From Gaza to Kashmir: Why is Indian media suffering from selective coverage syndrome?

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 15, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/12/15/from-gaza-to-kashmir-why-is-indian-media-suffering-from-selective-coverage-syndrome

For more than two months, the world has watched the virtual obliteration of occupied Gaza and its residents by Israel. The visuals, the videos, and the testimonies of residents, doctors, UN officials, and journalists are flooding social media portals. Those who want to know what is happening on the ground seek out these sources, watch, and read.

But if you depend only on mainstream television channels or newspapers, the horror of what is unfolding will pass you by. This is because even if there is reporting, it is selective and one-sided, playing up one side and playing down another.

In India, the reporting, what little there is, consists of reprints from the New York Times or a precis of reports from different western-based news agencies. You rarely find anything from Al Jazeera, which has focused on Gaza since Israel’s bombardment began, or other sources in the region. 

To illustrate, look back at what Indian newspapers reported during the brief ceasefire when Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails were exchanged for Israelis held hostage by Hamas after the October 7 attack. Most reports that appeared in our newspapers, which were reprinted from western sources, focussed on the Israelis who had been released. We read who they were and some of what they experienced while held captive. But there was next to nothing about the young Palestinians who were released in the exchange. These Palestinians had been held in Israeli prisons without trial. Their lives had been upended. They saw no hope of ever being released. Their stories also needed to be heard. But in India, we heard only one side. 

Occasionally, you come across reports like this one, taken from Reuters. It tells us that even those who survived the relentless bombing by Israel that has already killed around 18,000 Palestinians, many of them children, now face the prospect of the spread of diseases that will result in more deaths. It quotes data from the World Health Organisation that between November 29 and December 10, incidents of diarrhoea in children under 5 years have increased by 66 percent. In the absence of clean water or healthcare, these children might not survive the inevitable dehydration. Also, according to the WHO, 21 out of the 36 hospitals in Gaza are now closed.  

A notable exception in Indian media was Frontline magazine. It made the Israel war on Gaza its cover story in its November 17 issue, and for this, it was trolled by supporters of the government. It has continued to carry informative reports on the war.

Why are we seeing this partial and one-sided coverage in our media? One explanation is the dependence on western news agencies and newspapers for foreign news. If you look at the world news page in any newspaper, most reports are attributed to these sources. Practically no newspaper in India can now afford to send correspondents to provide direct coverage of such a conflict. Inevitably, this means that Indian readers get international news through the filter of a western perspective.

In the 1970s, there was talk of a New International Information Order, and some attempts were made to set up news agencies staffed by journalists from the Global South who could bring a different perspective to world news. Most of these efforts failed due to a lack of funding. As a result, we are back to our dependence on western news sources for news of developments outside our borders.

Even if this reality cannot be changed, is mainstream Indian media compelled to follow the line taken by the government on foreign policy issues? You would think not, given that we are constantly reminded that there is freedom of the press in this country. Yet, a survey of Indian media would show that, by and large, it toes the line of the government. 

This has been especially obvious recently in the coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Modi government has chosen to back Israel, going against India’s historical support for Palestine (although in the last days, it has modified its stance and voted for a ceasefire in the UN General Assembly). 

The one-sided reporting on the Israel-Palestine war, which has galvanised protests around the world demanding a ceasefire, and continues to be the lead story in media in many countries, also illustrates a deeper fault line in our media, linked to the business model of mainstream media. For several decades, we have watched “news” that sells the “product” gaining dominance, while other events and developments deemed too far or not of interest to readers or viewers are either ignored, or barely noted.  

Thus, for instance, Manipur was in the news for a short while when the extent of violence in a state caught in a civil war just could not be ignored. But today, it has virtually disappeared from our news pages. Nothing is normal in that state. Yet, we read next to nothing about it. 

Similarly, look at the coverage of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the abrogation of Article 370. The region affected by it is Jammu and Kashmir. Most newspapers carried details about the judgement, learned interpretations of it, some opinions – both critical and supportive, and statements made by a few politicians from the region. And all major newspapers printed the identical article by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the judgement. 

But so far, there is practically nothing about how ordinary people in Kashmir feel about the ruling. Those who want to know have either reached out to people they know or read their guarded comments on social media. Guarded because of the fear that pervades the region since 2019.  

A rare and brave article that has appeared, predictably, on an independent digital news platform rather than in any of our national newspapers is this one written by Toufiq Rashid in The Wire. Titled “Why there is silence in Kashmir over the Supreme Court’s verdict,” this beautifully written, and evocative article is worth reading not just once but several times. Let me quote just one paragraph:

“The silence in Kashmir is loud and deafening and its people are isolated. Kashmir continues to be the paradise it was, people continue to remain the best hosts you will have but we are far from happy. With every passing day, as the voices in Kashmir are muffled, we are stepping closer and closer to complete political alienation.”

It is in these pockets of silence – Kashmir, Manipur, our tribal belts, the areas that seem entrenched forever “below poverty line” – that the real stories of what is happening in this country lie. These are the stories that we in the media need to report, and through them inform the comfortable that there are millions who are afflicted.

Even if we argue that the sorrows and tribulations of the people who are still alive in Gaza are some distance from us, what is our excuse for not keeping the focus on the areas engulfed in silence within our own boundaries?

The answer is so obvious that it does not need repeating. 

Big media’s strange self-censorship of Cricket World Cup, and why it mustn’t now forget ‘rat-hole mining’

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 1, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/12/01/big-medias-strange-self-censorship-of-cricket-world-cup-and-why-it-mustnt-now-forget-rat-hole-mining

In the good old days, when print was king, people got all their news from newspapers. Depending on your preoccupations or interests, you could start with page one, or turn to the back of the newspaper.  Page one, as now, consisted of headline news – mostly politics, some business, disasters, wars, and sometimes sports, if an Indian team or sportsperson won a tournament.

The back page, then as now, was exclusively sports. No place for politics here. Or so you would think.

But there is politics in sports. That has always been the case. Especially, in the most popular of Indian sports, that is cricket. The difference today is that in the newspaper age, sports journalists also wrote about the politics in sports, about the politics behind team selection, the politics that resulted in certain people dominating certain sports. They also reported on tournaments and wrote about individual sportspersons. The sports pages had space for all of this.

Not any more, it appears. Although, I am one of those who still reads page one first when I pick up a newspaper, I am conscious of the changes in the way the world of sports is reported on today.

At no time has this been more evident than in the reporting on the recently concluded ICC Cricket World Cup, leading up to India’s loss to Australia in the finals on November 19 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Reporting on any sport in print has been compelled to change because people can now watch the sports events live as they happen. Readers look for nuance, for the back story, for something that was not obvious as you sat before your television screen and watched. And many of the excellent sports reporters in major Indian newspapers do provide the kind of copy that makes for good reading, even if you’re not passionate about that particular sport.

But during the recently concluded Cricket World Cup, it is intriguing that practically none of these sports reporters in mainstream newspapers, as far as I can tell, reported on crowd behaviour. We learned about this only from the international media covering the matches, from social media and from independent digital platforms that carried some critical articles.

The usual controversies about the choice of the pitch chosen for a particular fixture were also barely reported. Once again, it was the international press that picked this up, such as this report in Britain’s Daily Mail. And as for the politics around the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the richest and most powerful sporting body in the world, we have yet to read a more perceptive piece than this one by one of India’s best sports journalists, Sharda Ugra in Caravanmagazine. 

It was also Sharda Ugra who informed us on the curious matter of the politics behind the colours the Indian team would wear for fixtures. Apparently, there was talk of changing the colour to saffron or orange from blue as she writes in this article in The India Forum. 

My short point about the coverage of sports in India’s mainstream newspapers is to ask whether it too has been infected by the self-censorship bug that has become the norm in other coverage? Why else would the unsporting behaviour of crowds at the Modi stadium, for instance, not be reported where ultra-nationalism seemed to overwhelm love for the sport to the point spectators would not applaud a batsman from the other side scoring a century, and senselessly booed the umpires when they were felicitated? Several reports in the international press referred to this such as The Guardian and this from an Australian website.

Since that Sunday, when most of India seemed to have been pushed into gloom barring those who don’t follow cricket, a minuscule minority I admit, the rescue of the 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand has provided some solace.  

In fact, the country has been introduced to a new phrase: “rat-hole mining.” Most people who heard or read this term on the day of the rescue would not have known what it means. Since then, most newspapers have run explanatory articles that inform us about what this entails, including the dangers and the skill required. 

There is little so far about what these men, who come from the most marginalised communities, in this case all Muslim or Dalit, are paid for this hazardous work. Rat-hole mining was banned by the National Green Tribunal in 2014 and then partially permitted in 2019. The abject poverty of the workers is evident from some of the reports such this in The Hindu, where one of them asks for a “pucca” house, and is then reprimanded by his mate for asking a favour of the government.

We must wait and see if the media follows up on this important story of rat-hole mining, of the lives of those who are engaged in it, and whether there are any regulations that apply to the kind of work they do and the hazards they face. The Telegraph, in its editorial on the lessons to be learned from the tunnel collapse, brings this out.

An equally relevant issue that the media must pursue is the environmental angle. The Silkyara tunnel, which is part of the Char Dham project of building wider roads in Uttarakhand to facilitate pilgrimage to Hindu holy sites, apparently did not get an environmental clearance as this editorial in Times of India points out. The region where such projects are taking place is ecologically extremely fragile. This has been pointed out repeatedly by several expert committees. Yet these warnings are not heeded. 

It is incumbent on the media, that has been reporting continuously for 17 days as the 41 workers remained stuck in the collapsed tunnel, to now follow up on these infrastructure projects. Are they safe for the workers, and for the terrain in which they are being built? Have they received environmental clearance? If not, why not? Who is responsible for cutting corners? 

One report suggested that even the plan to construct a rescue tunnel alongside the main one was not implemented in this case. Surely, there must be accountability. And if the government prefers to sit back and soak in the glory of the successful rescue, without holding an inquiry, it is the job of the media to build up the pressure so that this is done, and we don’t have to report on more such tunnel collapses. 

This year has been marked by the terrible consequences of unchecked building of roads and other structures in fragile mountain environments in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Too many lives have been lost due to this push to build without pausing to consider environmental sustainability. While several independent digital platforms, despite limited resources, have been writing about this, it is time mainstream media woke up and assigned reporters to investigate, rather than waiting until tragedy strikes again.