Rope trick

John Bogart’s famous definition of journalism (when a dog bites a man, that is not news; but if a man bites a dog, it is) found a new version in Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district earlier this week. An elderly woman in Basanwahi village died of snakebite. The villagers spotted the snake and captured it. But, instead of killing it, they fastened it by a rope to the pole of a street light and informed the police and local journalists, demanding action against the “culprit”. Both were equally perplexed: the police over what action to take against the snake and the journalists over how to report the incident. Since people routinely die of snakebite in these parts, the incident clearly wasn’t news, so journalists diligently searched for a new angle. And finally, they found the headline: “Villagers take snake hostage”. There was no report, however, of what the police did.