It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper

– Jerry Seinfield

Early this month, New Delhi Television (NDTV) Editorial Director Sonia Singh in a keynote address at Unesco, on World Press Freedom Day remarked: “…sadly, yes, a farmer has to travel to Jantar Mantar to commit suicide to get his voice heard”.

Singh was alluding to the death of Gajendra Singh that played out live endlessly on our television sets and was carried on front pages for two days straight. Her comments came in for much flak on Twitter since the facts of Gajendra’s case are still not out – he, by all accounts, does not fit into the profile of an average woebegone farmer and it’s still not certain whether his was a case of suicide.

Details of the case aside, Singh, though, may be on to something when she asserts that a “farmer’s suicide” may likely get more attention in the capital than in any other place.

Gajendra’s case was reported on the front pages of four major English dailies – Hindustan Times, The Times Of India, The Hindu and The Indian Express – the very next day on April 23 with in-depth coverage exploring all angles. These papers, through the next two days, carried stories on Gajendra’s background, interviews with his family, the politics that ensued after his death, the conspiracy theories around it and so on.

Compare this to the recent case of an alleged suicide by a farmer in Surapur village in Punjab that was relegated to a single-column space on page 10. The case was only reported by The Indian Express on May 14.

In a suicide note, farmer Narinderjit Singh has stated that he had lost five crops in a row and hence could not bear the burden anymore. “I waited for a good season one after another but things didn’t turn out for me. I have no money to pay my contract,” it reads.

Narinderjit had five acres of land but had taken 35 acres on contract. Villagers said he lost potato crop on 34 fields during the heavy rain in February and March.

His suicide note also urges the prime minister and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi to visit farmers. Despite the seemingly desperate circumstances that may have driven Narinderjit to suicide, his case neither elicited reams of sentimental op-eds on the plight of the Indian farmer, nor received any prime-time coverage.

Was it the lack of drama and the fact that Narinderjit’s alleged suicide did not play out in full public view that made it not worthy of prominent coverage? It appears not. A farmer, within days of Gajendra’s case, allegedly committed suicide byhanging himself right in front of the office of the District Magistrate in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh.

Thirty-five-year-old Asharam Gautam’s body was found hanging tied by his scarf early Sunday morning, police said. A suicide note found from his pocket has mentioned among other things his financial instability, they said.

Additional district magistrate (ADM) Prem Prakash Pal said Asharam, a resident of Haidergarh area’s Bhulbhuliya village, wrote in his suicide note that he had taken a loan and had not been able to repay. He also wrote that someone had taken his land by making him sign an agreement under the influence of alcohol.

Asharam’s body was seen hanging from a tree at about 5 am when locals informed the police. His death went largely unnoticed.

Between Gajendra’s death in late April and May, several such cases —  in Rajasthan, in Uttar Pradesh, in Tamil Nadu, in Maharashtra, in Punjab — made it to news without quite making a splash.

One particularly devastating case reported from Gujarat of a wife of a farmer committing suicide in front of her husband’s body, again, played out only as a snippet.

The 34-year-old farmer, identified as Haresh Rabadia, was distressed over the failure of his crop, said sub-inspector J S Rana of Dhorajitaluka police station.

In a tragic fallout of the incident, Rabadia’s wife, Bhavisha (31), killed herself allegedly by setting herself on fire on Wednesday night in front of her husband’s body.

This happened on April 30 when the media informed us of Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s  assurance of a free and fair probe and the Delhi Police keeping a “special watch on trees” in the aftermath of Gajendra’s death.

So, does a farmer have to travel to Delhi to commit suicide to get his voice heard? Perhaps yes.

Of the five W’s, “where” seems to decide how a news is played out and, “who”, how it is buried.

In an exclusive story, DNA, on May 14, reported on its front page fresh Essar leaks that implicated President Pranab Mukherjee, Congress leader Veerappa Moily and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The report quotes from an Essar group internal email, dated May 1, 2012, in which an Essar executive claims to have “met FM again and requested him to give an early date for GoM (Group of Ministers) on Mahan… he has given me a resume of Mr Santosh Reddy to absorb him suitably in the group. He has shown his annoyance that Mr Reddy has not been recruited so far.”

According to the report, an offer letter was sent to Santosh Reddy with an income of Rs 12 lakh per annum the very next day. It also adds that Mukherjee was India’s finance minister from January 24, 2009 to June 26, 2012.

The report effectively goes to show that Essar wielded considerable influence over the finance and petroleum and natural gas ministry. The story on alleged quid pro quo involving the holder of the highest office in the country was not followed up by a single newspaper in a prominent way, nor was any prime-time space dedicated to it. The only three stories that show up on Google search are from TOI, India Today and Mail Today. None of these mention names and merely state that certain ministers of the UPA era were implicated in fresh Essar leaks.

Did the media ignore the fresh leaks, even as it went to town with the first set of Essar emails, simply because this involved the President of the country?

If this was a case of the powerful escaping adequate media scrutiny, there was the case of a Delhi cop getting bail within a day of killing three women that did not get due attention perhaps because he wasn’t powerful (or famous) enough.

On May 13, the case of the Delhi cop running over three safai karamcharis in a case of rash driving was carried on the front pages of HT, The Hindu and TOI, while The Express carried it on the first of its city pages on page three.The very next day the news of his bail was reported only by The Express and TOI as a brief and a single-column story, respectively.

On May 9, however, TOI, The Hindu and The Express carried front-page reports on Salman Khan getting bail after being convicted in the 2002 hit-and-run case. The Hindu carried a front-page picture with a caption. TOI along with the front-page report carried three reports each on Page 12 and 13 each, explaining “The Salman Conviction”.

The Salman Khan bail order was dissected to its bare bones by all the major English television channels, too. (Times Now had deputed about nine reporters in Mumbai to give a blow-by-blow account.) Questions were raised and answered on how Salman Khan could get bail. Was it a case of the powerful getting away easy? While Salman getting bail made for fodder for news, the Delhi cop getting bail elicited little interest, even if he has not been convicted yet.

If the play a story gets is contingent on how famous the dramatis personae are and how central its location is, there is little wonder that public trust in us has hit an all-time low.