Inadequate reportage, no shortage of opinion: Where does Big Media stand on the hijab row?

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on February 17, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/02/17/inadequate-reportage-no-shortage-of-opinion-where-does-big-media-stand-on-the-hijab-row

 

The controversy over women students being permitted to wear a hijab in their classroom will not die down anytime soon. What began in one college in Karnataka's Udupi district is now spreading not just to other districts in the state but also to some other parts of the country.

This is still a developing story. It began on December 28, when six students of the Women's Government Pre-University College in Udupi were not allowed to enter their classroom wearing a hijab. Now, with the arguments being heard currently in the Karnataka High Court, the controversy poses several challenges to the media.

Will the media help tamp down emotions or add fuel to the fire that has already been lit? Will it, as seems inevitable in the highly polarised communal situation prevailing in Karnataka and elsewhere, ratchet up the blame game, creating false binaries such as Muslims vs Hindus, hijab vs saffron, etc? Or will it report with responsibility and context?

As with many such events, the initial news was barely reported, except in the area where it occurred – in this case Udupi. It gradually escalated and drew the attention of the national media once photographs of the girls sitting outside the classroom circulated on social media.

Soon, politics took over. The Campus Front of India, which is affiliated to the Social Democratic Party of India, spoke up on behalf of the Muslim students in Udupi. It was only a matter of time before other actors entered the fray, principally the Hindu Jagarana Vedike, which is a part of the Sangh Parivar and has been active on a number of incendiary communal issues in Udupi and nearby districts of Karnataka. This region has been in the news for years with such right-wing groups hounding Hindu-Muslim couples and raising the bogey of “love jihad”.

When such an issue flares up, independent digital news platforms are often the most reliable for more detailed background and information. The News Minute, which focuses on the south, has done some excellent reporting providing the necessary background and context. It has also investigated what led to the almost staged confrontation between the women students wearing hijabs, and groups of men, not all students, sporting flashy saffron turbans and scarves outside the gates of the MGM College in Udupi.

This report in the News Minute is particularly revelatory as it establishes that what was attempted to be portrayed as a spontaneous reaction by Hindu students to the demand of Muslim students for their rights was, in fact, stage-managed. The scarves and turbans were made available, and then collected once the media had given the demonstration coverage.

Newspapers based in Karnataka like the Deccan Herald also carried the kind of detailed and contextualised reports that helped explain why and how this issue escalated the way it has. This report, for instance, gives a useful graphic with a timeline of how the standoff developed and also how politics took over what was an issue that could have been settled at the college level.

Another report that brings out the many layers that need to be understood is this one in Newslaundry, based on what students told the reporters. The issues are certainly not black and white.

Also notable is how most media highlighted only one part of the Karnataka High Court's interim order of February 9, in response to several petitions filed by students on their right to wear the hijab, which stated:

“Pending consideration of all‬ these petitions, we restrain all the students regardless of‬ their religion or faith from wearing saffron shawls (Bhagwa),‬ and connected matters‬ scarfs, hijab, religious flags or the like within the classroom,‬ until further orders.‬”

But the next paragraph said this:

"We make it clear that this order is confined to such of the‬ institutions wherein the College Development Committees have‬ prescribed the student dress code/uniform.‬"

Between February 9, when the order was issued, and February 16, when the Karnataka chief minister clarified in the assembly that the high court's interim order only applied to pre-university colleges where a uniform was mandated and not to degree colleges, many colleges decided on the basis of the first part of the order to bar all students wearing the hijab from entering the premises.

Barring a couple of times when reporters questioned college principals of degree colleges on why they were stopping women wearing hijabs from entering college premises, no one in the media intervened. Instead, we saw videos in the media, and especially on social media, of college-going students being compelled to remove their hijab before entering college premises.

Worse still, some institutions even insisted that Muslim teachers remove their abayas in full view of the media and the police at the gate of the institution. Any media house that had taken the trouble to read the original order would have read this last paragraph that makes it clear to whom the order applies.

We, in the media, must also think of the price these minor girls have paid for the intrusive media attention. There is one particularly upsetting video of a purported reporter chasing a young schoolgirl while the school authorities do nothing to stop him.

Some of the girls chose to speak to the media, such as Muskan Khan, a second-year BCom student from a college in Mandya, who was seen walking boldly towards her college after parking her scooter despite the gang of men wearing saffron scarves taunting her. But they too have had to pay a price. For instance, soon after Muskan spoke to the media, according to Alt News, several fake accounts were created in her name. This is the kind of harassment so many young Muslim women have faced on social media in recent times.

Apart from the inadequate reporting on this issue in mainstream media, there has been no shortage of opinion, either on television, on digital platforms or in print media.

In print media, many opinion pieces have appeared giving various views. From one columnist making the rather predictable connection between “jihadi” and the hijab, to more nuanced comment that suggested that this was also an issue of choice, what comes through clearly is that there is no clear “for” and “against”, no binary that the media loves to project.

Of the many articles, these two are worth a second look. Written by Muslim women, they present different points of view and illustrate the many layers that need to be understood.

Ghazala Wahab, journalist and author of Born a Muslim: Some truths about Islam in India, argues in this piece in Mint Lounge that “the issue is not about hijab any longer. What started as a small disciplinary issue in one college has grown into a political battle in which the colleges are mere fronts and young girls, pawns. Someone with foresight in the right-wing universe laid a trap to further push Muslims to the margins, and the Muslim organisations have walked right into it, not realising that they would end up harming the weakest among their own.”

On the other side, Shayma S, a researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University, has a different take when she writes in Indian Express:

“The urge to rescue Muslim women, often from Muslim men, who are portrayed as oppressive and violently orthodox, is dominant in Hindutva discourse. But Muslim women who enter higher education and speak for themselves are a double threat; impossible to 'rescue' and difficult to silence. So, perhaps, it is not about the hijab, or about public order. Perhaps, it is the rising anxiety over Muslims and other minorities in the public sphere, who are fighting their way into educational institutions and jobs.”

Unfortunately, in an age of shortened attention spans, where for most people news and opinion have been reduced to a few words on social media, such articulation is read only by a very few, those actually searching for answers, for some kind of middle ground between the extremes.

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Why Rahul’s speech should remind Big Media of the other India

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on February 3, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/02/03/why-rahuls-speech-should-remind-big-media-of-the-other-india

Rahul Gandhi's speech in Parliament on February 2, in response to the union budget, made it to some front pages﹘Indian Express, Telegraph and Hindustan Times, but not the Hindu or the Mumbai edition of Times of India.

While the Hindu ran it across two columns on page 8, TOI did not report it at all in the edition I checked. It was an important intervention, whether you agreed with what he said or not. Then why bury it, or ignore it altogether?

The newspapers that did report Gandhi's speech picked his key point about there being two Indias, one of the rich and the other of the poor.

This is not even a debatable issue any more given the statistics in the Oxfam report on inequality in India. The top 10 percent of the country control 77 percent of its wealth. And between 2018 and 2022, India has apparently produced 70 new millionaires a day, states the report.

That other India, of the poor, was barely represented in the media as a whole on the days following the economic survey and the budget. Many pages, with colourful graphics and illustrations, were devoted exclusively to reporting and comment on the budget. Typically, the most space was given to the responses from industry and the markets.

How many newspapers sent out reporters to speak to poor people to find out whether the budget means anything to them or not?

In the 1980s, when neither private television channels nor social media existed, print media made it a ritual to get the views of the aam janta on the budget. Of course, quite often this vox populi consisted of a quote from the cigarette and paan vendor outside the respective newspaper office. But at least an effort was made to find out what ordinary people thought.

Today, it is evident that media houses calculate that these voices will not sell their product. So why devote space to them?

On the day the budget was presented, I spoke to two men who can be found on a pavement in one of Mumbai's upmarket localities. Shankar is a cobbler, originally from Satna district in Madhya Pradesh. Srinath sells bananas and is from Allahabad (now Prayagraj) district in Uttar Pradesh. Both men have been around for over two decades. Shankar has a room elsewhere; Srinath sleeps on the pavement next to his stall.

Neither had any idea what I was talking about when I asked them about the budget. Did they know that this happened every year, I asked. No, said both.

I explained briefly what it was about. Srinath, who is always ready with a philosophical comment to any question I ask, said, “What difference does it make to our lives what these politicians say? We are barely surviving.” Shankar echoed these sentiments, adding that in his village, people had no work. He had no option but to continue to sit on that patch of pavement and work as a cobbler.

I know two is not a representative sample. But any conversation, even if it is not for a story, with that other India reminds us that for a vast majority of this country, the hectic and loud discussions on television, or the learned op-eds in print on the annual union budget, mean very little.

What Gandhi said will be debated, and ironically the responses to his speech by ministers and spokespersons of the BJP will be reported at length even if what he said was barely covered. But apart from the slanging matches that have predictably followed Gandhi's speech, surely the media can occasionally turn its eyes towards that other India? Speaking to people like Shankar and Srinath might not make for scintillating copy. But talking to them acknowledges that they exist, that they are as much a part of this country as the experts we quote.

K Sujatha Rao, former union health secretary, in her op-ed in Indian Express on February 2, makes a telling comment that ought to be a cue for a media follow up. She writes, “Inequalities have widened. An estimated Rs 70,000 crores have been spent by the people in this short time for medical treatment that the government ought to have provided.” The period she is referring to is the Covid pandemic. The Oxfam report quoted above reiterates this by pointing out that health care in India is virtually a luxury good, only available if you can pay for it.

Yet, given that health reporting has now become one of the most important beats in the last two years, you have to work hard to find the stories that tell us about the state of public health care. Most often such stories can only be found on independent digital platforms.

Take, for instance, this story by Parth M N on the Pari website. He reports from UP about a community of Musahars, the lowest even amongst scheduled caste communities. His story tells us not just about the lack of adequate health infrastructure, but also about deep prejudice, where a Musahar woman is forced to deliver her child on the pavement outside a hospital because the staff will not admit her.

Another woman tells him how many of them preferred to stay at home when they took ill during the second wave of the pandemic last year rather than go to a hospital. “Who wants to be humiliated when you are already scared of the virus?” she said.

Parth also spoke to Muslims in nearby villages who tell their own stories of discrimination and being compelled to go from one hospital to another to get emergency treatment. As a result, most of them have built up debts due to medical expenditures.

Illustrating Sujatha Rao’s point about the money people have been forced to spend during these pandemic years, Parth writes, “In many of UP’s villages across nine districts, people’s debt grew by 83 percent in the first three months of the pandemic (April to June 2020). The data was gathered through a survey by COLLECT, a collective of grassroots organisations. It recorded that in July-September and October-December 2020, the increase in indebtedness was 87 and 80 percent respectively."

This is the type of granular reporting that is sadly missing from the English print media today, barring an exceptional story. As a result, that other India is vanishing from our consciousness, even though it represents the majority of the citizens of this country.

In the past, election coverage gave journalists an opportunity to understand the real problems that people faced in rural India.

Today, you read endless reports about caste and community calculations and the strengths and weaknesses of various political parties and politicians in the fray. While this has to be reported, do people reading these stories know anything about the region being covered? Do these places have their own histories? What are the sources of livelihood? Is there availability of water? What about public health care facilities? Are they within reach or do most people pay private doctors and fall into debt? And what about environmental issues?

These issues can be integrated into the reporting on elections. They give the reader a picture of parts of India that are otherwise routinely ignored. They come into our line of vision only if there is a major calamity. And, of course, during an election.

Such stories make for much more interesting reading than the routine and predictable. Yet, once again, it is hard to find such reporting in mainstream media. On the other hand, independent digital platforms like Newslaundry, Wire and Scroll are doing this with fewer resources.

While at least some people have appreciated Rahul Gandhi’s reminder of the other India in his speech, it is likely to be forgotten soon. As election day approaches, Big Media is in full form speculating about winners and losers. In the meantime, the Shankars and the Srinaths of this country will still be there, just barely.

Ever wondered why the best pandemic reporting has been by women journalists?

 Published in the Kochi edition of Times of India on February 1, 2022

When I became a journalist 50 years ago, there were but a ha ..

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 When I became a journalist 50 years ago, there were but a handful of women in the print media.  At that time there was only print.  All India Radio was controlled by the government. And there was no television.

 

By the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, more women joined print. But the majority worked as sub-editors on the desk. Or in the magazine and features sections.  There were very few women who were reporters.

 

The few who managed to get into reporting had to fight to get the beats they wanted. They were usually assigned the so-called "soft" beats, such as health, education, culture, entertainment etc.  Politics, business, strategic affairs, and sport were almost exclusively male domains.

 

It took at least another decade before major daily newspapers began assigning women to cover these so-called "hard" beats.  By the latter part of the 1980s, women were covering conflict and war, politics, business and even sports, the last male bastion to crumble.

 

Some of these women are now senior editors in their news organisations. It has to be said, however, that the glass ceiling at the very top has not been shattered, only partially dented.  And that too by women who are also owners of media houses.

 

Given the lack of reliable data, it is difficult to quantify the percentage of women in print media.  Several surveys suggest that women covering news represent only 12-13 per cent of all journalists. So even if the actual numbers of women in print media is larger, it is evident that the majority would still be on the desk or features, and not in reporting.

 

Yet even on the desk, women were not permitted to be on the most important shift in a newspaper, the "graveyard shift" when the paper is put to bed. Unless you are around when the latest edition of a newspaper is assembled, you cannot move upwards in the hierarchy of a newspaper and aspire to be, say the news editor.

 

If women were to stay in office till after midnight, the newspaper would have had to provide either transport, or a place to rest in the office until daybreak.  Although eventually this did happen, it was only after a considerable struggle.

 

Many of these external hurdles have disappeared today. But appearances can be deceptive. Even if news organisations do not discriminate against the women they employ, there are subtle ways in which women continue to be pushed into certain beats. 

 

If you look at areas of coverage like health or education, you will still find them mostly covered by women journalists. Some women choose these beats.  Others are left feeling that they were never given a choice.

 

The irony in these Covid times is that the health beat has become the most important one.  It is no coincidence that the best reporting in the last two years on the pandemic has been by women journalists. They already had background knowledge on public health, disease, the pharmaceutical industry and government policies, all essential for effective and informed coverage in these dire times.

 

The main difference from the 1970s to now is the way the media has changed.  Print is no more king.  Television dominates but digital is not too far behind.  In any case, increasingly media content is being consumed on a mobile phone.  That in itself has altered the style and focus of much of the media, including print.

 

Within that changed context, does the fact of more women practitioners in the media really make any difference in terms of quality or the work culture in the media?

 

Ammu Joseph, in her seminal book, "Making News: Women in Journalism" (2005) interviewed 200 women in the print media, many of whom are still prominent.  Her conclusions are relevant and apply to the media scene even today.

 

Joseph pointed out that the presence of a few high-profile women in journalism does not represent the full picture. The more visible bylines by women are evident in the main media centres, such as Delhi and Mumbai, and not if you look beyond, and certainly not in the regional print media.

 

The women interviewed by Joseph before the year 2000, and those who have spoken to Paromita Pain for her essay in South Asia Chronicle (Volume 11, 2021) recently, suggest that the experiences of women who are in journalism are varied and cannot be generalised.  A number of factors play a part in their personal journeys including class and caste.

 

Yet, gender underlines much of that experience not just by way of what they can or are not permitted to do, but also the way the external world treats them.  The headline of Paromita Pain's essay, based on interviews with women covering politics in print and online, speaks for itself: "It's hard. It's even harder when you are a woman".

 

Despite this, it is evident that women journalists have not just broken through the traditional barriers of beats, but are also excelling in the quality of journalism they are producing.  You can see this in the list of journalism award winners every year.

 

The most notable are the young Kashmiri women journalists. Most of them are independent journalist because of the lack of permanent job opportunities. Yet, despite the challenges of working in a conflict-ridden state, they have published stories on conditions in Kashmir that have brought them awards and recognition.

 

Finally, has the entry of more women in print media changed the work culture? Not necessarily. Since 2018, when women journalists began speaking up about sexual harassment at work, the ugly side of working in a male-dominated environment was exposed.  Some steps have been taken to put effective redressal systems in place. But this is just the beginning.

 

A change in attitude cannot be legislated.  Whether women are denied a beat for no reason apart from their gender, or have to suffer harassment, the end result is the same.  Journalism does not give women a free ride. That much has not changed in the last five decades.

 

When I became a journalist 50 years ago, there were but a ha ..

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#Bullibai will lead to attacks on all women, not just Muslims

Published in National Herald on January 26,2022

Link: https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/bullibai-will-lead-to-attacks-on-all-women-not-just-muslims

Given the nature of breaking news, and the daily litany of media reports on atrocities in the current communally charged climate in India, our sense of outrage seems to have been anaesthetized.

This year began with news that Muslim women were being "auctioned" on social media. The "Bulli Bai" app followed a similar attempt in July last year with the "Sulli Deals" app; and within weeks emerged evidence of how social media platform Clubhouse is being misused, with participants in a discussion using sexually explicit and violent language while mocking, objectifying and humiliating Muslim women.

Unlike last July, the outrage this time pushed police in Mumbai and Delhi into action. Several young people from different parts of the country were arrested. Each time an arrest was made, police claimed they had found the "mastermind". Yet, there is little evidence to suggest that they have actually got to the bottom of who created and funded these apps.

The law will, or will not, take its course. There is little about the way the criminal justice system works that gives us confidence that it will. However, the process of tracking down the culprits behind this dehumanising, misogynistic and Islamophobic ploy has revealed a much more disturbing and uglier reality.

The young people detained so far are all in their late teens to early twenties. They are educated and tech-savvy. Evidently, being "educated" does not protect you from irrational and hateful propaganda. The question we must ask is how much hate do you need to imbibe before you become a part of a hate-spewing system? What compelled these youngsters to be part of such a system?

Also, irrespective of whether any one of these young people is the main instigator, we are confronted with not just a bunch of lonely, twisted individuals, but an entire ecosystem that is spawning such people.

A major contributor to the creation of this ecosystem is mainstream media, especially news television that amplifies communal bias and hate speech. Some TV channels have virtually become the mouthpieces for those who want to keep Indian society divided along communal lines. The latest slogan on some of these channels is "Hindu khatre mein hai" (Hindus are in danger) taking off from an out of context statement made by a Muslim preacher and to detract from the vile hate speech that emanated from Hindu preachers recently. Such shenanigans would be laughable if they were not so dangerous.

Equally responsible is social media. Initially, it was seen as a space for self-expression, for connections, for community. It has now become home to misogyny and communal hate of the vilest kind. It works on the basis of confirmation bias. You read or hear all that confirms that bias because the system is designed to do just that. As a result, it assists in creating these vast pools roiling with hate towards the 'other' -- Muslim, Christian, Dalit, women, take your pick.

Secondly, we have to ask what these attempts to "auction" Muslim women in India tell us about Indian society?

While not all the targeted women are necessarily political, they project themselves on social media as confident and independent professionals with strong opinion. Social media has opened up a space for women, albeit with its attendant risks if they express opinions contrary to the dominant narrative. Most outspoken women on social media, irrespective of the community to which they belong, and including many women politicians, suffer vicious and dangerous trolling that includes rape and death threats.

Although this attack on Muslim women is part of a deeper woman-hating strain that is so integral to Indian public life, where women who are confident, who speak out, must be demonised, in this instance we cannot use that generalisation. Because this is specific to Muslim women, and part of the larger agenda of demonising and dehumanising all Muslims. The attacks represent the dominant ideology in this country that essentially tells all Muslims to either behave, or face the consequences.

Think about it. When the men spewing hate and openly calling for a genocide of Muslims in India at the recent "Dharam Sansad" in Haridwar escape virtually unscathed; when the scores of lynchings of poor Muslim men just going about their lives are written off as acts by a fringe; when Muslim journalists like Siddique Kappan are in jail for months for no reason except for doing their jobs; when those disrupting Friday prayers not just in open spaces but now even in mosques are not punished; then why would anyone be afraid to "auction" Muslim women as an extension of this growing Islamophobia? They did this because they were confident they would get away with it.

And finally, what stands out is the deafening silence from a government at the Centre that constantly speaks of "women's empowerment". Is "empowerment" only for some women? Are women "empowered" if they are auctioned and demeaned in this manner? Do Muslim women not matter because Muslim votes make no difference to the party in power?

Those of us born into privilege by way of caste, class or religion, cannot even imagine what it must feel to be a Muslim woman in this so-called "new India' under construction. If despite the hurdles that so many of them would have encountered, if some Muslim women are confident enough to speak out and express themselves freely on social media, we should celebrate and salute them for their courage.

I believe it is imperative that we do not forget, or allow this particular attack on Muslim women to be forgotten. Today these attacks are on social media and directed towards women identified as Muslim. If unchecked, this will pave the way for far greater violence on all women, and not just on social media.