What could be more disturbing than the gruesome images of charred bodies of children all in a heap that we saw on television over the weekend? I don’t know about you, but what I found even more upsetting were the endless visuals of distraught mothers beating their chests, wailing uncontrollably, pleading to the cameras for the return of their kids.

The ghastly death of the children was the story; the depiction, however grim, part of that story. The portrayal of the parents’ lament, on the other hand, was shamelessly voyeuristic, disgustingly exploitative, robbing the grieving parents of all privacy and dignity. Did we really need these in-your-face videotapes to bring home to us the magnitude of the tragedy at Kumbakonam? Would the death of 90 children have been less distressing if the school had been an orphanage?

The desperation of 24-hour news channels reached its nadir at Kumbakonam this weekend. By the time the cameras reached the temple town last Friday, the action had mostly shifted to the hospitals. There are horror stories of cameramen barging into sterilized intensive care units to zoom in on kids fighting for life and screaming in agony. Two children who were brought to Chennai for special treatment were made to wait at the gates of the hospital, writhing in pain, till the intrepid newsmen were through with their perfect frames and bytes.

It’s not just that the journalists were doing their job and no offence was meant, it was all for their good, etc. At issue is a question central to reporting and consuming news in the era of 24-hour television coverage: what, if any, should be the guidelines for the use of gut-churning visuals?

The answer, one would think, is hardly rocket science. It would all depend on whether the images are facts or illustrations, wouldn’t it? If they are facts, essential to getting the full reality of the tragedy, like, say, the pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, then the answer is simple. The pictures are the story. But if they are, as they usually are, just illustrations, such as the anguished mothers of Kumbakonam, then it is a matter of judgment, taste and propriety. Evidently, these are in short supply in the TV studios.

No need of help

If R.S. Lodha does finally win his battle with the Birlas, he may give rise to a dangerous trend in media management: utter and absolute silence. While the Birlas and sources close to them have been strewing quotes like confetti, while their PR firm has been hard at work issuing statements and dropping hints, the silence from the Lodha camp has been deathly.

The press has seldom faced something like this, especially from someone who would appear to be the David against the Birla Goliath. Of course, the Birlas have more to worry about, family image and nosediving share prices. Still, the norm so far has been for the junior partner to come running for media support.

The Economic Times, rightly proud at having scooped the story, is so incensed at being left out in the cold that it even wrote last Sunday, “Whoever said silence is golden? Silence can sometimes be very confusing, and irritating, too.” What will they all say if Lodha gets away with something so momentous without any help from the media?

Shrinking space

When Pablo Neruda got the Nobel Prize in literature in 1971, the excitement in India was quite palpable. And newspapers and magazines, especially the English-language ones, still a fair indicator of the aspirations of the Indian intelligentsia, were full of special articles celebrating this honour for the Chilean poet. Neruda’s birth centenary on July 12, however, went by virtually unnoticed. He was remembered from the US to the UK and even in the Philippines, but in India it was as if Neruda never was. Either the intelligentsia in India has died an unlamented death or its members read only one newspaper in the country: The Hindu, the only paper to devote some space to a poet who once inspired lovers to woo one another in verse.