STAMPED IMPRESSIONS
Ouch couch
Reeta Sharma

First it was Tehelka, then the Kareena-Shahid kissing episode and now it is the casting couch story involving actors Shakti Kapoor and Aman Verma. These new stories have raised questions about ethics in sting journalism. Overnight, after the Tehelka exposure of public figures, Tarun Tejpal shot to national prominence. In the case of the Shakti expose, the TV channel concerned can boast of raising its TRPs.

There is no denying that these sting operations succeeded in exposing the culprits. But the modus operandi is questionable.

Post-Independence, media in India set very high standards of ethics to report on political or social issues. Our media, by and large, has never taken undue advantage of the democratic set-up of the country. We have not only enjoyed freedom of the Press but also exposed many irregularities, scams, police excesses, human rights violations, etc. This was possible despite the very high standards of ethics adopted by the media. By and large, sensationalism was avoided and individual’s privacy respected.

The majority of the Indians know that many aspiring and ambitions youngsters can be easy prey for hawks in the film industry. However, not everyone in the film world has taken up cudgels against the so-called villain. Quite a few, such as Salman Khan and Govinda have come forward to support the Shakti Kapoor and Verma. Their arguments include, "they did not touch the woman"; "it is character assassination"; or "Shakti was drunk but the channel was not," and so on.

However, coming back to the modus operandi adopted by TV channels, there is clearly a case for much more self-restraint. Sexual harassment or exploitation is nothing new and is also not exclusive to the film world. Exploitation of women at work is common in India, in government and private establishments too. Only recently, a case of harassment has been reported from the Indian Air Force Training Academy, where some women cadets had alleged that their instructor threatened to "reject" them if they did not "oblige him".

In fact, many women, and not only in the film industry but other fields of work also have been reporting to the police about harassment. If the objective was to expose exploitation of women, these channels could have done the laborious work of digging up records of such complaints.

There are also a number of NGOs active in this area and they could have been approached for details about the cases which could have been used to highlight the condition even while maintaining the anonymity of the exploited girls. Yet another way out was to reach out to a large number of extras in the Hindi film industry who are a potential source of information. But this particular channel chose the easiest and the most sensational way by offering a female journalist as the bait. This is strictly against the high ethical standards that the Indian media takes pride in.

With the emergence of electronic media, TRPs seem to be all that matters for some television channel. No one is bothered about distortions and how it impacts impressionable minds.

Instead of raising the ethical bar, such practices tend to lower them. Even though the recent exposes offer what can be presented as irrefutable evidence, the means adopted were not ethically correct.

Of late, regard for norms and individual privacy appear to be at a discount among those out to sensationalise whatever can be ‘captured’ on camera without pausing to consider what public interest such telecasts serve.