The Mega Media Blackmail

“I sleep, with the doors tightly shut,

I sleep, with the intruder alarm aptly in place.

I sleep, with a gun under my pillow,

I sleep, in my panic room”

The “so-insinuated” callous decision of the Supreme Court to execute combined with the “showcased” lack of sympathy by the President to commute or pardon has been widely reported by the media, so Yakub Memon has definitely earned some commiserations among the de facto rulers of the democracy, the people. How can a terrorist who has waged a war with the country, engaged innocent civilians into warfare, bred fear into the hearts of children earn such sympathy amongst so many of us? How are we able to judge the contention that he is innocent? Is he our true friend, were we involved in the investigation and interrogation when it was in progress, or were we the court judge who had to make the hard decision to grant the verdict to execute him provided all the necessary evidence? Then how come we know that he is not so evil and is being wrongly sentenced? On what basis is our opinion grounded so firmly? How come I know I am going to protest in support of a man who has hardly been closer than a thousand kilometer of radius of my existence? Our sentiments have been swayed to take a stand by the watchdogs of democracy, the media, which has the kept the most powerful and the fearless of men in check and has kept its liability firmly to the common man.

Now, here is a straight forward question, how has media successfully convinced us that the convicted terrorist deserves some mercy at least a commutation? A father breaking down on seeing his daughter, a pregnant wife left alone in an unfamiliar land, an innocent man being betrayed by his own treacherous brother to take the blame for mistakes that were never his own, sounds familiar? These were the tactics that have been widely used to create a picture of a man, who has been innocently convicted for “masterminding” an act of terrorism that has left many families destroyed. Did he leave his pregnant wife behind to fight against the atrocious actions of a colonial power like our freedom fighters or to protect a motherland from external aggression like our brave soldiers? But he left her behind to create more such pregnant women waiting for their husbands to return home, to create more daughters who may breakdown when their fathers name might be mentioned. The innocent father, husband, brother image so actively publicized by the media has nothing but emotionally blackmailed us to ignore the actions of a man who has been responsible for conspiring and executing the killings such fathers, husbands and brothers.

My intent here is not to express my opinions on the rights and wrongs of the verdict upheld or to gather support for or against Memon. I am simply trying to analyze the role the media is playing in this particular scenario. Let me draw a parallel; remember the hijack of the Indian Airlines flight in 1999? The demand was to release the prisoners from Indian jails in return for the hostages. At the time of negotiations, the media took a stand, it made the country sympathize with the passengers on board, it made us empathize with the families of the hostages by telecasting the terrors of these families in losing their loved ones and through these actions media justified its stand to make the government listen to voices of the people to release the prisoners in return for securing the hostages on board. Which the government did, not doing so would have been anti-national at least after all the polarization the media had done. It was appreciable of the media to take a stand and do what they did, but the story doesn’t end here, once the terrorists were released and the hostages secured, the media had taken a different stand altogether, it lashed out at the government for making compromises and bending to the whims of the terrorists, it now started telecasting the atrocities of the men who were released and spoke in volumes about the weakness of the government to stand its ground, releasing terrorists who were captured with great difficulty in return for a few Indian lives was suddenly made to seem like a very bad idea!

Today, the media seems to be preoccupied with granting some relief to an innocent Memon, now an interesting question is, if Memons life is spared from the death sentence, will the media hold on to its stand or would it make a 180 degree flip like the earlier case and start to showcase victims of the 1993 bombings and make the decision to spare Memons life a mistake? If so, then for justice it is but a lose-lose situation. Media has manipulated us to support relief for Memon but tomorrow, it will make us feel otherwise if his life is spared, do we have any opinion of our own after our thoughts have been so heavily polarized by this Mega Media Blackmail?