Over the past few weeks, Meghalaya witnessed yellow journalism. This style of journalism, to put it simply, is sensationalism. Over the last decade, media moguls in India have favoured sensationalism at the expense of facts and issues that really matter. Let me recount a few instances to illustrate how yellow journalism serves us spectacle over truth, spinning sensational stories of conspiracy, scandal, fear-mongering, communalism, love, marriage, and tragedy.
During the 2023 Delhi floods, a news report went viral in which a reporter was almost submerged in water as he gave his report. The fact of the matter was that he had performed a stunt, jumping into a corner of the road where water had logged.
By the time he arrived to report on the floods, the water had receded, and he created a spectacle over truth. Our media moguls’ obsession with “jihad” is on a different level. From love jihad to tomato jihad to fertilizer jihad—a new jihad can be created any day.
In recent times, following the Pahalgam attack, the Government of India released a directive to media houses to abstain from making any live coverage of military operations, as it could reveal key information to enemies of the state.
But our media houses defied national security and engaged in mis/adventure romance to entertain and rouse intense emotions. Such journalism is characteristically unapologetic.
And in the pursuit of spectacular entertainment to rouse our emotions, the news has become less honest, less empowering, and less secular-democratic. The case of Meghalaya, of late, has made this style of journalism a force to reckon with.
The most popular national news story—at least at the moment of writing this article—is the investigation of the murder of Raja Raghuvanshi. But we need to ask: is this even genuine news that deserves national coverage? Is this news worthy of being considered in the national interest?
The case has no implications for the nation’s sovereignty, economy, military, or culture. The case does not involve high-profile individuals whose loss would impact society.
This does not mean that an ordinary person does not matter. Ordinary people’s lives matter. The death of Raja Raghuvanshi needs to be addressed, and the bereft family needs to be assured of justice.
But the family of Raghuvanshi should not be used as a smokescreen to distract from the issues in the Northeast that deserve national attention—illegal immigration, devastating floods, the rise of violence in Manipur, to name a few.
News in the national interest requires addressing the grievances of the people and questioning the apparatus of state governance.
These might look mundane, dull, grey, and boring, but they are as important as the love, faith, and relationships we struggle to maintain every day. But the media has chosen the easier narrative—one that appears informative but is tailored to meet its self-interest by rousing emotions to entertain and to glue people to bigger, illustrated headlines and images.
In this senseless murder case, there is not just one victim. Meghalaya has become a victim of yellow journalism. Sensational headlines such as “Meghalaya murder mystery,” “Meghalaya honey murder,” and “Meghalaya murder case” have captured and tarnished the national imagination of Meghalaya.
These headlines are phrased to incite an interest in spectacular drama, thrill, mystery, fear, and pity among audiences. But on the flipside, they also invoke an alarming misconception—that Meghalaya is not safe. That Meghalaya is a frontier with no rule of law. That Meghalaya is complicit in the crime.
Meghalaya, at least at the moment this line is written, does not evoke the imagery of the “abode of clouds” that its name suggests. It is depicted instead as a frontier land that is exotic and dangerous, inhabited by people who eat, pray, and sleep differently.
This imagery is coupled with the mistrust that the media is fanning—by repeatedly replaying Sonam’s father’s ridiculous insinuation that the state government is involved in a cover-up by implicating his daughter.
Such a practice might give fiction a life of its own, making the state appear unruly and ungoverned. There is no truth in such news, and the news agencies will express no apologies or regrets for such inaccurate representation—because in the age of mass media, anything that sells is deemed good.
We must counter this sensational imagery of Meghalaya—not because the state is defenceless, but because we love it. Meghalaya is committed to its social contract to secure its territory and population.
It is committed to the rule of law, and the law enforcement agencies have ensured, with the case of Raja Raghuvanshi, that crime does not pay. It has restored faith in the judiciary for the aggrieved family.
The state is inhabited by responsible citizens like Albert Pde and Bhakupar Wansai, who consider it their duty to serve their fellow citizens and ensure their safety.
It is a frontier state with exotic scenery, but it is not like populous cities or tourist destinations where taxi mafias, counterfeiters, drug lords, traffickers, and extortionists thrive, run a parallel state, or hold the government hostage.
It is like any place on the surface of the Earth—with its distinct physical geography and a people who are blessed, washed, and shaped by the Megha sun, rain, and culture.
The tragic loss of Raja Raghuvanshi is not a confluence of mistrust and violence between the people of Meghalaya and Madhya Pradesh. It involves an irreversible, tragic human experience—but it is also not the rarest of the rare cases that deserves national frenzy.
It is one of the many narratives on love, marriage, and tragedy explored in novels like Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola and in salacious crime magazines like Crime and Detective.
There is also a smack of misogyny in the coverage of the news, as if the murder of a husband by a wife is more shocking and gruesome—despite the fact that hundreds of murders are committed by husbands.
The case of Raja Raghuvanshi should be narrated within the framework of blind passion and how this passion drove the lovers to concoct a murder plan in a remote corner of India known for its difficult landscape and environment.
The human agency—and not the environment surrounding the tragic event—should be the focus of the narrative.
We don’t need media-driven vicarious tourism that will damage our industry and economy. Meghalaya should always be known as the abode of clouds—evoking Romantic reverence for nature and appreciation of its majesty, and reminding us how a bond with nature is essential for human happiness.
Also Read: Sohra incident vindicates Meghalaya residents: Will national media apologise?
The author is a former student of St. Anthony’s School and St. Edmund’s College, Shillong. He teaches English Literature at the University of Delhi. The views expressed are his and do not represent the views of any community or organisation.