Fundamental Rights during a Pandemic

It is an observable fact that some sections of the media is known to resort to sensationalism to sell its story. This section of the media aligns with a political ideology and fervently defends its position. It also tries to convert with the zeal of a missionary. Every story has an agenda or is part of a larger narrative. The fundamental problem with 'speaking for the people' is that you are stereotyping people and classifying them into groups like the middle class, the oppressed, the elite, the nationalists, the minorities etc. The easiest way to portray a group in good light is to compare and contrast them with another group. Sometimes a group is maligned to make a point for another group, quite unnecessarily.

Now, in the current extraordinary circumstance of a pandemic, even though the media, as a collective, has pledged its solidarity with the government in its fight against the virus, some sections of the media cannot refrain from sensationalizing and marketing their own brands by committing a mistake that could very well have been a calibrated attempt to come into the limelight for a brief period of time and then apologizing for the wrongly attributed quote. Either it is a wilfully committed mistake or sloppy reporting which makes the offense no less when you are trying to malign a leader. 

In the meantime, the wrongly attributed quote has done its damage in the court of public opinion. Now when a state government objects to such 'below the belt' tactics of an editor and uses the law to convey its objection by raising an FIR against the editor, the intelligentsia that includes judges, writers, artists and of course, the thespians come to the defense of the said individual by citing that fundamental rights are inviolable even during a pandemic.

The issue here is not fundamental rights. None of the states in our country or the central government has invoked anything resembling a social emergency. The media has every right to publish a story along with rightfully attributed quotes. Justice applies equally to the citizens, the media and the elected representatives. A leader cannot let slide a deliberate attempt to malign and tarnish, if it was so intended. It will be near impossible to determine whether the wrongly attributed quote was done on purpose or was it a genuine mistake. 

Now, to be fair, it is a violation of lock-down if anyone or any group tries to assemble for any event and if a chief minister is endorsing such blatant violations, putting the people at risk, then it is condemnable but next time, the editors must be careful in attributing quotes to leaders, lest they stir up an unnecessary and self-serving controversy.