Hi everyone,
Just a quick head’s up that this newsletter will discuss sexual assault allegations, mental health and suicide. If these are triggering topics for you, please consider skipping this one. I’ll be back soon with the next installment. For a list of mental health resources, please click here.
If you follow Indian news, you’ll know that there’s a lot going on right now. A contempt case in the Supreme Court against an activist lawyer; allegations that Facebook is biased towards the ruling BJP-led government; upcoming elections in Bihar… But if you follow trending hashtags on Twitter and turn on television channels like Republic TV and Times Now, it might feel like there’s only one thing happening: the media trial of Rhea Chakraborty, the girlfriend of the late Bollywood actor, Sushant Singh Rajput (SSR), who allegedly died by suicide. On Friday, The Quint put out a short episode as part of its Big Story podcast. Media commentator and journalist Naomi Datta speaks about how someone like Rhea made an easy target for India’s sensationalist media.
Now, I don’t claim to have anything new to add here. Anything I say will be pure conjecture, and G_d knows we’ve had enough of that. I just want to express my revulsion at how things are going, and share my rambling thoughts on this issue with podcast/episode recommendations that address some of the themes.
When I heard of SSR’s passing in June, I was shocked, like a lot of people were. He’s an actor I really admired, and I knew that he was an ‘industry outsider’ without the family connections that Bollywood’s star kids have.
Then there was the way he died. Every time time I hear of a death by suicide, I am stopped in my tracks, and I think ‘why?’ ‘What happened? How much pain were you going through?’ Even if I don’t know the person well, I hunt for closure. This, obviously, isn’t very good for my own mental health, and life sometimes comes to a standstill for a few days while I agonise over the ‘what-ifs’. Over time, I have tried to develop coping mechanisms to help me handle the news of a suicide. One particular episode that I found very comforting was author and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht’s interview on On Being with Krista Tippett, which talks about the history of suicide and also why we have to be mindful of how we talk about these tragedies because they can be incredibly triggering (‘copy-cat’ suicides are a thing, especially in countries that are obsessed with movie stars).
That’s why the media coverage of Sushant’s death has been triggering. It reveals a complete lack of understanding about mental health. News anchors are asking, ‘How could this smiling person have taken his own life? ‘Look, he made plans for the following week.’ People who once knew him are saying ‘He looked happy in 2013, he would never have done this’.
Even if Sushant’s death was not a suicide (and that is for law enforcement to ascertain, not us), the fact that he smiled or looked happy isn’t an indicator of his mental health. This lack of understanding has been incredibly insensitive, and I am shocked at how Indian media channels are milking this situation for their numbers. Maybe, then, this is a good time for us to expand our understanding of mental health and of how it can manifest in our lives. Maybe we can go beyond the shock of ‘Oh I didn’t know this person was going through that’ or saying ‘Go to the gym, do pranayam and count your blessings and it’ll all be fine’. There are SO many incredible podcasts about mental health, like the famous Terrible, Thanks for Asking and the Canadian podcast Other People’s Problems, which takes us into live therapy sessions (with the client’s permission).
And then, of course, is the incredibly unfair trial by media of Sushant’s girlfriend, Rhea Chakraborty. Everything — from her possible weed-smoking habits to her ‘Bengali black magic skills’ — has been used as evidence to prove that she killed Sushant. And when she finally came on the news to defend herself, people said, “Oh she looks too well-composed to be telling the truth.”
This sickens me. There are three law enforcement agencies doing their job. Why can’t we just let them do it, and report on their findings instead?
Minus the tragic death of Sushant, this hounding of Rhea made me think of how the British tabloids treated Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Tabloids like The Sun really used the ‘virality’ of the couple’s lives to hound them at every step. They used rumours of Markle’s unlikeable personality to justify their sensational stories. My classmate Pauline Bakker and I were so intrigued by this that we wrote an article about it. We interviewed media studies experts and tabloid researchers who said, “You might not like her, but this is not fair treatment.”
Dan Wootton, the Executive Editor at The Sun, who broke the story about the couple wanting to leave England, talked to Amol Rajan at the BBC’s Media Show in January, about his decision to publish the story. The show also has a few more guests who discuss all the media furor around the couple’s move to Canada.
I don’t think journalists should stop being investigators. The best of the profession have unearthed important truths that would otherwise never have reached the ears of the public. But adhering to ethical standards is important. And often, we get into truly murky territory. This four-part podcast series by Fourth Estate delves into Australia’s #MeToo scandal with actor Geoffrey Rush. The Telegraph published a story that was uncorroborated, detailing a sexual harassment complaint filed by one of Rush’ fellow actors during a production of King Lear by the Sydney Theatre Company. The article ran with the headline ‘King Leer’, and even though the complainant didn’t want to be named by the media (or want any media attention), she was eventually outed. Rush then filed a defamation suit, and the alleged victim — who had wanted nothing to do with the case — had to come up and discuss her allegations. And then she had to listen to the court say that her allegations were not credible enough, even though some pointed out that the judge had failed to take into consideration the power dynamic at play (between a veteran, Oscar-winning actor like Rush, and a younger actress). Moreover, Rush won the largest defamation settlement in Australian history, to the tune of nearly 2.9 million AUD. In a weird twist of events, the young actress and The Telegraph were now batting on the same side.
Sexual harassment allegations should be taken seriously, and this story doesn’t absolve Rush of anything. But there are ways to go about reporting these stories, and it’s not really the media’s responsibility to pass the verdict. Instead, it is responsible for presenting the facts. As we saw with the Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby cases, the journalists who broke those stories had to go through months (if not years) of vetting, corroborating and finding a credible threshold of sources willing to go on the record. That didn’t happen in this case. By the way, Rush was later accused of sexual harassment by another female actor — a story broken by The New York Times.
But there’s a way to do these things…
Thank you for reading my rant. I hope these podcasts are useful.
See you in the next newsletter! Maybe if you liked reading this, you’ll share it?
Best,
Sindhu
Best one yet!