April 15, 2009: Is media jingoism fanning Indo-Pak tensions?
Media Sways Public Sentiment But
State Policy Is Not So Fickle
By Vivian Fernandes
There was a 180-degree divergence in views on the debate, “Is Media Jingoism Fanning Indo-Pak Tensions?” organised by the Foundation for Media Professionals in New Delhi on April 13. Amit Baruah, Foreign Affairs Editor of the Hindustan Times said the media could sway the government, Beena Sarwar, unaffiliated Pakistani journalist, cited a recent example in support, columnist Swapan Dasgupta said its influence on bilateral relations was “limited” while Daily Mail editor Bharat Bhushan cautioned journalists against having an “inflated notion of ourselves.”
The debate was a fourth in a series since the Mumbai terror attacks. FMP had invited five Pakistani/Pak-based journalists and as many Indian speakers. There were no vacant seats at India International Centre’s main auditorium, despite the debate being in the forenoon, on a weekday. There were some surprise visitors. They were from the Sri Rama Sene, which had also attacked a pub in Mangalore. They shouted slogans in an unsuccessful attempt to disrupt the debate but managed to get headline mentions in channels and next day’s newspapers.
Aniruddha Bahal of FMP set the debate going by enumerating the enthralling hold of subjects like “Pakistan,” “Lashkar” and “Taliban” on Indian TV channels. The Centre for Media Studies’ media monitor found that prime time devoted to matters Pakistan and terrorism increased from 0.34 percent in November 2008 to 12.5 percent in March 2009. Indian anchors were partisan, the guests flaunted their patriotism, the headlines were dire (example: Savdhan Pakistan). Pakistani media was not different. On the day of the Mumbai siege Geo TV, for instance, got a guest, author Amrish Mishra, to suit its bias and advance the theory that the attacks were an extremist Hindu conspiracy to discredit Pakistan.
Sarwar said Pakistani media reacted with sympathy initially but closed ranks after the speed with which Indian media blamed Pakistan for the attacks. It was because of the media’s projection of an Indian request as “summons” that the Pakistan’s government could not risk a visit by ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, as it would have been seen as “nak katwane wal bath” or a humiliating response, Sarwar said.
Saeed Minhas, editor of Daily Aaj Kal, said jingoism was always there, it got accentuated after November 26, 2008. He said the media is being manipulated by state agencies, rather than the other way around, and the media plays along when government is weak. He blamed the pursuit of profit and “breaking news syndrome for breaking the barriers of impartiality.”
“Nobody wanted war. Even Islamic leaders did not want to go to war,” said 
Rahimullah Khan Yusufzai, Peshawar bureau chief of The News. He is one of the few journalists to have interviewed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden. The attempt to pass off extreme but fringe views as representative is not a particularly Pakistani affliction, he said. Indian channels too are guilty and cited their affinity to Zaid Hamid (a Pakistani defence analyst who fought the Afghan war as a mujahid and reportedly thinks that democracy is un-Islamic) and Hamil Gul , former chief of the (spy agency) ISI as examples. While reporting of terrorism, the media unwittingly plays into the hands of the intelligence agencies, he said, because it has few other sources of information. It was when Yusufzai quoted IIM Bangalore professor R Vaidyanathan’s eight-point programme to deal with Pakistan, including boycott and dismemberment, that the Rama Sene guys in the audience clapped in approval, and shouted slogans denouncing Pakistan.
Terrorism as an expression of rage against economic deprivation and an attempt to assert one’s existence – that was the deterministic explanation given by Muniba Kamal, the editor of Instep, News International’s fashion magazine. She (wrongly) said the well-off do not take to terrorism (Osama is supposed to be a billionaire, and the 9/11 suicide bombers were quite cushioned). To brush off those holding extreme views as of no consequence, would be a mistake, she said. They need to be heard.
Columnist Swapan Dasgupta, fresh from drafting the BJP’s media plan, said news channels do not have much of an influence on political parties even domestically and cited the party’s preference for Star Plus and Colors (he perhaps had paid advertising in mind). He said the assumption that there is “desirable, neutral and objective journalism is flawed.” Journalists are flesh and blood people, they are not non-state actors, and nationalism is a potent prejudice. He expressed his preference for nationalism of a “enlightened kind” that does not see Pakistan through the prism of mushy Punjabi sentimentality but objectively as a neighbour, not an estranged member of the sub-continental family. 
The media offering is a buffet, said Bharat Bhushan, editor of the Daily Mail; it is for the viewer or reader to pick and choose. He thought media consumers were quite shrewd and were not led along by channels like India TV. This was a view shared also by QWS Naqvi, director of Aaj Tak, who saw the shrill coverage of the Mumbai attacks as part of the commercialisation of the media. He said that TV channels may sway people’s sentiment; he doubted whether they changed opinion.
Bhushan said the Indian state responded to prickly bilateral issues like Siachen in a cool, detached manner; it was not overly swayed by the media. The unintended, and a positive, consequence of the Mumbai terror attacks, Bhushan said, was the play that Pakistani commentators and journalists get on Indian TV. They cannot be accused of endorsing Indian jingoism.
Nirupama Subramaniam, The Hindu’s correspondent in Islamabad, said TV was quite potent and narrated an incident in Lahore airport where she was asked for an autograph by a boy, mistaking her for (External Affairs Minister) Pranab Mukherjee, as she was often seen on Pak TV holding forth on Indian policies. . She said the outlook of Paksitani media changed after a background briefing by the ISI, immediately after the Mumbai event. That left her wondering whether the media that had campaigned for the re-instatement of sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary was a protest against then President Pervez Musharraf and not against the military’s meddling in politics. She said democracy in Pakistan and friendly relations with India were compatible; it is the national security agenda forwarded by the army and the ISI that were not. Indian leaders can walk into this trap, she said. Pak TV channels repeatedly played up Sonia Gandhi’s “muh todh jawab denge” remark (following the Mumbai event) after the Lahore attack on Sri Lankan cricketers as if there was a connection. She also called for level-headed reporting about Pakistan, without “over-the-top” mood swings (like the euphoria attending on Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore).
For Amit Baruah, it was not an issue of accuracy or factual reporting, as of attitude. He said some journalists only emphasised the negative. “A lot of Pakistanis want India to help but many Indians do not want anything to do with Pakistan.” He wanted Pakistan to be treated as a normal neighbour, and the emphasis to be on peace and human development, to which Swapan quipped that Pakistan is not a normal neighbour.
Baruah said the media does influence government policy. He cited pressure by relatives of passengers of an Indian Airlines flight hijacked to Kandhahar in 1999. They were demanding the release of terrorists in exchange, and were able to prevail on the government as their demonstrations of anguish at press conferences was amplified by TV channels.
Writer Arundhati Roy let the cat among pigeons when she asserted that the real question to be asked about the Mumbai attacks, is not who carried them out but why? She asserted that Kashmir was the reason. She admitted that media did influence public policy and gave the example of (New York Times’s Pullitzer Prize-winning correspondent) Judith Miller’s reports (proved wrong later) on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (based on information given by discredited Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi) that bolstered the Bush Administration’s case for the war on Iraq. Nearer home, Roy said, the Supreme Court sentenced Parliament attack accused Afzal Guru to death, on the basis of circumstantial evidence as “the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.” The Mumbai terror attacks were the culmination of a series of events – the religious war in Afghanistan against the Soviets, the unlocking of the gates of the Babri Masjid, the conflict in Kashmir… “We are living in a delta of poisonous ideologies,” she said, from American market fundamentalism to communalism, which could result in nuclear war at one end and genocide and fascism at the other.
(The Foundation for Media Professionals would like to thank Sunny Thomas, course coordinator at Times School of Journalism, and the following students for helping transcribe the speeches for this report: Priyanka Sahai, Diksha Kamra, Arindam Ghosh, Abhimanyu Chakraborty, Meghna Sharma, Anupriya Jolly, Khaled Amin, Anvesh Koley and Priti Payal)
