From Odisha to Kanpur: What got the media interested in public healthcare?

Ever since the image of a tribal man carrying his dead wife on his shoulders went ‘viral’, there have been a rash of reports highlighting the pitiable condition of public healthcare in small towns, cities and villages of India.

All within a span of a week.

On August 25, it was reported that a man from Kalahandi district of Odisha had to walk 12 km with his wife’s dead body on his shoulders as the district hospital refused to organise a hearse van.

This was followed by a report on August 26, on hospital workers carrying a dead woman’s body to Balasore district hospital for post-mortem. The workers “broke the body at the hip, wrapped it in an old sheet, tied it to a bamboo pole, and carried it to the railway station”. This was done because an auto fare to take the body till the railway station could not be arranged.

Yesterday, a report from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, gained momentum on social media and TV news. The story was about a 12-year-old boy who died on his father’s shoulders as he carried him around in the city’s biggest emergency hospital to get him treated.

“…Allegedly denied a stretcher, Mr Kumar rushed out on foot, hefting the boy on his shoulder,” reported NDTV.

While TV news and Delhi newspapers picked up the story yesterday, the report first came out in Amar Ujala on Saturday, August 27.

Newslaundry spoke to the journalist Durgesh Tripathi, who made the video in Hallat Hospital, Kanpur. “The whole thing happened within a span of five minutes,” said Tripathi. “The father with the boy on his shoulders entered the hospital and was headed to the emergency. There, he was asked to head to the paediatric section, some 500 metres away, where he was declared dead.”

Tripathi said the hospital should be blamed for not providing a stretcher, but this absence of facilities was a common practice.

Since then, Tripathi has uploaded another video on Amar Ujala. It shows a woman carrying her unwell son on her back to get treatment at the Hallat Hospital. When asked why she didn’t ask for a stretcher, she responds in a resigned tone: “Kahan stretcher…”

The above video escaped Delhi media’s attention perhaps because it wasn’t as dramatic as that of a father carrying his 12-year-old boy on his shoulders who eventually lost his life. Which brings us to why some stories acquire virality and others don’t.

What Delhi demands

Reporters and stringers working in smaller cities and towns know that their stories have a good chance of getting prominent play if they cater to the trend being set in Delhi bureaus. For example, to put it crudely, if Dalit atrocities is the flavour of the month, reporters and stringers file more stories on such incidents because they have a better chance of getting picked up by national media.

“It is not as if crimes against Dalits are not routine or are not reported by us, but they are more likely to get picked up if the Delhi bureaus have a ‘demand’ for such stories,” said  a reporter with Press Trust of India in Uttar Pradesh.

‘Demand’ in this case is often triggered by that one story that captures the national imagination, more often than not with a viral video or a picture.

A stringer who works with NDTV told us that given a stringer’s earning depends on the number of reports that get picked up by national media, he or she is also more likely to keep an eye out for stories that are setting the trend in Delhi and file accordingly. “For example, after the December 16 gang rape case, the focus was on violence against women, so such stories had a better chance of getting picked up in national media.”

Tripathi admits that perhaps his report wouldn’t have received the attention it did from TV media had the stories from Odisha not preceded it. He also says that reports have now distorted the events. “Some reports have said that the doctors denied treatment to the boy or that the father ran around in the hospital for two hours,” said Tripathi. “This was not the case at all. The problem was not being given a stretcher, but you know how government hospitals are.”

Indeed the lack of infrastructure in public hospitals is common across these stories, but that got drowned out in our outrage over “shocking apathy”, “heart-wrenching images” and “viral video”.

On surface, this helped to the extent that it brought to our attention stories that were earlier getting ignored or considered ‘routine’. But only till the next “shocking story” takes over breaking news.

Dutch journalist and author Joris Luyendijk while speaking on his brand of “deep journalism” had said, “Most reporters focus on the news, what happened today. For me, it’s about what happens every day and uncovering the underlying structures.” Indeed beyond the current news of child’s death, the focus also needs to be on the everyday reality of patients being denied the most basic facilities in hospitals.