In a shocking incident that shows the lengths the electronic media can go to or the depths it can descend to in order to boost its Television Rating Point (TRP) a media crew asked a debt-ridden farmer in the mining district of Bellary in Karnataka to re-enact his failed suicide bid for the camera.
This real life re-enactment of the popular Hindi film Peepli live took place in Korlagundi Village of Bellary taluk on Wednesday, where 60-year-old Kurubara Kumarappa had tried to kill himself.
According to reports, before the video was shot, the farmer had really tried to commit suicide because his crop had withered away due to lack of water.
Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha and Hasiru Sene district president Darur Purushottham Goud alerted the media about the man’s plan to burn his crop and kill himself, but some villagers had already foiled the farmer’s suicide bid by the time the electronic media reporters reached the spot. Unfazed by this, and in order to get the TRP for their channels, media persons allegedly made the farmer re-enact the scene of his attempted suicide and asked him to pretend as if he was about to consume pesticide. Other farmers were asked to pretend like they were stopping him from dying. The media crew can be heard shouting at the farmer in the background to get it right for them and losing their cool at him. The video that went viral has caused a lot of outrage on the social media and many people are demanding a probe and action against those behind the insensitive video. Many farmers’ leaders expressed shock over the incident and condemned the changing attitude of the media for this heinous act for TRP.
Kodihalli Chandrashekhar a leader called this a criminal act and demanded action against media persons responsible for this act which destroyed the image of the electronic media and put a huge question mark on the role it is playing in society and its desperation to get its precious TRP up. A senior journalist of a reputed newspaper called it an outrage and said, “We have lost the moral right to tell anything to society.”
He also called for an introspection of the entire episode and sought a public apology from the people involved in this episode.
Karnataka has witnessed hundreds of suicides by farmers and this incident is a blot on the entire media which was willing to go to any lenght for boosting its TRP.
This real life re-enactment of the popular Hindi film Peepli live is an eye-opener and the electronic media needs to introspect where it is going wrong and what its contributuion to society is.