On Monday, The Free Press Journal published a piece on how media is broken and it needs to be fixed. The author of the article opines "As we step back and look at mainstream news platforms, it becomes difficult to say where entertainment and spectacle end, and news reportage begins. Everything is made out many times more dramatic than it is, way more binary rather than nuanced, and more confrontational. It is almost as if by sowing strife, and reaping misery, news media will increase fleeting attention of the easily distracted consumer."
While we talk about news reportage, something that all journalists and media houses must ensure is the content we put out for our readers is verified.
And the kind of reportage we see nowadays really makes us question the ethics of journalism. Well, to give you an example, Times of India, one of the leading newspapers in India, made a gaffe in an article titled 'Man kills estranged wife in Bengaluru, mom-in-law in Kolkata'. Apparently they put out a wrong picture of the couple instead of the one related to the story.
The TOI article was about a 42-year-old Amit Agarwal who allegedly shot himself after killing his mother-in-law at her flat here after flying down from Bengaluru where he had killed his wife Shilpi Agarwal, a Kolkata police officer said.
In a bizarre move, TOI had instead used a picture of Amit Agarwal and Shilpi uploaded on their Facebook profile from a different location who, by the way, are doing perfectly fine. The couple put out a video explaining the same.
Watch Video:
After the couple whose picture was used by TOI went public about the blunder, the website changed the image to a representative one and apologised for the error. "We had inadvertently uploaded a wrong photo in this story. We sincerely apologise for this error," TOI said on its website.
Screengrab/ TOI
Now, netizens are in shock after TOI uses wrong people's pictures in their story. Here's how they reacted;
Well, this is not the first time the Times Group has been in trouble. Earlier, in 2011, SC had asked Times Now to deposit Rs 100 crore after it declined to relax a Bombay HC order in a case filed by ex SC Judge.
Former SC Judge Justice PB Sawant had sued Times Now for displaying his picture in an artcile dated September 2008 about a person who had a similar sounding name and was allegedly involved in a multi-crore provident fund scam.
