The way the media reported two issues has come under the scrutiny of the court. With four medical aspirants committing suicide in Tamilnadu, the Madras High Court had urged the media to desist from glorifying the suicides of students.
The court also observed that government and political parties should stop giving financial assistance to the victim’s families. Barely hours before about 1.17 lakh students were all set to take the NEET exams, three incidents of suicides were reported in Tamilnadu in 24 hours due to fear over clearing the exams.
The first death was reported from Madurai when a 19-year-old girl, in her second attempt to crack the NEET, ended her life by hanging after leaving behind a suicide note and an audio message. The second incident was reported from Dharmapuri, where a student Aditya ended his life, which was followed by another casualty in Namakkal where another aspiring candidate Motilal hanged himself to death late on Saturday evening. Many media houses carried sensational reports and debates on this.
In the other incident, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday issued a notice to the Union government over a petition filed by an NGO seeking that the media be restrained from reporting on issues related to the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput and subsequent probe into the case.
This is the third such plea filed before the Bombay High Court. A bench led by Chief Justice Dipankar Datta is already hearing two pleas, one filed by Pune-based filmmaker Nilesh Navlakha and two others, and another by eight former police officials from the State. “The recent spate of media reporting in the case of the untimely demise of actor Sushant Singh Rajput and the extent of media frenzy concerning all issues and non-issues involving the incident is quite disturbing,” the plea said.
While the media going behind sensational issues is nothing wrong, there should be a sense of responsibility in reporting, which is missing in some cases.