From Nanavati to Aarushi Talwar: How the media gets it wrong in reporting criminal trials

What does ‘media’ mean? Is it a movie, newspaper, magazine, website, tabloid, one of these or all? Do they influence a trial or the under trial influences them? The audience wanted these questions answered at the Times Litfest session by Bachi Karkaria and Avirook Sen.
With ‘trial by media’ perception gaining strength, the two authors used their own experiences in covering these cases to highlight how at times media might get it wrong but it also has influenced justice to be delivered through proactive reporting.Gautam Siddharth, the moderator, highlighted how at times the media might have gone overboard in reporting but it is the same media that has made judgements be overturned or revisited. “We are accused of playing judge and jury. But it is our newspaper that changed the course of justice with a headline ‘No One Killed Jessica’."
Bachi insisted that media either guns for the accused or turns the accused into a hero based on its reporting. A fallacy, she said, many a time has been too much of focus on the criminal than on the crime. Avirook remarked that most often than not readers wanted the trial proceedings and the judgement as a ‘Confirmation of their worldview than an information of the world.’ He added that readers like to read what validates their beliefs than actual turn of events.
Avirook recalled how in many cases, reporting had been reduced stenography where the authorities dictated turn of events to reporters and they reproduced it verbatim without fact checking. Bachi stated that an ‘unalloyed hero and witless victim’ discourse surrounded Nanavati case as well. But it is for the media to “Not be judge and jury while ensuring that truth is told.”