“Funeral images for 23,000” ; Is India becoming a land of media vultures who sell calamities???

Between an increasing Coronavirus surge, India has become the focus of attention for media globally. This has driven to more comprehensive coverage of India in the worldwide journalists, concentrating on the description of the conventional Hindu funeral fire as a means to “shock” their non-Indian audience. After controversial journalist Barkha Dutt was seen reporting from crematoriums, now, photographs of tragic funeral pyres, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, have shifted marketable products, bought and sold in the Western media.

The British-American media firm Getty Images presently hosts various images representing different Indian funeral pyres burned ablaze on their website. From hereabouts, any inherent media group around the world can purchase these pictures, in three different sizes, with the largest size costs about Rs. 23,000. Most of the large versions of the pictures are rated at Rs. 23,000.

Here is a tragic image from Delhi which was clicked just yesterday, representing many deceased COVID-19 victims, marketing for Rs. 23,000. Aerial images of crematoriums are also available, which means the photographers operated drones over the cremation areas to click photos. These sorts of images have become famous with Western media, with multiple news appropriating this sort of aerial shot of a crematorium. A tragic illustration representing an embrace between family members of a dead COVID-19 victim, now trading for Rs. 23,000 on Getty Images.

It may be remarked that the photographs are taken by different photographers in India, both autonomous photographers and those associated with media organizations. This means, not just Getty, but Indian photographers are also earning money out of the pandemic by taking photos and marketing in the international store.

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Obviously, terrible pictures from India representing people succumbing to their loved ones make clicks, which describes the trend of Western media in managing such pictures for every article explaining India’s prevailing Coronavirus crisis. So it does not appear as a surprise that images portraying the misery of normal Indians are getting huge amounts on Getty images for all the foreign media to apply.

Tragedy porn is a great business model for Western media and that is why they join in it. It’s good for the publishers distributing it, the writers writing it, and the photographers contributing the tragic pictures for the article. It just does nothing for the person suffering, who will remain to suffer, his tragedy forever celebrated in some Western media article.