Urban India was shocked and millions of eyes were tranfixed to news channels as police made the sensational revelations about the Aarushi Talwar murder case on Friday.Though, it is to the credit of TV channels that the investigation picked up the pace and the police were under pressure to solve the case, the channels ignored every other important news item including the killing of 15 Gujjars in Rajasthan, on the same day.
The case had dominated the media headlines for the last week and after the press conference in which police named her parents Dr Rajesh Talwar and Nupur as killers of Arushi and Hemraj along with Dr Anita Durrani as an accomplice, everybody was dumb-founded.
However, the extent of media coverage is baffling. There are thousands of gruesome murders in this country ever year. Agreed that it was a case involving a doctor couple but there has to be a limit to the macabre coverage. Everyone had a gut feeling that the parents may later turn out to be killers and it turned out to be true.
By repeating the grisly details of the murder and later discussing them in panel discussions, the channels pandered to populist emotions. Ironically, people were disgusted by the news but they still wanted to watch it. And channels did the same, throwing all caution to wind and caring little what effect it would have on millions of teenagers and kids.
