Thread by @PSainath_org

1/5. Shocked by Sushant Singh Rajput suicide coverage – compared with that of 330,000 farmer suicides since 1995? It’s about the money. Talk TV is a lucrative revenue model. Yak and gab costs a lot less than good journalism
#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput

2/5. Farm crisis coverage needs field investigation, travel, interviews; studying credit systems, input costs, eco-ruin, state policies. Takes money.
Talk TV needs low-cost, high decibel, lame-brained cacophony. Makes money.
#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput

3/5. The SSR suicide-Rhea arrest coverage is repulsive but it’s neither an aberration nor happening for the first time. Huge crises affecting ordinary people were also ignored during the Sheena Bora case, and earlier too
#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput

4/5. In 2006, 512 journalists covered Lakme India Fashion Week all 7 days and 125 more did so on daily passes. Only 6 of us from outside Vidarbha spent a full week there at the height of the farm suicides. Clear priorities
#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput

5/5. One giant daily showed rare honesty when it told its upset reporters who wanted to cover the farm suicides, in an internal memo: ‘dying farmers in Vidarbha don’t buy our newspaper or its products. The elites of SOBO do’
#RheaChakraborty #mediatrial #media #SushantSinghRajput