I Think: We talk about rape in the metros but forget others
Sadam Hussain, student, Srinagar
I read the news regularly. I follow the newspapers, television and social media.
People who have the power of reporting news should be considerate, understanding and empathetic. These are exactly the things I find missing currently. Rape reporting, especially, has become entirely about the identity of the victim. How much coverage a case gets is highly dependent on the caste/ class/ religion of the victim.
In doing so, the minorities are almost completely left out. We talk about rapes in the metros and forget the others. The Kathua and Unnao cases felt like an exception to this. They got a lot of media attention. But even in the Kathua case, there was a huge gap between when the incident happened and when it was reported.
I think that our media today lacks empathy. In an attempt to create a sensational news piece and get more ‘shares’, they end up de-humanising the victim and her family. This in turn creates psychological stress for the victims. It happens mostly in high-profile cases, where the affluent individual — the perpetrator — is protected at the cost of making life tougher for the victim.
I am waiting to see an honest report of an incident — one that is not fabricated by influencers like the government or corporates.
The one thing I want the media to do is to report incidents of sexual violence in a more civilised way. The victim should be treated as more than someone who is there to provide facts and details. There needs to be a humanising of the entire narrative while reporting.
