NEW DELHI: The two governments, state and central, have moved to gag the local Kashmiri newspapers while maintaining complete silence on the so called national television channels that have gone completely berserk over the past two weeks almost while Kashmir has been under curfew, and in the grip of tension and violence.
It is precisely this media coverage---the worst performing channels being again those that covered themselves with honours during the JNU crisis with morphed videos and sensational claims---that has equated Kashmir and Kashmiris with Pakistan and dished out a hype of ignorant, sensational and divisive propaganda that is building tremendous pressure on the moderate Kashmiris.
These television channels have during their ‘prime time’ telecasts astounded not just the Kashmiris but sane Indians across the country with the tripe that is being made to pass for news. The coverage found mention in the Rajya Sabha debate on Kashmir yesterday, with senior Opposition members wondering what exactly television was trying to do. Congress leader and former chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was particularly incensed, asking the government to take responsibility for these telecasts, that were spewing venom and poison in the garb of news. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley later said that TV channels could not be blamed for what was going on in Kashmir.
The first indication of the pressure being built by this totally irresponsible coverage of the events in Kashmir came from a Facebook post of IAS topper Shah Faesal. In a passionate outburst this young officer serving currently in the Jammu and Kashmir government, wondered at a media that was constantly flashing his photograph along with that of slain militant Burhan Wani. In drawing this distinction, as Faesal has further explained in a subsequent article, these TV channels had placed him also at terrible risk, to a point where he had to go out of his house incognito for fear of attack.
The ignorant TV discourse was trying to distinguish between the Faesal kind of Kashmiris---that for them of course are negligible in percentage---and the rest who are Pakistan motivated, and terrorist supporters. This travesty of facts violates all ethics of journalism, throwing accountability and responsibility out of the window. Besides, pushing all Kashmiris into an anti-Delhi position where as many have now started saying, there are no regional parties left, no so called mainstream leaders, but just angry alienated masses. If this indeed is true, or at least on the way to becoming so, then our TV channels and celebrity anchors can take credit for pushing a divisive agenda on the basis of planted information, and corporate pressures.
As Faesal has put it so eloquently in his Indian Express article, “I have no hesitation in saying that Zee News, Times Now, News X and Aaj Tak are at the vanguard of a movement that will take India from a dialogical civilisation to a dumb,illogical civilisation.”
The damage being done is huge. But the attack of the state was on Greater Kashmir, Rising Kashmir and other publications from the Valley that were reporting the news as it was. And clearly in doing so they were countering an agenda being set into motion by the PDP-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir that has no problem with the projection of Kashmiris as terrorists, but finds it impossible to cope with reports of deaths and injuries at the hands of the state. So the local newspapers were gagged from countering rumours with facts; and national television channels were given a thumbs up to continue with their telecasts of hate and venom!
The fact that the same channels that had branded JNU students as secessionists, are at the forefront of the campaign against Kashmir and Kashmiris, points to a certain understanding between this section of the powerful media, the corporates that own them, the money bags that have funded them (as we all know a great deal of the money comes from undisclosed sources now) and the government that provides the patronage and the carrots that this media clearly thrives on. The footnote that is now the headline is basically that all those who have another point of view and do not accept the government word as gospel are flaming anti nationals, and hence the state reserves the right to kill them, blind them, and of course arrest them which is the mildest of punishments at this point in time.
The Indian media has been very conscious and protective of its freedom from government control after the Emergency, and rightfully so. However, in this, reluctance has crept in- a laziness whereby seniors in the profession are not taking out the time to have a fresh look at the code of ethics that was formulated by journalist bodies earlier, amend it, and think out a way under which defaulting media is named, shamed and held accountable. TV channels are now following laws unto themselves. Anchors often posing as invincible gods and dropping all veneer of even societal norms to attack their targets of the day, are not journalists; and their shows are certainly not journalism. And when this ignorance and sensationalism is applied to sensitive issues like Kashmir it becomes dangerous for India, as in the spewing of hate these channels shake the very foundations of secularism and democratic unity.
The damage being done by television channels is immeasurable. And while their antics might suit a government at any given point, as these people switch their loyalties as fast as they lose their manners, they certainly do not strengthen democratic India.