The Sagar Dighi pond in Cooch Behar, West Bengal, is known for being home to a diversity of migratory birds, and is surrounded by government offices and courts. Many young people come there to hang out as it serves as a ‘third place’ – a space besides the home and workplace, which anchors community life. Khaboria24, a local news channel, recently broadcast a short video from the banks of this pond where 2 young women were sitting and recorded kissing from a distant camera. On the channel, as a presenter wrapped up their segment, the video was played on screen to a song that seemed to poke homophobic fun at the young people. After all, queerness is just a mere spectacle for mainstream media.

This breach of the young persons’ privacy can be largely attributed to stringer culture in journalism. Stringers are not unlike your local gossip. They land up in the vicinity of a neighborhood and ask for information about what’s going on. If it is newsworthy, they might pull out their camera or microphone to get a shot or soundbyte of it. They don’t receive salaries or retainers, but often maintain relationships with multiple news organizations that rely on them for B-roll or early information from ground zero before a reporter can get there and do a more thorough investigation and reportage. This means that stringers are often not sensitized about the ethics of journalism (that are already quite sparse and white gaze-y, to begin with). During the COVID lockdowns, many news organizations were telecasting videos sent in by stringers where they can be seen prodding people who had lost children or dear ones due to bureaucratic mis-steps related to imposing the lockdown – such as daily wage labourers resorting to walking long distances to flee cities so as to sustain themselves and find shelter. They were asked pointed questions, even as they were in the throes of grief, like: is your child dead? Is it true that you suddenly lost your livelihood in the city?

It is likely that some stringer going about the town happened to spot these 2 young women kissing on the banks of the pond and zoomed in on them with their camera to get a shot of it before sending it across to the news channel. The editor at the news channel, seeing no fault in outing these 2 young women without consideration for social consequences, seems to have gone ahead and telecast the same. After all, to mainstream media, queerness is merely a spectacle. According to reports, the channel refused to take down the video until the parents of the 2 women apologized and assured that it would never happen again.

Contrast this with the trans-person in Chennai, who works as a software engineer in the Chromepet area. They were dragged and tied to a lamppost, stripped of various articles of their clothing, and beaten as several people looked on. According to the people, they were suspected of being a kidnapper in the neighborhood, but it boils down to transmisia. The police eventually rescued the trans-person from the mob, and videos recorded by onlooker began circulating of the event. News channels and social media accounts broadcast the video as-is, without considering the pain and humiliation of the trans-person who was victimized by the pervasive transphobic gaze in our society.

This is not just breach of individuals’ privacy by the prevalent media culture, but also a case study in how voyeuristic “news” content led by stringer journalism has become in today’s day and age. It is a deep-rooted systemic rot in the gaze taken to report on community life. At a time when queer people report feeling unsafe to be their real selves at home and in workplaces, a ‘third space’ like the banks of the Sagar Dighi pond or even the roads of Chromepet in Chennai is where they feel they could retreat and take a breather – but alas! the Big Brother lurks there too. Media, which is often touted as the fourth pillar of democracy, has been reduced to a bully who is prying on people and threatens to leak their private information, with little regard for their life post the 15 minutes of infamy and humiliation doled out by news platforms.

This is not limited to queer persons, but can also be observed in how women were chased and slut-shamed by popular Tamizh news channels simply because they were at a pub that was open beyond 11:30pm in Chennai on the night of the cricket World Cup final in November 2023. They were described as “half-dressed” and shots of their faces and bodies were repeatedly flashed on the videos accompanying the news reportage.

One truly wonders about the newsroom culture in these media organizations and the editorial gaze taken to news itself.