Brilliant piece by Anuradha Bhasin A must read. Some of the important points worth reading are:- >In 2000, the excessive media coverage of the Chattisinghpora massacre of Sikhs by unidentified gunmen was followed by stories of the ‘heroism’ demonstrated by the security forces and the state police in the Pathribal ‘encounter’ in responding to the attack. This version of events was countered by locals who came out in protests, arguing that the encounter was stage-managed and demanding that the bodies be exhumed. Some identified their family members who had been unaccountably picked up and gunned down. The media, in this context, had to re-visit the Chattisinghpora massacre in a new light. Two years later, it was a national Indian daily, the Times of India, which first broke the news about how the DNA samples were fudged to maintain the fallacy that the innocent slain men were actually ‘foreign militants’. The reports were withheld by the state government because the Forensic Science Laboratory in which the samples were tested sent back a report stating that the samples were tampered with, and that one of the samples was that of a woman. Subsequently, a fresh round of tests proved conclusively that the men had only been innocent civilians from Pathribal. Such stories, however, have been exceptions rather than the norm. Yet, these were rare occasions when the national media was forced to point out the gaps in their narrative and ask serious questions. >Similarly, Jammu-based newspapers sharpened the traditional regional divide by playing to Indian nationalist sentiment in their commentary and reportage. Every January for instance, the different tone of the headlines carried in Jammu-based newspapers and Kashmir-based newspapers reflects the two different realities about Kashmir. While ‘holocaust’, a term used by some rightwing Kashmiri Pandit organisations for their exodus in January 1990 is frequent in Jammu-based papers, the Kashmir-based newspapers tend to only recall Gawkadal and other massacres. The worst display of this Jammu versus Kashmir discourse was seen during the 2008 Amarnath land row, when newspapers on both sides fanned the communal fire and local television channels particularly became agents of provocation. >In 2010, during the five-month-long agitation that started over human rights and fake encounters, nearly 120 people were gunned down on the streets by policemen and security forces on duty. However, the Indian media, unwilling to look into the genesis of the unrest, simply lapped up the official versions like it was gospel truth and treated the protests as yet another ‘proxy war’ on behalf of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Pakistan. Some even blamed separatists and the opposition Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party. No questions were asked, no evidence was sought. An alleged mobile phone conversation between members of the Kashmiri separatist group Hurriyat Conference was aired by Indian news channels in July 2010. The channels claimed that the two of them were discussing how “Ten to 15 more protesters must die during fresh protests”. The translation of the transcript was dutifully carried without even verifying whether it was authentic. Another translation widely circulated on the internet challenged this version, elaborating that the two people in question were only cracking a joke and made no mention of instigating mobs. This version found no space in the news channels that carried the initial propaganda. >In 2010, newspapers were forced to suspend their publications for about two weeks. In 2013, after Afzal Guru was hanged, a curfew was imposed across the Valley and newspapers were not allowed to be published for almost a week. The power of the alternative media, including mobile SMS services and social media networking, remains limited and subject to the onslaught of whimsical official decisions. The ban on SMS services has only recently been lifted after four years. The internet is often barred fully or partially on the pretext of security issues; and Facebook and other social networking sites remain well within the radar of official scrutiny. Young men and women have been picked up routinely, detained or released after sustained interrogation for charges that range from ‘spreading facebook terror’ to ‘sedition’. The politics of control is in full swing and in this scenario, not only do we need to struggle to maintain clarity and not be blindsided by the many versions of events that are handed to us, but also refocus our attention on what traditionally goes underreported. Some of this includes news from remote areas, often inaccessible because of the region’s tough hilly topography; and questions of gender, which does not, amongst other reasons, sit well with a still largely male-dominated media empire.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 12:44:15 +0000
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