INVESTIGATION – IF WE DON’T CHALLENGE…

The world is divided into disciplines run by professionals. The professionals are educated and trained and then go through the rigours of practice to deliver value. That value and quality is certified by the mandated system, and is accepted as the official, legal, norm and the process. Whatever they decide and deliver is also mandated as final as per the law of the land. We heard a doctor lamenting in a video that non-professionals with no knowledge of ventilator functioning where commenting on a lapse, supposedly because of it. Undeniably, the What’sapp university fuelled the fire of the urge to transform the Information Age into a Disinformation Age.

In a lighter vein was a joke, that somebody asked a doctor when would the pandemic end, the doctor referred him to the journalist. In the current backdrop it seems that they have scripted their own penal code and all other modalities that go with it. Criminal investigation is neither fun nor an audience game. Give what the spectator wants to see. Masala cannot become an ingredient of every facet of our existence, even if it means shredding our civilised and legal existence indirectly. With regards to the investigation, if we don’t challenge, they would take over. I presume they are still in the process. The huff in which the TV journalist moves, chases, pushes his mike down your throat or hops on to a vehicle gives us a feeling of a mobile and fixed trial before a packed audience.

The accused’s right to silence does not exist for the media. Every person has the right against self incrimination. The style of eliciting information speaks of a feudal lord who has that legal right to information, per force. Only the backdrop has changed. Who will investigate is also being directed by them so to say, given the pleasure and satisfaction derived if the court’s direction goes their way. Can media campaign be allowed to happen in something sub judice? See the legal acumen derived out of nowhere and then the audacity to stick on to it. The journalist turned 9 pm legal luminaries can take best of investigators, prosecutors and lawyers to task, as if there are no norms legal or otherwise. He is exempted only when he by design, reasoning or default is of the same point of view.

The tone, tenor, aggression, verbal duels, challenges thrown and warnings pronounced on supposedly legal and technical points speaks of the audacity with which they operate. What will the real trial mean to the audience, who have been made blood thirsty. Whatever little is left is taken over by the even better professionals operating full time on the social media. A fully perfect judicial trial and most reasoned legal judgement will not find favour, if it is not of their liking. The thought process has already been vitiated. Their capability to judge biased. Sanitiser you can use to wash you hands, brains have already been. The Social Dilemma on Netflix tells us what damage social media has done, now where the other media circus leads us to, nobody knows.

UNDERSTANDING AND SCRUPULOUSLY MAINTAINING EACH OTHER’S DOMAIN IS THE FUNCTIONAL BEAUTY OF DEMOCRACY.
Sanjay Sahay