It is an interesting thing, isn’t it? Showing up responsibility. Especially in the media.

Today’s headlines in the main city newspapers are interesting. On the front page are articles exhorting the Prime Minister to take up the issue of extradition of Warren Anderson for the Bhopal gas leak tragedy (example see this link). He was the chairman / chief executive officer of Union Carbide then and there is the demand that he be extradited to India. The demand has some merit, though the company has denied it was responsible. Last year it stated that the ownership and operating responsibility of the Indian plant was with the local employees.

An action by the company resulted in deaths. Let us prosecute the company’s CEO. All good.

The front page also carries this headline: TV crew flirts with danger, fisherman gets washed away. A TV channel crew without permission puts people in danger and its actions results in a death. But look how the media hides its own. None of the papers carry the name of the TV channel. Where are the calls for the CEO of the channel to be tried? Where is the naming and shaming?

While I am not trying to equate one death with the disaster that was the Bhopal gas tragedy, this kind of hypocrisy needs to be called out.