This time too, like in every other, as soon as doctors went on strike against the attacks, a few media houses started crying that patients are suffering due to doctors’ irresponsibility – ignoring the genuine plight that brought doctors down to streets.

We just witnessed what was probably one of the greatest doctor agitations ever, as doctors from across the country joined hands in protest against the brutal attacks on some resident doctors in West Bengal. It was a sight to behold – not just because doctors from various corners of the nation stood together in solidarity and forced an ever apathetic administration to take notice of their long standing grievances, but also because it evoked the sympathy of a large section of the lay public which has always remained censorious of doctors and the medical profession, by and large.

While demand for a strong central law for punishing offenders of healthcare violence was gaining ground, I argued in one of my articles in a major newspaper that enforcement of already existing laws remains feeble, and that despite a new law, implementation will remain key along with making our medical malpractice system more responsive and swift.

However, the role of the media in and around this is bemusing. At first, an otherwise hypercritical, over-judgemental, and populist mainstream media appeared to be vocally sympathetic and supportive of the resident doctors’ cause. In probably what might have been motivated more by partisan political interests rather than considerations of fairness and justice, a large section of the media came down on the West Bengal government for being insensitive towards doctors’ demands, while expressing solidarity with the medical fraternity. It seemed as if the ruthless race among media houses for augmenting TRPs was at least temporarily forsworn. In less than a month, this expectation has come crashing down.

Personally and on the surface, I am aware of two such incidents. At the appalling outbreak of the so called Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in Bihar recently, which cost hundreds of lives mainly among under-nourished children, a reputed journalist of a popular TV news channel decided to barge into the ICU of SKMCH, Muzaffarpur and heckle the doctor and a nurse with all sorts of inapposite questions. In what seemed to be a deliberate attempt to catch eyeballs and tug the emotional heartstrings of less-informed masses – rather than an act of innocent foolishness – the concerned journalist appeared to blame the doctor for the poor state of patients, while failing to note that the hospital was having way more than 100 percent bed occupancy, which is an larger administrative fault rather than a medical fault. Similarly last week, a major English newspaper put the blame of a tribal boy being unable to get a surgery done due to alleged faulty paperwork on ‘insensitivity’ of doctors. I am sure the readers here have encountered many such other examples.

Politics and media have forever played foul with the doctor-patient relationship, not just in India but in many parts of the world. While numerous episodes of violence have been known to be utilised by political parties to score brownie points with voters, the high emotional content of a patient suffering due to lack of healthcare provides a fertile space for the mainstream media to play populist tunes to score TRPs. The possible consequences due to undermining of trust in the doctor-patient relationship are easily ignored, while blame is shifted to the easiest and the innocuous target: the doctor. This time too, like in every other, as soon as doctors went on strike against the attacks, a few media houses started crying that patients are suffering due to doctors’ irresponsibility – ignoring the genuine plight that brought doctors down to streets.

While doctors this time put up an exemplary display of unity, forcing the political circles to shed their conventional populist garb, I am afraid it has had little effect on the populist tendencies of the media. And I am of the conviction that this stands to undermine whatever of a positive perception and sympathy for doctors that the recent strikes created in lay people.

Dr. Soham D. Bhaduri is Editor, The Indian Practitioner, a healthcare commentator, and a medical doctor based in Mumbai.