The news shocked Meghalalya to its core. A sweet and innocent 4-year-old girl goes missing from home and her frantic family desperately searches her out only for her lifeless body to be found on Monday morning.
Whether it was an accident or something more sinister should be left to the investigations of the state police, who already cracked one sensational murder case this year, namely that of Raja Raghuvanshi, and who deserve our trust in this case too.
The discovery of the child’s body, however, resulted in distressing videos and photos shared on social media. While more reputable organisations blurred out distressing parts of the scene, others did not hold back and published them uncensored, for which a severe reprimand was issued by the police.
This is not the first time that something like this has happened, though involving a child makes it rarer than most. For example, after almost every grisly road traffic accident, images and videos are shared through WhatsApp and other messaging apps of victims splayed out on highways, crushed under the wheels, with limbs severed or body parts and blood smeared across the road. These are awful sights that even journalists have a hard time coming to grips with. But it seems so normal for people nowadays to whip out their mobile phone and film/photograph such scenes.
The established media houses often pin the blame on social media upstarts for publishing uncensored images or other restricted practices, such as publishing names of rape victims or names of criminals/suspects who are minors.
But even established media, Old Media, if you will, has been known to slip up in this respect too.
One of the biggest enemies to proper procedure is the battle to be First. The first media house or social media handle to upload a video or publish a photo of a hot button issue will likely get more likes, reactions, shares, views, interactions that will lead to greater advertising revenue and be considered higher by a social media company’s algorithm.
Everyone wants to be first with the news but this at times comes at a massive cost – to the victims, their families and we as a society, who are worse off because of this infringement on the rights and dignity of those who are suffering a trauma.
