A Delhi Court criticized media sensationalism while dismissing BJP leader Rajeev Chandrashekhar’s defamation complaint against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. The court found that the Malayalam news channel 24News misrepresented Tharoor’s statements by using edited clips, leading to a distorted narrative. It emphasized the importance of context in media reporting.
New Delhi: A Delhi Court has criticized media sensationalism, highlighting how selective snippets from interviews can be used to manipulate narratives. The court made these observations while dismissing BJP leader Rajeev Chandrashekhar’s defamation complaint against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Paras Dalal noted that in today’s fast-paced media landscape, news channels often sensationalize reports to grab attention.
“A news channel can easily fall to ‘scheme of sentimentalization’ since in today’s times with diminishing attention span, the news presented for consumption requires sensationalizing and eye-catching headlines,”
the judge remarked.
The court particularly questioned the conduct of Malayalam news channel 24News, which aired an interview of Tharoor that led to the complaint.
Also Read: Delhi Court Dismisses Criminal Defamation Case Against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor
Chandrashekhar had alleged that Tharoor accused him of bribing voters in Thiruvananthapuram ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. However, after reviewing the full interview, the court found no such accusation was made.
Instead, it pointed out that 24News had misrepresented Tharoor’s statement by taking it out of context. The court questioned why the news channel chose to air the interview in two parts, suggesting it was done to create a misleading narrative.
“It is noteworthy to see how interviews, words, etc. can be manipulated to mean differently with some outside context or interpretation attributed to such words,”
the court stated.
It further explained that when the entire 23-minute interview was viewed in its original form, it appeared as a civilized conversation between two individuals.
However, the 3-minute and 54-second edited clip, aired as breaking news, presented a distorted picture.
The court criticized the news anchor for failing to disclose that the full interview was 23 minutes long and instead, introducing the segment with his own biased narrative.
“The anchor never referred to the question which was put by the interviewer and after his own narration, played a few answers of the proposed accused,”
the order stated.
The court also noted that Tharoor, in later interviews, had clarified that there was no proof of such bribery and left it to the people to judge fairly.
“The proposed accused merely expressed having heard talks as what was being questioned, however, he never imputed that the complainant has bribed the voters,”
it added.
Legal Representation
Senior Advocates Pramod Kr Dubey, Vaibhav Gaggar, along with advocates Somdev Tiwari, Dhruv Mehta, Amrita Vatsa, Swati, and Muskan Sharma represented Rajeev Chandrashekhar in the case.
With the dismissal of the complaint, the ruling highlights the growing concerns over media ethics and the impact of selective reporting on public perception.
Case Title – Dr. Rajeev Chandrashekhar. v Dr. Shashi Tharoor
Read the Judgement here:
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