May 27, 2009: “Can conflict reporting be non-partisan?”
Can conflict reporting be non-partisan? This question has assumed importance because of increasing attacks on conflict reporters by state and non-state actors in south Asia allegedly for being partisan. In Pakistan, for instance, a Geo TV reporter was killed by Taliban because he was suspected to be acting at the instance of the ruling establishment. On the other hand, a newspaper editor in Sri Lanka was murdered because, as his posthumously published letter showed, he was raising uncomfortable questions about the Army’s operations against LTTE. Even in India, where the media is relatively free, reporters routinely face threats of state and non-state violence in J&K, the North-East and in areas controlled by the armed Maoists or Naxalites.
Throughout the present century, particularly since the Second World War, the media have increasingly got caught up in conflicts, wars, insurgencies, and more recently, terrorism. Even the liberal democratic state assumes that if a journalist is not with the state, she or he is mixed up with the enemy. The non-state actors too are forever suspicious of media persons. Practicing free and fair journalism has never been more demanding and perilous.
High technology and smart weapons have made ‘kill rates’ extremely high in today’s conflicts. A state at war needs constant supply of soldiers and public funds by way of taxes, and both hinge on popular support. Modern techniques of propaganda too have become sharper and subtler. It is often charged that hard selling peace is becoming an accessory to waging wars. It is not enough to lionise the soldiers; it is equally important to demonise the enemy. Can a journalist stay neutral through all this? Are media persons equipped to tackle the spin industry? Is it even possible to stay non-partisan when tempers are running high?
Foundation for Media Professionals revisited some of these recurring questions, and raised many more, at a conference on May 27 at the Claridges, New Delhi. The well-attended conference was part of a series of workshops and interactions FMP had organised for 14 visiting mid-career journalist from Thailand in partnership with the Indian and Thai Chapters of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES). The meeting began with a welcome address by FMP’s Ashutosh.
The panel of journalists comprised Kanwar Sandhu, Harinder Baweja, Sudeep Chakravarti, MR Narayan Swamy, Prabal Pratap Singh, Stephen Farrell, Reem Makhoul and Soe Myint. The discussion was moderated by FMP’s Vipul Mudgal.
Introducing the topic, Vipul Mudgal said digitization of modern-day combat has made it akin to Nintendo warfare. As such mired in difficult conditions, conflict reporters have to constantly look over their shoulders, lest they fall prey to the propaganda war of either side. The World War II propaganda, he said, was crude and designed to make us see only the state’s point of view. But the televised and uncensored Vietnam War ended up creating anti-war consciousness. Today, the propaganda is back with a vengeance, and nobody wants a repeat of Vietnam-style, unmediated reporting. Then there is each individual’s multiple identities and her/his cultural baggage which, he said, makes impartiality nearly impossible.
Kanwar Sandhu, who has edited Chandigarh editions of leading dalies like Hindustan Times and the Indian Express, felt the topic of discussion was far too sweeping. He was simple and forthright in declaring that in certain conflict zones like wars between nations it is hard to be non-partisan. A veteran war reporter himself, Sandhu said reporting rules and regulations and sheer logistics of covering difficult areas would differ from situation to situation, and for convenience of understanding he divided it into seven categories: (a) war between two nations,(b) incidents leading to war, (c) low-intensity war or counter insurgency, (d) terrorism (e) flash points like 26/11 Mumbai terror attack or recent Punjab Dera clash and (f) dispute between states or social conflicts.
His blunt question was, should you be non-partisan if your own country is forced into a war? Or can you be non-partisan? According to him there is no way media can be non partisan in this circumstance since the government has vested interest in manipulating media reports. And it has been seen that journalists, who get access to battlegrounds only due to armed forces support, are compelled to get their reports vetted by the authorities.
He recounted several instances in the past – to name a few, the Kargil and Falkland Wars — where media’s work ethics and neutrality were tested. During the Falkland war, the BBC had to face the British government’s ire for being neutral in its coverage, while during Kargil war the journalists reported what was fed to them by the Indian army. It is another issue that after the war got over, critical stories followed, Sandhu exhorted. Sandhu, however, had a caveat to his assertion: honest appraisal of reportage– post war– was possible, and perhaps, desirable.
Harinder Baweja, the investigative editor of the Tehleka magazine and a veteran of many conflicts in India and abroad, said “yes and no” to the conference proposition. She said that it is crucial to be non-partisan but tough to be neutral in reporting conflicts.
A journalist is also a human being and has various indentities – first his nationality and subsequently his sub-identities like his religion, caste and region he comes from, Baweja said. These various identities throw up questions at you and it is not easy to get over the sub-conscience pricks. Recollecting one of her assignments, Baweja said that anti-sikh riots shook her out of the secular environment she was raised in as a daugther of an Indian Air Force officer. For once, I was made to realise my Sikh identity, she remembered.
But she said that the Indian media has been by and large non-partisan in its coverage and much of this has been due to good editors media industry has had.
Sudip Chakravarti, a journalist-turned writer, brought a different dimension to the debate. At the outset he said that he had problems with words like ‘bias’ and ‘partisan.’ Chakravarti, whose latest book Red Sun on the Naxalite violence has hit the stands, deconstructed some notions by arguing that as a journalist the most important thing is the story we are telling.
As there are many lies so are many truths. Chakravarti said the problem comes only when journalists try to pretend what they are not in the story they file. Am I biased if I talk to a young man who has picked up the gun? he asked. As chroniclers and storytellers we should be honest to facts of the matters we are handling. He blamed the reporters and editors for discrepancies that colour the reportage.
Stephen Farrell, the Iraq correspondent of the New York Times , who had flown in especially to attend the conference, said it was necessary and possible to do non-partisan reporting. A veteran war correspondent having covered conflicts in Iraq, Northern Island, Bosnia, Israel and Pakistan in the last 15 years, Farrell said some of the best reports on conflicts come from native reporters. He was of the opinion that the problem comes when journalists get overpowered by their identities. An Irish born in London, he said that there are a set of things – like common cause of nationality — which reporters should avoid in order to do justice to reports.
Farrell said that journalists get patriotic, as had happened during the Falkland War and fail to ask difficult questions. It has been often seen that governments lie, spread rumours and bully to get their views across.
Farrell also mentioned that the biggest challenge was embedded journalism – a term coined during 2003 Iraq war when the western reporters gave one side of the conflict, for they were taken to the frontlines by the troops. In such cases, consciously or un-consciously journalists suppress bad things of armed forces they accompany to cover war. The reporters have to have one thing in mind that they have to bite the hand that feeds them in order to stand up and be counted. Though at times one-sided reporting takes place because of the partnership of the support-staff like interpreters don’t tell us the correct picture, he lamented.
M R Narayan Swamy who has authoried two books on Sri Lanka, including a biography of the LTTE supreme Prabhakaran, confined himself on how the Indian media covered the civil war in Sri Lanka. Swamy didn’t mince words when he said that Indian media had been partisan for a long time on reporting LTTE problems in Sri Lanka.
Though we assail Pakistan’s ISI for training terrorists and launching them into our side of the border, we have failed to expose Indian government’s stand in raising and financing the LTTE in Sri Lanka. Before, 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka accord, the Indian agencies blatantly trained, armed and financed the Tamils in Sri Lanka but ended up paying a huge price when former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated.
For us to be better journalist, we have to look at the mirror and find out where have gone wrong, he stated. Not only the vernacular press, which had vested interests, but the mainstream English media too got sucked into the Tamil Vs Sinhala divide. On the other hand, he said that many Lankan journalists lost their lives since neither their government nor the LTTE would allow them to do their job objectively.
Swamy said that his experience has been that non-state actors can be more dangerous than state actors.
Prabal Pratap Singh, an Indian TV journalist who has covered war in Afghanistan, Iraq, said that the reporters cannot afford to be partisan while covering conflicts. He said that there are ways of reporting. Recollecting the days he had spend in Gujarat to cover Godhra riots of 2002, he said he had to face ire of the Hindu as well as Muslim communities since the hysteria was such in those days. But that did not colour reports he filed from sensitive places like Narodapatia where Muslims were being buthered by what looked like organised mobs. He said on occasions, the cops stopped him intentionally from reaching the spot of violence, including the arson at the Gulbarga Society where former Member of Parliament Ahsan Jafferey was burnt alive.
He said a reporter will never come across such hurdles or dilema if he is clear about the story he intends to file. Narrating an instance from his Afghanistan coverage, he said that he had decided not to get embedded with Northern Alliance troops to get access to the Taliban warlords. The result was many Afghan nationals and leaders passed crucial information to him, since they found an Indian journalist to be more non-partisan.
Reem Makhoul, who works as an interpreter and a videographer for the New York Times in Jerusalem, said her loyality to the job is stronger than her lineage. She said her multiple identities of being a Christian Palestinian who is An Arab and also an Israeli, never came in the way of her professional commitments. Having worked in Isreal for years, she said she guarded herself from allowing her prejudices creep into a story she interprets for foreign journalists. I tell exact words used by the people to reports, added Makhoul who was in Delhi to attend the conference.
Perhaps the toughest task journalists from Burma are facing due to government censorship on media, said Soe Myint, who lives in India as a refugee for the past 19 years. He runs a website — Mizzima news – to provide a window to the world on Burma. Many journalists reporting for his news agency have to live under cover and send cell phone pictures via the Internet. Myint, who gave a power point presentation on the situation in his country, said that despite the gag on media, independent journalists are trying to raise their heads taking advantage of technological advances.
(Reported by FMP’s Dalip Singh with inputs)
