The Footage Lands at 9 pm: An Editor's Choice After a Student's Death

One Death, One Villain and a Line Every Editor Must Hold

Imagine you are a television news editor. It is 9 pm. Exam-hall CCTV of a 22-year-old student, who died by suicide hours after an exam, has reached your desk. Rival channels are already airing it, presenting it as showing he was caught with a phone.

His father alleges caste discrimination and has named a faculty member in an FIR. The institute denies that any of this caused the death. You have perhaps twenty minutes before the next bulletin. What do you put on air?

Why the

choice is genuinely hard The easy answer would be "never air it". But there is a real case on the other side. The public has a legitimate interest in what happens inside its most prestigious institutions. A grieving family has made a serious allegation of caste discrimination and an institution has denied it.

Footage might seem relevant evidence. If you refuse to air it while others do, your silence protects no one: the footage is already public and your channel loses viewers and influence. Some will even say you are suppressing information.

That is the pull of public interest and competitive pressure. It is not trivial.

Why the

line still holds On the other side stand clear rules and deeper values. The Press Council of India's 2019 guidelines on reporting suicide were designed for exactly this moment. They warn against sensational coverage, intrusive images and simplistic explanations.

In this case, the opinion writer argues, every line was crossed. There is also the person at the centre. A young man who can no longer speak should not become content. Broadcasting footage from the last hours of his life, together with insinuations about his conduct, treats him as a spectacle rather than a person owed dignity.

And there is a harm beyond the individual. Sensational reporting on suicide can increase risk among vulnerable viewers, the effect known as contagion. That is why responsible coverage avoids detail and includes routes to help.

The single-villain trap The deepest ethical failure, though, is not the footage itself.

It is the story the footage serves: the search for one villain, whether a professor, a phone or a parent's expectations. A single villain is comforting. It lets everyone else off. The structural picture is far larger.

The NCRB recorded 14,488 student suicides in 2024, the highest it has ever logged and roughly 1.24 lakh between 2014 and 2024. These deaths cluster around coaching towns, entrance-exam hubs and high-pressure institutions.

The Supreme Court has set up a National Task Force on student mental health and has criticised tokenistic compliance with its guidelines.

The resolution As the editor, you do not air the footage.

Instead, you report the facts with care: that a student has died, that his father has made allegations, that the institute denies them and that inquiries are under way. You use the phrase "died by suicide", because since the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, attempting suicide is no longer treated as a crime.

Then you turn the coverage to the structural question: why does one exam result still stand in for a young person's whole future? The cost is real. You may lose viewers tonight and some may accuse you of protecting the institution.

That is the price of choosing dignity and public health over spectacle.