Congress MP and former Union minister Shashi Tharoor found an ally in the Delhi High Court on Friday, August 3, when the latter asked Republic TV channel and its founder Arnab Goswami to reply to a petition filed by the parliamentarian against their alleged misreporting on the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar in January 2014. The bench asked the journalist and his channel to respect Tharoor's right to silence on the matter.
Tharoor, on his part, had said that he chose to remain silent on the issue since he did not want to disrupt the police investigation into it even though he had to suffer a great deal because of such reports.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP has been seen taking sharp digs at the channel and its founder on occasions and accused them of maximising their TRPs at the expense of someone's personal tragedy. Tharoor had filed a defamation case against Goswami on May 26 after the Republic TV, which was just launched then, had aired an episode claiming it to be an exposé connected to Pushkar's mysterious death in a posh hotel in New Delhi on January 17.
The court than had told the channel that it could report facts but not call Tharoor names.
Media must draw its line somewhere
The Tharoor-Republic TV case brings to the fore the question: Where does the media's limitation lies?
The death case of Sunanda Pushkar is still shrouded in mystery and till the jury is out, every version will only feed our imagination more and create more trouble for Tharoor since he doesn't have the machinery of campaigning in his hands.
A channel can't use all its resources to run a campaign against an individual
The Republic TV, on the other hand, can act in whatever fashion it wants because it has a popular TV anchor in its ranks and the necessary logistics to untiringly carry on the crusade. The contest is uneven and the Delhi High Court did the right thing by siding with Tharoor. Whether Tharoor is guilty or not is for the judiciary to decide. The media can't run his trial, declare him the culprit and send him to the gallows as well. This is a gross violation of the basics of journalism.
The media can at the best act as a witness and furnish the legal system with relevant information and evidence it has but the noisy Goswami and his channels (both the past and the present) take it as their golden opportunity to emerge the conscience-keeper of the nation. Actually, they are turning journalism into a caricature.
The actual game is to destroy the Opposition?
The real game behind the constant attack on Tharoor (every time a Republic TV reporter meets the MP, he is asked about his deceased wife, no matter what's the agenda in hand) could be more be a part of a more visible strategy of destroying the Opposition, and in that case Tharoor will gather more sympathy and even if the investigation into his wife's death comes out with evidence against him, he would return stronger. So either way, Goswami's channel's trial is not going to help.
The duty to respect the right to silence which the court has emphasised on is also an important aspect that a democratic society should not lose sight of. Pushkar's death was afterall a family tragedy for Tharoor and no matter what the arguments and counter arguments are, nobody really has the right to make use of the episode to run its 24X7 show to create sensationalism. As an agency that monitors the functioning of a democracy, this is not something the media should refrain from doing.
