In the dark the marble of each tomb grows skin.
I tear it off. I make a holocaust. I underline.
God is the only, the only assassin.
– Agha Shahid Ali in "God"
Omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, round-the-clock television is the closet thing that postmodern society has to a god. But unlike the supreme being of the pre-modern epoch, media is neither merciful nor just. Modernity had its saving grace in rationality, but the contemporary media flourishes by focusing on the incredulities and irrationalities of everyday life. Falsehoods and injustices sometimes cling to its coverage like mud sticks to the soles of gumboots.
Distortions of truth and justice by the media, however, are not always intentional. The 24/7 electronic media has to report as events unfold. Instantaneousness creates urgency, and leaves little time for investigations into a story's background, or reflections over its ramifications. Breathless reporters have to gush into the microphone to feed the insatiable demands of channels driven by cutthroat competition. The recent double-murder tragedy in Noida, outside New Delhi, has exposed the lethality and limitations of television reports like never before.