get worse, before they get better. I wish I could have the same confidence about the eventual improvement in news media when covering stories about India. For now, I don’t, because a typical journalist seems to have taken the place of the vulture in the infamous Kevin Carter photograph.

Professor Divya Sharma is based at the Justice and Law Administration department in the Ancell School of Business, Western Connecticut State University