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With crime cases receiving more and more media attention, Newswatch India tracked the quality of media coverage of two high-profile cases
A study by the online news portal, Newswatch India, reports that in high-profile murder trials the accused is accorded greater media coverage than the victim. The amount of coverage too has been high in such cases. The study tracked coverage of the court judgments in two murder cases in which the accused were rich and powerful: the BMW hit-and-run case in which Sanjeev Nanda, grandson of a former navy chief, was the prime suspect, accused of driving over and killing six people in Delhi in 1999, and the 1999 murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar in which bureaucrat R K Sharma was the chief accused. In the Shivani Bhatnagar case, the prime accused was convicted on March 18, 2008, and sentenced a week later. The study tracked the case from March 17 to March 27, 2008. In the BMW hit-and-run case, the prime accused was convicted on September 2, 2008, and sentenced after four days. The study monitored the case from September 1 to September 10, 2008. Around 1,636 stories appeared on the two cases; 743 in the Shivani Bhatnagar case and 893 in the Nanda case. Of these, 234 stories (123 for the former, and 111 for the latter) were shortlisted for analysis. R K Sharma, the prime accused in the Shivani Bhatnagar case, was quoted in 10 stories and his family/friends in five of the 123 items selected for the study. The victim did not get proportional coverage, being quoted only in two stories -- India Today Digital, which talked about Shivani’s health, quoting her two sisters, and The Times of India, which quoted Shivani’s in-laws. Sanjeev Nanda, prime accused in the BMW case, was quoted in only one news report but his family/friends were quoted in 18. The relatives of the victims were quoted in 13 news items. The judge was not quoted in many of the ‘breaking news’ stories in both cases. The judge’s verdict was quoted both attributively and retrospectively in 27 of the 123 stories in the Shivani case, and in 37 of the 111 stories in the BMW case. The ratio of the number of stories that quoted the lawyers of the accused and of the victims differed. In the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case, the lawyers of the accused were quoted in 22 news stories and those of the prosecution in eight. In the BMW hit-and-run case, the lawyers of the accused were quoted in 25 news stories and those of the prosecution in nine. The study also tracked the headlines of the stories. It classified headlines broadly into two categories -- ‘declarative’ and ‘label’. ‘Label’ headlines are flat headlines where the obvious fact is stated. ‘Declarative’ headlines are those that may be just as obvious but are either implications of the content of the story, however low key and implicit, or have been lifted from the mouths of people quoted in it. These headlines may be explicit judgments on the part of the reporter/publication. Around 12% of the ‘breaking news’ stories (6/51) in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case had ‘declarative’ headlines (a ‘breaking news’ story is defined as the story of the incident, in this context the first set of reporting of both the conviction announcement as well as the passing of sentence). An overwhelming 88% (45/51) opted for flatter ‘label’ headlines. In the BMW hit-and-run case, 72% (23/32) of the ‘breaking news’ stories had ‘declarative’ headlines; the rest (9/32) were ‘label’ headlines. The study also looked at the ‘tone and tenor’ of the story, as these can create an impact on the reader’s mind and influence a reader’s judgement. More than half the first reports in both cases were straight news items; the rest added some colour to varying extents, ‘from mild adjectives to elaborate descriptions of what the accused in the two cases were wearing’. In the follow-up stories, 40 of 72 stories in the Shivani case were ‘stories with colour’ as were 33 of 33 in the Nanda case. The study also noted that many stories described the accused physically -- the clothes they wore, the expressions on their faces, even their probable thoughts. There were even stories describing the hardship they would have to endure in prison. There were no similar descriptions of the victims’ kin. Source: ‘Guilty Mileage: How the Indian news media covered the judgments in two high-profile cases’.http://www.newswatch.in/files/judgments.pdf, November 2009
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