It has been 75 days since actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s unfortunate demise on 14 June. In those 75 days, in a swift administration of media justice, his partner and actor Rhea Chakraborty has been accused of murdering the actor and also found guilty of it.
In between the accusation and conviction by a special bench of the media’s court comprising all the usual suspects, television channels have found her guilty of controlling his life, putting him on drugs, spiking his tea, swindling his money, giving him certain medicines, not giving him certain medicines, distancing him from his family, using him to get film offers, having other affairs, performing black magic, appreciating marijuana from Bhubaneswar and calling him ‘babu’.
This unrelenting coverage by television media, described as a ‘circus’ by many has a familiar pattern to it. Why don’t news channels not care about the overt misogyny? Why haven’t we learnt any lessons from previous media trials and why does Rhea Chakraborty tick all the boxes of a made for television villain? We have journalist, author and media commentator Naomi Datta with us today to explore these questions.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)