Thread by @MnshaP

How did the two most circulated newspapers in UP cover #HathrasCase? Too late, too little.

Besides both papers had something else in common: they carried multiple half-page and full-page advertisements for the Uttar Pradesh government.
newslaundry.com/2020/10/01/how…

The first mention of the case in the Lucknow edition of the Times of India was on September 29, on the victim being shifted to Safdarjung Hospital from Aligarh a day before. It was a single report split across Page 1 and Page 7, with barely 40 words on the front page.

On Page 7, Hathras victim's case was, rather questionably, placed next to a story on a youth who killed 11 pigeons as “revenge”.

On September 30, the morning after the woman died, the newspaper carried three reports and a cartoon. One report appeared on the front page under an update on the Sushant Singh Rajput case, perfectly encapsulating the mainstream media’s priorities.

.@cynstepin: “I expected nothing more from them [MSM]. It is just more of the same pattern of ignoring of Dalit lives, realities and issues,” she said. She added that this is indicative of the “passive support” extended by these media houses to “oppressive structures of society”

The pages of the Lucknow edition of Dainik Jagran, India’s leading Hindi daily, tell a similar story. Dainik Jagran has a Hathras edition. The Hathras rape did not make its front page until September 28

On September 30, when the victim died, the Hathras edition reported the story on its front page, continuing on Pages 4 and 5. The story was under an overarching headline “beti”, or daughter.

Vineet Kumar, a Delhi-based media critic:...in the next few weeks, as India goes into 'festival mode' with Diwali and Dussehra, the rhetoric surrounding the case will see a shift in metaphors and identifiers, from maa/behen to goddesses & devis. After that, it will be forgotten.