When media ‘solves’ terror cases, Kashmiris are collateral damage

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 27, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/11/27/when-media-solves-terror-cases-kashmiris-are-collateral-damage

The story about the Delhi blast on November 10, where a car exploded at peak hour in the Red Fort area, killing 15 people and injuring many more, continues to unravel as we read every day about the police and investigating agencies uncovering so-called “terror modules” and arresting more people. 

The headlines paint an intricate web of how it happened. They suggest an amazing certainty, as if the puzzle has already been solved. But read the story beneath those headlines, and you find that the information printed is based on what the investigating agencies are choosing to tell the media. It is their version.  

The people arrested so far are “suspects”. It has still to be established in a court of law that they were behind what happened. But readers, and especially viewers of our mainstream television channels, would not know that. Because the reporting has this quality of certainty, rather than being qualified by attribution to any source or agency. 

The cost of this kind of irresponsible reporting, something that runs contrary to the basic tenets of journalism that all of us have been taught, is being borne primarily by ordinary Kashmiris, who are living their lives, trying to study and qualify for jobs, selling their wares in Kashmir and outside, and basically surviving like so many in the rest of this country.

Let me quote here from an article which appeared as an op-ed in The Hindu on November 27 by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Chairman of the Hurriyat Conference. It is based on a sermon he gave at the Jama Masjid in Srinagar. Here is what he wrote, referring to the media and the November 10 incident: 

“Yet, while we mourn, it is troubling to see how quickly such tragedies are converted into sensational narratives. Even before investigations establish facts, sections of the media are quoting ‘inside sources’ and are ready with headlines that cast suspicion on a particular community and religion. This rush to judge not only misleads the public but also places an entire population under scrutiny – especially Kashmiri students and professionals living across India, who suddenly find themselves being treated as suspects. Fear replaces safety, and anxiety grips families back home.”

His observations come as no surprise. They should make us in the media pause. But that is unlikely to happen because Mirwaiz is anyway condemned to be part of “them”, the so-called anti-nationals.  

Barring a few honourable exceptions, mostly in mainstream print media, qualifiers like “alleged” or “suspect” or “according to” have virtually disappeared. Even if they appear in the main story, they are certainly not reflected in the headlines, which is what most people read and remember.  

Mainstream media probably needs to be educated about the fundamental right of every citizen to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Even the spate of judgments in terror-related cases, where people have spent years in jail on charges that were finally dismissed by courts, does not seem to have informed reporting of such incidents in this country. The latest is the Allahabad High Court judgement on November 10, absolving Mohammad Ilyas, who spent 28 years in jail after being convicted for being the brain behind the 1996 blast in a UP Roadways bus. In my last column in Newslaundry, I had mentioned the men acquitted by the Bombay High Court for their alleged role in the 2006 serial train blasts in Mumbai.

Apart from the permanent harm such media coverage is doing to scores of families of these alleged culprits and co-conspirators, the more troubling aspect is the impact on the lives of people who have had nothing to do with that incident, namely all Kashmiris. Several reports in newspapers tell us that Kashmiri students are being targeted, that they are being asked to leave from rented accommodation in cities outside Kashmir, that itinerant dry-fruit and shawl sellers who can be seen on the streets in many cities once the weather becomes cooler are being harassed.  

This can only happen because the media is complicit in creating a narrative that places all Kashmiris in the same basket as a few who might be responsible for what happened in Delhi.

Equally concerning is the virtual absence of solidarity from India’s mainstream media with the Kashmir Times, one of the oldest English-language newspapers in Kashmir, founded by the respected journalist Ved Bhasin in 1954 and now published as a digital edition by his daughter, Anuradha Bhasin.

On November 20, the Kashmir Times office in Jammu was raided by the State Investigation Agency (SIA). The office had been locked for four years as the print version of the newspaper had been suspended. According to Anuradha, no one worked in the office. Yet the SIA chose not just to raid it but claimed that arms and ammunition had been found in the premises. All this was dutifully reported by newspapers. 

Furthermore, according to this report in Indian Express, the SIA has charged the owners and the editor of the paper with “disseminating terrorist and secessionist ideology”; “spreading inflammatory, fabricated and false narratives”; “attempting to radicalise the youth” of J&K; “inciting disaffection and separatist sentiments”; “disturbing peace and public order”; and, “challenging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India through print and digital content”.

The raid on Kashmir Times should jolt us into remembering the challenges that journalists living in Kashmir face every day, particularly since August 2019, when Article 370 was abrogated, and Jammu and Kashmir became a union territory governed directly from New Delhi.

This comprehensive article by Irfan Amin Malik in Frontline magazine spells this out. It covers the reality of print publications, like Kashmir Times, that have withered and died because of the absence of any financial support. Most of this came in the form of government advertising. But since a “media policy” was introduced specifically for Jammu and Kashmir in 2020, things have become worse.  

One of the provisions in the policy states: “There shall be no release of advertisements to any media which incite or intend to incite violence, question sovereignty and integrity of India or violate the accepted norms of public decency and behaviour.” In other words, if you don’t toe the line, you will not get advertisements from the government.

Kashmir Times has been raided before, on October 19, 2020, when according to an op-ed in 2023 in New York Times by Anuradha Bhasin, “government officials and the police swept into the newspaper’s offices in the city of Srinagar, chased out the staff and put a lock on the door that remains to this day.”

Have a look at the charges against Kashmir Times and then read some of the articles it has carried, such as this one on autism and the absence of care or this one on saffron, one of the staple exports from Kashmir. You will not find such stories in newspapers published outside Kashmir, or for that matter, even in those that have survived in Kashmir. How is this kind of reporting “challenging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India”?

The raid on Kashmir Times, the impact of media reporting of the November 10 Delhi blast on the lives of ordinary Kashmiris, and the routine surveillance and harassment that Kashmiri journalists go through call for some introspection by India’s mainstream media, which emphasises that Kashmir is an integral part of this country. If our colleagues in the media in one part of this country are facing such problems, surely it is a concern for all of us who support a free press in a democracy.

In this strong editorial following the raid on their office, Anuradha Bhasin and Prabodh Jamwal have said something that should be heeded by the media in India, before even the pretence of a free press is permanently erased.

“Journalism is not a crime. Accountability is not treason. And we will continue to inform, investigate, and advocate for those who depend on us. The state may have the power to raid our offices. But it cannot raid our commitment to the truth.”

From one WhatsApp to every frontpage: How ‘sources’ dictated the Delhi blast coverage

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 13, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/11/13/from-one-whatsapp-to-every-frontpage-how-sources-dictated-the-delhi-blast-coverage

Every time a suspected terror attack takes place in India, you can be certain about how it will play out in the Indian media.  

Without waiting for verifiable information, there will be confident conspiracy scenarios spelt out, it will be pronounced as “terror” even before there is official confirmation, the neighbouring country will be blamed, and those whose names are put out as possible suspects will be broadcast as the perpetrators of the crime even before there is adequate and plausible evidence to charge them. With its desperate need to beat the competition over a 24-hour news cycle, the spin given based on few, or even no facts, by TV channels will send many heads spinning.

Additionally, in today’s divisive political atmosphere, if the suspects happen to be Muslim, then inevitably the hate and invective against an entire community will be aired without any compunction. 

That is precisely what we have witnessed, yet again, after the explosion that killed 13 people and injured many more on the evening of November 10 near the Red Fort metro station in Delhi.  

We know now that it was an explosion in a car. We are told there is certainty about the identity of the person driving the car. And after two days of speculation, hints by “sources” and conspiracy theories set out with great certainty by the usual suspects on mainstream television channels, the Modi government finally issued a statement saying that it was a “heinous terror incident” by “anti-national forces.” The anticipated accusation that Pakistan was behind it, something that has occurred so routinely as to be taken for granted, was not in the statement.

What one should note, however, is that in the preceding two days before this statement, neither the Union Home Ministry, nor the Delhi Police that was on the spot, has held an official briefing for the media.

The reason this stands out as unusual is because in the past, when such incidents took place, the media has been briefed officially, and not through unofficial sources.  

In Mumbai for instance, when serial blasts took place on Mumbai’s suburban trains on July 11, 2006, at peak rush hour, in which 209 people were killed and more than 700 injured, reporters were sent out to the blast sites to speak to survivors and gauge the situation on the ground. But at the same time, the police held official briefings giving out what information it had on hand. There was little room, or for that matter time, for speculation. Mainstream media at that time largely stuck to basic journalistic norms, “err on the side of caution and verify.” In today’s media sphere, that sounds like something in a foreign language. 

In the days following the Mumbai serial blasts, people were questioned, detained and some arrested. Those charged with what was seen as a “terror attack,” faced a trial, were convicted, sent to jail, and some even given the death sentence.

Yet, in July this year, 12 of these men who had been charged and convicted for the 2006 train blasts in Mumbai were acquitted by the Bombay High Court. The court held that the prosecution had “utterly failed” in establishing that these men had committed the crime for which they were charged.  

Indeed, one of the men acquitted earlier this year, Ehtesham Siddiqui, spent 19 years in jail, some of them on death row, before finally being acquitted. Although the Supreme Court has stayed the Bombay High Court ruling, those acquitted, including Siddiqui have not been sent back to jail. While in jail, Siddiqui wrote a book on his experience titled, “Horror saga”. His story is important at a time when once again, people are being interrogated, and some will be charged for a “terror attack”. 

Also worth reading is this article by Aditya Menon in The Quint about previous such incidents in Delhi.

To come back to the Delhi blast, a story that will continue to unravel in the days ahead, it is interesting to view the similarity of the reporting in the national daily newspapers following the incident. None of them could quote a single person from the government who was prepared to go on record. All the reporting was attributed to “sources” which, those who cover the central government will tell you, are based on informal messages sent out to journalists like this one: 

Sharing informally, kindly attribute it to sources: 

•⁠  Raids by security agencies across multiple locations in Delhi-NCR and Pulwama, recovering significant quantities of explosives, are believed to have led the suspect to act hastily under mounting pressure. 

•⁠  ⁠Earlier, during raids carried out on November 9 and 10, 2025, in Faridabad, Haryana, almost 3,000 kg of explosives, along with detonators, timers and other bomb making material were caught and confiscated.  

•⁠  ⁠The explosion was caused by panic and desperation due to raids carried out by the security agencies to nab them.

•⁠  ⁠The bomb was premature and not fully developed, thus limiting the impact.

•⁠  ⁠The explosion did not create a crater, and no shrapnel or projectiles were found.

•⁠  ⁠A major attack has been averted, credited to ‘pan-India alertness and coordinated crackdown’ on suspect modules.

Not surprisingly, the next day’s newspapers reported precisely what was contained in the message quoted above. Incidentally, the name of the suspect driving the car with the explosives, Dr Umar Nabi, was all over the media even before the DNA test had established his identity. As were the names of the other doctors who are suspects in what is being called a “white-collar terror module.” 

Perhaps, given the nature of the media today, with people looking to social media platforms first for “breaking news” followed by mainstream TV channels and only after that to the print media, there is little point in hoping that any of this feeding frenzy, especially after a “terror attack,” will ever change.  

Nor can we expect that this plethora of avenues for information and disinformation that exist today will disappear any day soon.

Reflecting in many ways the wishful thinking of those of us who still believe that credible journalism is possible and needed, Varghese K George, the resident editor of The Hindu in Delhi put out this comment on X after the Delhi blast:

“News cannot be, and should not be, a 24×7 affair. Can we turn back the clock and have news bulletins at periodic intervals? If not three times a day, perhaps four?

"The link between clean public information and democracy is a well-established fact. The positive correlation between misinformation and democratic decline is also an evident fact. Social media is often rightly blamed for this, but legacy media too is complicit in this decadence. At the core of the media’s collapse is the pressure for a constant, unending requirement for ‘updates.’

"The reality is that there is not, and there cannot be, and there should not be, minute-to-minute updates on any news – whether it is a Delhi blast or a Supreme Court hearing. 

"News should happen first, then be processed by experts, and only then transmitted to the public. That is what mediation of information should be about."

“Mediation of information.” Yes, in an ideal world, that is the job of the media.  But is that possible today? Can we really turn back the clock? Or has that train left the station, never to return?