Newspaper rules

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What differentiates the stylistics of a newspaper from that of a raconteur is consistency. One does not expect a story-teller to stick to some rules in narrating an event, except that the story be made interesting enough for the listener to want to hear it till the end. A newspaper, or any other publication that makes some claims of regularity, has already given its readers the promise of following some rules. Rules, like whether to name the victim of rape, how to treat a public person from a private one, or how to distinguish between a completed suicide and an attempted one, it is assumed have been thought out

The Telegraph curiously informed its readers, “Driven to despair by unrequited love, a 23-year-old model (name withheld to spare her the stigma) attempted suicide by consuming poison at her Alipore residence on Tuesday” (Jilted model in suicide bid, 30 November, 2006). Now there are at least three ways that one can carve this issue. A 23-year-old person is not a minor and hence there is no reason to not mention the person’s name. A model by profession, in more ways than one, chooses to dance upon the public stage. There is an even greater reason not to hide the name of a model whose career, the newspaper informs us later in the story, “had taken off this year with her dusky look drawing attention.” One could also take a more libertarian approach and suggest that criminalization of suicides is largely a relic of British laws that had the religious and cultural values of that nation ingrained in their moral assertions. How one chooses to live or die is none of the state’s business, and hence the act even if criminalized by the law does not deserve any stigma. And hence, the parenthetical aside that “name withheld to spare her the stigma” is based on an erroneous understanding of the sanctity of life.

But the curiosity for the reader would lie in the fact that a 32-year-old Rabi Mandal, an 18-year-old Shreyashi Choudhary, a 27-year-old Mokhter Sheikh, a 37-year-old Tapas Chakraborty, or a 25-year-old Nirmala Ram and her six-year-old son Piyush, to mention just a few, were all denied the confidentiality and, if The Telegraph editors are to be believed, the accompanying stigma that was given to this 23-year-old model. It would be churlish to suggest that a phone call from someone well connected to the family, or even a family member, resulted in this spasmodic conscience-stirring act, which gave this young woman the veil to protect and recover from, what may have been, a rash act.

But let us pause to consider the cases of the six people who were denied this comfort. Mandal was a person who by all accounts had made no attempt at attracting the public eye (Couples ignore writhing man, May 21, 2006). He tried to kill himself, was not noticed by callous passers-by, was taken to the hospital, and survived. Sheikh was an inmate of a home for the destitute children who tried to kill himself as a way to protest against a decision to shift the children (Rights cry to home ouster, March 29, 2005.) Chakraborty apparently was trying to kill himself since he could not suffer his wife’s atrocities (Husband in burning bid, March 1, 2005). Ram and her son tried to killed themselves for no apparent reason mentioned in the story (Suicide bid, August 12, 2006). Choudhary’s reason for the attempt was not reported. But as an 18-year old, her only fault was that she was the daughter of a Congress MP (MP’s daughter in suicide bid, October 19, 2006).

The reason for giving us their names is possibly their very ordinariness. Perhaps the very fact that these people including the MP’s daughter were not public people meant that they had no fame that could be stigmatized. The common person does not have the wherewithal that can invite a mark of shame. What we may have here from the editors of The Telegraph is a remarkable logic for deciding on whether private individuals should be identified when they are involved in acts that invite shame. In the case of private citizens, let their names be mentioned. And for those who danced upon the public eye, let their names remain confidential since it would withhold the stigma.             The fact the courts have held standards exactly the opposite should not be reason for the readers to dismiss this newspaper’s standards as being out of joint with the common belief and conventions. The readers should only wait till the next “attempted suicide” takes place. If it is just one of your relatives who lived an honourable life, never desired fame and for whom this business of living became a bit too much, well we should be thankful that the name found its way to the pages for it is no shame that they took the step. Reserve your outrage if an actress, model, or a politician is identified and mentioned by name for trying to kill oneself; after all they deserve the delicate cover of confidentiality, if not anonymity, to recover and reclaim their place in the arc lights.