Srinagar: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is half-right: using condolences as political stepping stones is a low blow. But let’s save a slice of the blame pie for our hard-charging media pack. Somewhere between breaking news and breaking ethics, reporters forgot that a house of mourning isn’t a red-carpet premiere.
Thrusting fuzzy-topped microphones into the faces of people experiencing raw, private devastation doesn’t just cross the line—it obliterates basic human decency. Suddenly, a quiet sanctuary of grief is hijacked by tangled wires, blazing floodlights, and aggressive barking about “how it feels to lose everything.” It turns personal tragedy into a loud, ratings-driven media circus.
We’ve traded solemn silence for the high-stakes theater of competitive crying, where the best soundbite wins. Politics over grief is deeply distasteful, absolutely, but weaponized cameras chasing tears for prime-time clicks might just take the cynical crown. Let people mourn in peace, or at least take the circus back to the parliament where it belongs.
