RIP Journalism - Sridevi's death & the media circus around her

Yes you got that right. Since the day legendary Indian actress Sridevi died after a cardiac arrest in Dubai, the entire nation has gone into mourning and our "extremely hardworking" media into a frenzy. Journalism has reached a new low. 

The first day the news came out, every single article read about what a talented actress, doting mother, loving wife she was. But that was just Day 1. By the next morning, Whatsapp groups (atleast mine) started sharing forwards on how her death was caused by all the numerous Botox shots she used to take, weight loss treatments she underwent, how she was just an arm candy for her husband and how she was forced to look like a 20 year old even at the age of 50 etc etc etc. I have no idea how much of that is true. 

Come Day 3 and the entire media turned into desi Sherlock Holmes. Ever since the Dubai police revealed that Sridevi died of "accidental drowning", reputed news channels have gone to the extent of coming up with their own theories as to what would have "actually" happened on the day of her death. They could have just been decent and waited for the postmortem report. But decency in journalism died a long time ago. Thanks to our Indian media, Sridevi is now close to becoming another Sunanda Pushkar. 


Let's see the extent of the media's imagination:

Hindi channel ABP News announced that they would reveal 'Sridevi's last 15 mins in the bathroom' on prime-time news, Aaj Tak had the anchor stand next to the visual of a bathtub with Sridevi's portrait above it.

Telugu TV9 had a morphed visual of Sridevi lying dead in a bathtub, with Boney Kapoor looking on. The channel also ran a 'scene re-creation' with alcohol bottles placed above the bathtub, claiming that Boney Kapoor had not received a 'clean chit' as yet.

CNN News 18, too, had Sridevi lying dead in a bathtub. Times Now had an "investigative" display with Sridevi standing next to a tub, all measurements marked out - her height and the tub's dimensions - as if they were trying out the Archimedes' Principle on prime-time news.

But the award for the most ghoulish should go to Telugu channel Mahaa News which had their crime bureau chief conduct a bathtub investigation on air. Standing in a bathroom, the journalist is positioned next to a pink bathtub and asks, "Did Sridevi slip and fall into the bathtub or is there some other angle to this?"

He then claims that the bathtub Sridevi was using must have been of '3 feet height and 2 feet length' (don't worry, we're as confused as you are) and that he's in a similar tub. To set any doubts we may have about the issue to rest, he climbs into the tub and demonstrates that there's no way anyone could have drowned in it, even if she'd been lying down. Sherlock also adds that Sridevi could have easily climbed out of the bathtub if she'd wanted to.

"So did anyone MAKE Sridevi drown in the bathtub?" he puts forth the explosive question he'd been itching to ask from the beginning.

If someone wrote stupid stuff like this about me when I was dead, I would go and haunt them for the rest of their lives. No one gets to stay happy after ruining my reputation. Period.

A moment of silence. Not for the death of a beloved star (she deserves more than that), but for the death of journalism.

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/sridevi-death-and-circus-tv-reporter-even-jumped-bath-tub-77103