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.”

India’s fog of war: Print media treads cautiously, TV media loses the plot

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 9, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/05/09/indias-fog-of-war-print-media-treads-cautiously-tv-media-loses-the-plot

Illustration of an anchor shouting through a television while viewers cower on their couch. |Manjul

Subscribe nowIndia today is enveloped in a fog, the fog of war. It is so thick that we can neither see nor hear what is going on. We must wait patiently for someone in “authority” to tell us what is happening.

India today is enveloped in a fog, the fog of war. It is so thick that we can neither see nor hear what is going on. We must wait patiently for someone in “authority” to tell us what is happening.

Ever since the launch of Operation Sindoor on the night of May 6-7, when Indian armed forces launched nine precision strikes that targeted what were suspected to be terror outfits in Pakistan, Indian media – or at least some sections of it – has gone ballistic.

As for Indian TV news channels (which gave up on doing any kind of serious journalism years ago), they had already launched their own “operation” against Pakistan without waiting for the Indian government to act. Indeed, within days of the terror attack in Pahalgam where 26 people were killed, TV anchors were not just demanding war, but even demonstrating how it ought to be conducted. (It’s worthwhile, even now, to watch this episode of TV Newsance by Manisha Pande to get a sense of the madness on television screens.)

The official start of the clash between India and Pakistan has now given these channels additional ammunition and the madness has reached a higher pitch. Disinformation, misinformation, drama and ear-splitting decibel levels are par for the course. If you watch Indian TV, you might say this is normal. But is it, when the country is virtually at war with its neighbour, when the government is putting out all kinds of advisories about misinformation and fake news? 

Why is it that no such advisory has been directed at these channels, not even a gentle rebuke, when the government has the power under existing laws to do so? Is it because the government finds it convenient to let them rant in contrast to its official briefings that are restrained and low-key? Is it important for this government to keep up the ultra-nationalist fervour without seeming to be doing so directly? These are questions that we must ask, even if the mere act of asking questions now is considered “anti-national”. 

On the day after Operation Sindoor, barring headlines and display, the news coverage in all major newspapers was almost identical. What was missing was the story of the price being paid by the Kashmiris living near the Line of Control. An exception was the Indian Express, which had a story on its front page giving the names and ages of each one of those killed in the firing across the border.  

But the press could have given a human face to this war by asking why, if the government knew that it was mounting this operation, was there inadequate effort to make sure the most vulnerable, the people living on the border, had shelters, or somewhere else where they could go? 

And why should the Indian media not ask these questions, as Kashmir Times has done? Despite its constraints, Kashmir Times has been putting out daily reports on the lives of the Kashmiris affected along the Line of Control. If you visit some of the villages in Uri district, you can see the other side clearly, across a deep gorge with the Neelam River that divides the two sides of Kashmir. People on both sides face cross-border firing whenever there’s a problem between our two countries. Yet, so often, their stories are never told, or only in passing. The real price of war is paid by such ordinary people.

Apart from not reporting on the casualties along the LoC, the print media is also not asking legitimate questions. For instance, when the defence minister states that 100 terrorists have been killed in Operation Sindoor, we need to know who they are, where they were, and whether they were at any of the nine sites that were targeted in Pakistan. Yet so far, such a question has not been asked, and it is highly unlikely if it ever will be. 

There are other questions, including Pakistan’s claims on Indian fighter jets, and photographs of alleged debris. So far, there has been no official response.

Clearly, print media has decided to tread cautiously because they know that unlike TV channels, this government is not going to be charitable towards them if they report without official confirmation. Any speculation, or source-based story is likely to be regarded as antagonistic.

And with the Indian government’s action of blocking the sites of even established Pakistan media such as Dawn or GeoNews, Indian journalists have to depend on international media houses like the BBC or news agencies like Reuters to get a sense of what is being said and reported on the other side. Surely, this is something that the media in India ought to be able to access. 

Clearly, print media has decided to tread cautiously because they know that unlike TV channels, this government is not going to be charitable towards them if they report without official confirmation. Any speculation, or source-based story is likely to be regarded as antagonistic.

Also, while Indian TV news continues unchecked with its dangerous theatrics, 8,000 accounts on the social media platform X have been blocked on the request of the Indian government. Ironically, X’s own Global Government Affairs account which reported that these accounts had been blocked without a clear reason for why this should be done, has also been blocked.

Strangely too, accounts of senior Kashmiri journalists like Muzamil Jamil from Indian Express, who is not particularly active on X, and editor of Kashmir Times, Anuradha Bhasin, have been blocked. Also, the Kerala-based digital platform Maktoob Media, even though it is reporting on the ongoing exchange between India and Pakistan much as mainstream media is doing. 

At the time of publishing this story, The Wire announced that its website was blocked in India as well. 

When strategic affairs are involved, especially between India and Pakistan, the media is flooded with comments by “experts”. On television news, the expertise of some of some of these men, and they are all men, can be questioned. But they provide the optics for the shouting matches that are always the norm, and more so when the issue is India and Pakistan.

Fortunately, print remains more sober, and one can read, or listen to, counter-terrorism experts who speak with the knowledge and insight needed to clear the fog of disinformation.

One such is Ajai Sahni. In this long, but frank, podcast with senior journalist Nirupama Subramanian for Frontline, Sahni speaks about how much of the government’s response after the Pahalgam terror attack is pure optics, and what if anything can be done to deal with the reality of cross-border terror. Without mincing words, he says that Pahalgam was a policy failure, a propaganda failure, and a political failure.

In the fog of war, disinformation from all sides is the virtual norm. We have seen that in abundance in the last few days. The night of May 6/7 will be remembered for the deluge that followed Operation Sindoor. Yet, it was the much maligned Mohammed Zubair of Alt News who systematically separated the wheat from the chaff so to speak, and revealed how handles pretending to be Indians, were Pakistanis sharing old videos to show the extent of the attack by India. Later he also showed how handles in India, and even TV channels, were using old videos to show what was going on that night.

The scourge of social media did not exist in the previous major clashes between India and Pakistan (although there is hope that this one will not escalate into a major clash). Today, it is something that is virtually impossible to control. As a result, responsible media platforms without independent sources of verification are left with no option but to stick to what is confirmed officially, even if this is not the whole story. However, even within these constraints, there are stories about people, and the impact of conflict, that need to be recorded and told. 

All this started in Kashmir, when 26 people were brutally murdered on April 22 by gun-toting men identified as terrorists. It is a region that has now been pushed back into a time of tension and sorrow. Do read this sensitive and moving piece by Mirza Waheed, Kashmiri journalist and well-known writer, in The Guardian lamenting that Kashmiri voices are still missing. 

 in The Guardian lamenting that Kashmiri voices are still missing.  

Go to Kashmir to understand what life is like under an Emergency

 On the eve of the 48th anniversary of the Emergency, here's something I wrote for the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) website.

Link: https://nwmindia.org/features/nwmi-writes/the-emergency-writing-back-to-the-future/

Forty-eight years after Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency on the night of June 25, 1975, people still ask: What was it like?

If today, in the year 2023, you want to get a sense of what life was like under the Emergency, go and spend some time in what was once the state of Jammu and Kashmir.  Not as a tourist, or a pilgrim, but as a citizen who wants to understand what life is like for people in that region.

Since August 5, 2019, when the rights provided to the people of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 were taken away overnight, and a full-fledged state was reduced to a union territory, there is a virtual state of emergency in the region, especially in Kashmir.

Think about it.  Even as the central government led by Narendra Modi took this step, all political leaders who opposed the move were arrested.

The media, that has never had an easy run because of the presence of security forces, virtually fell silent. Internet was suspended making it impossible for journalists to file stories. They were questioned, intimidated, and detained.

Over time, what little remained of an independent media was snuffed out, while journalists who dared to question were charged under public safety and terror laws.

Four Kashmiri journalists are still in jail, and dozens more have had to either leave Kashmir or tread carefully as the sword of arrest or interrogation hangs over them all the time. Even leaving the country is not an option as several have found themselves on a no-fly list without prior intimation.

Many prominent Kashmiri journalists now write for international publications as their stories are rarely picked up by mainstream Indian media barring some independent digital news platforms.

Newspapers in Kashmir survive only if they toe the line as they are now entirely dependent on government advertising. Kashmir Times, the oldest English language paper founded by the veteran journalist Ved Bhasin and now run by his daughter Anuradha Bhasin, was forced to shut its Srinagar office when the lease was cancelled without explanation.

The Kashmir Press Club in Srinagar, an important meeting place for journalists, was also arbitrarily closed.

 

Kashmir Press Club. Photo by Quratulain Rehbar

A media policy was put in place in 2020 that would penalise any publication or journalist who reported what the government considered “misleading” or “false”. In other words, nothing critical of government policies or programmes could be reported.

How is any of this different from what happened in the days following the declaration of emergency in June 1975?

Then too, opposition leaders were rounded up and put in jail. Most of them remained in jail for the entire period of the emergency.

The press soon fell silent as press censorship was imposed. Any publication violating censorship “guidelines”, which were frequently revised and updated, faced closure. No one could question the logic of these guidelines. You just had to follow them.

Even if journalists working for prominent newspapers wanted to report what they saw on the ground, they could not as their stories would not have been carried by their own publications. Their only option was to somehow sneak out the information they had collected so that it could be published in the international media.

A pall of fear that fell on the country after the first weeks of the declaration of emergency ensured that no dissent or political activity could take place. Such activity was compelled to go underground. Opponents of the Emergency, who had managed to evade arrest, had to devise ways to communicate without being detected.

For the 20 months that the Emergency lasted, people in one part of the country were unaware of what was happening in other parts. We only knew the full extent of the atrocities that were committed during the period when censorship was lifted, elections were held, and the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government was thrown out.

It will soon be four years since the abrogation of article 370. Have things changed in Kashmir?

Although some political leaders have been released, they have no role in the running of their former state because there is no legislative assembly. Normal political activity, such as public meetings and rallies are impossible to hold.  Political parties are compelled to reach out to their constituents in ways that will not attract the attention of the authorities, people who take direct orders from New Delhi.

And what about the media? Before August 5, 2019, many highly regarded Kashmiri journalists reported for mainstream media houses. Their stories included reports on human rights violations and the views of ordinary people about the situation.  They featured opposition politicians even if their views were unpalatable to those in power in New Delhi.

Today, there is a trickle of news from the region. What we read or watch are stories based on handouts by the security forces, and upbeat write-ups about tourism. It’s as if all the human rights abuses we read about in the past have disappeared.

So, even if a formal state of emergency has not been declared in Jammu and Kashmir, what people in the region have lived through in the last four years is not that different from the Emergency period of 1975-77.

What is more worrying is the absence of outrage in the rest of India about citizens in one part of this country being deprived of their basic democratic rights.

Authoritarianism finds fertile ground when the citizenry is immunised against violations of democratic rights, when people are willing to delude themselves that what happens in one region really cannot happen elsewhere, and when they swallow the propaganda that India remains the “mother of democracy”.

We need to recognise that what has happened in Kashmir is an experiment by this government to see how far they can go to deny citizens their basic rights. Why declare a formal emergency when you can manage without it?

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When benevolence turns hostile: Why press clubs shouldn’t depend on government patronage

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on January 20, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/01/20/when-benevolence-turns-hostile-why-press-clubs-shouldnt-depend-on-government-patronage

The Kashmir Press Club is dead, killed in its infancy. The dramatic events around this have drawn our attention, yet again, to the dire state of media freedom in Kashmir.

How significant is the development around the Kashmir Press Club within the larger story of endangered press freedom in that region?

What happened on January 15 is now well known. First, a group of journalists, reportedly close to the administration, barged into the premises of the press club accompanied with armed personnel (apparently assigned to protect some of these senior journalists) and literally took it over. Then, following the outcry by journalists, including the elected committee that had managed the club, the administration decided that it had become a battleground between “warring” groups and hence must be abolished altogether. On January 17, it cancelled the lease to the space occupied by the club and reverted it to the estates department.

Most non-journalists have little idea what function a press club serves. It is presumed that it is simply a meeting place for journalists, where they also get subsidised food.

Yet, these clubs are not just watering holes. They are also intensely political spaces. Every election for a managing committee is closely fought; journalists group around those who have similar political leanings. This is no secret.

Also, depending on who gets elected, some clubs are proactive on issues like press freedom as well as the welfare of journalists. They also provide a space for open discussion on a range of issues, including politics and culture. As they are usually centrally located, they also turn into alternative offices or meeting places for independent journalists.

Could one envisage something like what happened in Srinagar taking place in say Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai? Perhaps not. But one factor is common to all these institutions. They function out of spaces provided by the government. That makes them vulnerable to pressure from governments, direct or indirect.

This kind of government patronage was extended at a time when it was viewed as benign and not a lever that governments would use to get the media to fall in line. But even in the best of times, this was a fine line, and the journalists managing these spaces were well aware of the risks.

In the context of Kashmir, there have been attempts in the past to set up a press club with mixed results as reported by Rayan Naqash in this piece in Newslaundry. In each attempt, the key factor was whether the government of the day was willing to allocate space for such an institution.

In 2018, the government led by Mehbooba Mufti finally allocated a space. Perhaps if Kashmir's status had not changed so dramatically on August 5, 2019 when Article 370 was read down, the club would have been just another institution. But since then, its importance for local journalists has grown.

On August 5, 2019, all journalists were suddenly deprived of the basic tools of their trade, access to the internet. Although this was partially restored, journalists were compelled to work from a crowded government-run media centre. Once the internet ban was completely lifted, journalists found the Kashmir Press Club an ideal base from where they could work and interact with other journalists.

The media in Kashmir has been under pressure on many fronts including financial, as I outlined in an earlier column. Many publications have either closed, or reduced their staff. The majority of publications that have survived now toe the government line given their dependence on government advertising.

In this scenario, younger journalists have been left with no option but to operate as freelancers or stringers, writing for multiple publications in India and abroad as and when they can sell a story. For them a space where they can work, get access to the internet, and also meet other journalists is essential. The press club provided that and became something of a hub for independent journalists, including many women journalists.

Yet, the closure of the Kashmir Press Club is only a small part of the larger story of how systematically, the media has been forced to fall in line. As one editor told me, “Journalism in Kashmir has been criminalised; it is virtually on its deathbed.”

But unlike the outcry about the closure of the press club – with strong statements by the Editors' Guild of India and several press clubs including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai as well as journalists' unions – we hardly find statements of solidarity for the Kashmiri journalists who are harassed, interrogated, surveilled and jailed, for no other crime except that they are doing their jobs.

Take the latest case, that of Sajad Gul, an independent journalist and media student, who was picked up by the police from his home on January 5 and detained. His crime apparently was posting a video on social media of women shouting anti-government slogans after an encounter between security forces and a militant. Even as he got bail in this case, he was arrested again for an earlier case under the draconian Public Safety Act, under which he can be held without trial for at least six months.

Gul has had several run-ins with the police in the past for his stories. Like him, many journalists are interrogated on the phone shortly after they file a story, or share information on social media that the administration finds offensive. But Gul's arrest takes that level of almost routinised surveillance and intimidation to another level.

What about the growing band of women journalists, many of whom are being recognised and rewarded for their work in Kashmir under these circumstances? Read this wrenching piece by Quratulain Rehbar describing the challenges she faces as an independent woman journalist:

“Even though you know about the intimidation of journalists that happens in Kashmir, and are aware of your colleagues going through the same or worse, nothing prepares you for your own interrogation. They ask for your name, the name of your parents, and how many people are there in your family. They asked me, ‘What is your ideology? Who do you write for? How much do you earn? How many brothers do you have? Has anyone gone to Pakistan? What’s your Facebook ID?' For someone with elderly parents and two brothers, these questions are chilling. It is a nightmare that you never wake up from.”

Incidentally, Rehbar was one of the over 100 Muslim women who were targeted by the misogynistic, Islamophobic and dehumanising "Bulli Bai" app that sought to "auction" them by using their social media profiles.

Or read about the experience of Anuradha Bhasin who runs one of Kashmir's oldest newspapers, Kashmir Times. Bhasin challenged the internet shutdown by filing a case in the Supreme Court. In October 2020, the estates department, without notice or explanation, locked up her Srinagar office which operated from Press Colony.

Since then, she has struggled to keep her newspaper afloat. The central government had already stopped advertisements for the paper. After Bhasin moved the Supreme Court on the internet ban in 2019, even state government advertising vanished. As a result, the newspaper has shrunk to just eight pages. Her paper remains one of the diminishing critical voices in the state.

Although Bhasin too is pessimistic about the future of journalism in Kashmir, she says that there is some hope because of the quality of the younger journalists who, despite the intimidation, have continued to write and report.

These developments in Kashmir around the media should be a wake up call for the rest of us. If a government can arbitrarily take back what it gives, by way of offices, residences, or club premises, what is to stop other governments in the rest of the country resorting to the same tactics?

It has been clear for some time that the Modi government believes that the media is free to do what it wants as long as it sings only one tune. And by choice, or due to financial compulsions, most of the media has already done that. In Kashmir, the centre has gone a step further and experimented with additional ways to make this happen. In addition to the arrest and intimidation of journalists, the arbitrary closure of the Kashmir Press Club is an extension of this experiment.

Perhaps this is as good a time as any for press clubs in India that believe they have a role beyond being meeting places for journalists to think of alternative ways to fund themselves and not be dependent on government patronage. Given the developments in Kashmir, there is no guarantee that this apparent benevolence will not turn hostile in the future.

 

Why do we keep ignoring violations of journalists’ rights in Kashmir?

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry.com on September 16, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/09/16/why-do-we-keep-ignoring-violations-of-journalists-rights-in-kashmir

When the news broke about two Afghan journalists being detained and subsequently brutally beaten up by the Taliban for covering a women's demonstration in Kabul recently, there was international outrage. And rightly so. After all, the two men – photographer Nematullah Naqdi and reporter Taqi Daryabi from Etilaat Roz – had not committed a crime; they were simply doing their jobs.

In Indian mainstream media too there was outrage, and the photographs of the two men with their injuries were reproduced. Yet, as several senior Kashmiri journalists like Gowhar Geelani asked on social media, why was there no such outrage in mainstream Indian media when similar violations of the rights of journalists take place in Kashmir all too frequently? Such as the beating up of journalists and photographers covering a Muharram procession in Srinagar on August 17.

This is as good a time as any to focus on the state of the media, journalists and press freedom in Kashmir. There is no better illustration of how impossible it is for journalists to do even their routine jobs when you see the response of the administration following the death of the chairman of the Hurriyat, Syed Ali Shah Geelani on September 1. Not only were journalists prevented from going anywhere near his home after news of his death spread, as this report by Shahid Tantray in the Caravan describes, but they were even stopped from filming the huge presence of security forces outside his home. Additionally, internet services were suspended yet again, crippling the media even if it wanted to report on developments.

The absence of any independent source of information, which would have been facilitated had the media had access, has left the public with two conflicting narratives about Geelani’s funeral: one of the family alleging that the police forcibly took the body and buried it without the immediate family present, and the other of the police which claims that the last rites of the Kashmiri leader were performed properly.

If you look back over the last two years since August 5, 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir's special status ended and it was split into two union territories, there are innumerable and frequent incidents illustrating the continuing pressure under which journalists and the media have to function there.

Priya Ramani, in this detailed piece in Article14 titled “The dangerous profession of journalism in Kashmir”, has recorded many of these incidents. She outlines not just the impact of the media policy for Kashmir of last June that essentially allows the administration of the union territory to control the media in multiple ways, but also reports the string of instances of journalists apprehended, jailed, charged, interrogated, detained and threatened if they deviated from the script the government now expects from them. That, according to the media policy, is to create “a sustained narrative on the functioning of the government in media”.

Ramani begins her report with the experience of a young photographer, Kamran Yousef, who was jailed for six months because, according to the National Investigation Agency, he had "never covered any developmental activity of any Government Department/Agency, any inauguration of Hospital, School Building, Road, Bridge, statement of political party in power or any other social/developmental activity by state government or Govt of India."

In other words, for not doing what the government expects, a journalist can be charged under the UAPA and jailed. Yousef got bail in 2018 but the following year, he was beaten up by the police while taking photographs in Pulwama in southern Kashmir.

Since then, there has been no change in the attitude of the government towards journalists. The latest incident took place on September 8, when the police raided and searched the homes of four Kashmiri journalists – Hilal Mir, Shah Abbas, Showkat Motta and Azhar Qadri – and confiscated digital devices and travel documents.

In an atmosphere where you can be apprehended, and even jailed, for any number of reasons, how can journalists function? How different is this from the challenges that journalists in other countries, such as Afghanistan, face today? The difference, of course, is that we insist we are a democracy where the freedom of the press exists, even though India's ranking in indices measuring this freedom is steadily plummeting.

The intimidation of journalists is not the only way to control the media. Another well-known tactic is to squeeze finances by withdrawing government advertising. In many parts of India, newspapers and local TV channels are heavily dependent on advertisements from the government. Since the pandemic and the downturn in the economy, this dependence has grown. Indeed, it is striking to see how much government advertising appears today in major mainstream newspapers. In Jammu and Kashmir, this is a well-honed tactic, one that the government has used to good effect to silence any semblance of criticism from the media.

What’s wrong with the Indian media’s election coverage?

Broken News (Published on October 22, 2020)

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/amp/story/2020%2F10%2F22%2Fwhats-wrong-with-the-indian-medias-election-coverage?__twitter_impression=true 

 

Elections are always challenging times for the media. Also exhilarating.  For they give us the opportunity to go out in the field and get a sense of not just the political temperature but also more specifically how India lives, and dies.

 

This year, with the imminent elections in Bihar, field reporting has posed many challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite that, it is heartening that at least some newspapers, websites and television channels are running stories that go beyond politics in Bihar.

 

These however remain the exceptions.  The bulk of the reporting, predictably, is on the political persona, what they say, and the permutations and combinations that always give grist to the political mill in India. Bihar, in addition, has that other element -- caste; it takes specialised knowledge for people in other parts of the country to get a handle on the many acronyms of castes and sub-castes that come into play in Bihar's politics.

 

The absence of women's voices from even routine reports on political rallies, for instance, is striking.  In fact, given that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has made women so much the focus of his government, we are not hearing enough from the women in Bihar.

 

Beyond the rallies and public events, far fewer this time, is the reality of the lives of the people in Bihar.  Supriya Sharma of Scroll.in captures this in a report from Muzaffarpur. She chooses to speak to the poorest, the Musahars, and writes: "The Musahars live on the brink of hunger even in the best of years. But this year hunger is all pervasive in Bihar. Everywhere you go, it is the same refrain: 'Koi kaam nahi, ghar baitha hain.' There is no work, we are sitting at home. 'Ek time kha raha hai ek time nahi kha raha hai.' We are skipping meals every other day.

In such a calamitous year, the state is holding assembly elections in early November."

 

Particularly heart-breaking is the photograph of a young girl, a widow, holding up the photograph of her 22-year-old husband who died. She looks no more than 12 or 14 years old. Yet, she already has two children.  Child marriage? Underage pregnancies?  This is the kind of reality check election coverage can provide.

 

Another such story is this one from Newslaundry titled, "Sushil Modi says Bihar is open defecation free. If only he looked outside his door."  The report debunks these claims and reminds us yet again of the wide gap between official claims and the reality on the ground. In this case, the residents of a Dalit colony that is half a kilometre from the Deputy Chief Minister, Sushil Modi's house in Patna, are compelled to defecate in the open because the toilets are unusable.

 

Routine "developmental" reporting, as it was once called, is now history.  Only when there is a calamity, or elections, do media houses send reporters out to find out what's going on beyond the obvious range of media reach.  As always there are exceptions.  Often such stories are by independent journalists with a passion to write about the voiceless.  They struggle to get their pieces published.

 

Yet, in the 1980s, "development" was actually a beat. Hindustan Times, at that time headed by the redoubtable B. G. Verghese, had adopted the village Chhatera, not far from Delhi in Haryana.  Reporters were sent out regularly to write about it.  Every fortnight, a full page titled "Our village, Chhatera" appeared in the paper's Sunday magazine.  It ran from 1969 to 1975 and only stopped when Verghese was sacked by the paper just before the Emergency was declared.  His editorial, questioning the Indian government's action of annexing the former kingdom of Sikkim had earned the ire of Indira Gandhi, who was then the prime minister.

 

In Indian Express, where I worked in the 1980s under the same editor, a special correspondent was assigned to travel anywhere in India to write about health, education, and other issues linked with people's survival.  Even if times have changed, as has the media, the issues that affect the poorest in this country remain unchanged. 

 

Every story that appears about the India outside the media glare reminds us of this. Such as this distressing report in Indian Express from Madhya Pradesh where a 45-year-old woman bled to death before giving birth to a still born 16th child. Her 23-year-old daughter could not persuade her to have a tubectomy two years ago, when she was pregnant for the 15th time, because the husband would not agree to it.  Hard to believe that in the India of 2020 this is happening. Or perhaps not.

 

Furthermore, as the story points out, there is no gynaecologist in the nearest hospital, a mere 5 km away.  The nurses are trained to conduct routine uncomplicated deliveries, but if there is a woman in a high-risk pregnancy, like this woman, there is no one around to intervene.  Qualified help is available at a hospital 40 km away.

 

On the importance of field reporting in these times, The Print carried this article by Ashutosh Bhardwaj.  Writing on what he calls the crisis in Indian media, Bhardwaj states:

 

"Journalism plummeted when social media became the preferred mode of journalistic expression and hashtags hijacked field reporting. The slide continued when the follower count started determining the worth of a journalist, and instead of toiling away in the field, they increasingly opted for provocative opinions in a few characters. It reached its nadir when selfies became an obsession, a complex reportage brought fewer rewards than Twitter outrage, and the holy adage ‘you are as good as your last byline’ stood replaced by ‘you are as good as your last tweet’."

 

While his general point is valid, I don't think the "hashtag journalists" he is referring to are the reporters who are still out in the field doing their job, such as those mentioned above.  Field reporting has suffered because media houses have decided it is not worth investing in this kind of in-depth reporting. On television in particular, opinion is much cheaper than reporting. Print media still devotes substantial space to reporting but if you scan newspapers from the 1980s or even 1990s, you will notice the stark difference.

 

With so many reporters being laid off as media houses downsize, we really cannot put the blame on reporters.  And if a small section of high profile journalists, living in the bubble created by social media, choose to resort to hashtag journalism, this is not a reflection on all journalists.

 

The crisis in the Indian media requires a much longer and detailed discussion. And it goes well beyond reporting, from the field. It is a crisis that has been exacerbated by a government that has made life impossible for any media choosing to report the reality.

 

Most shocking and condemnable has been the attack on the editor of Kashmir Times, Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal. This is the oldest English language newspaper in Kashmir, founded by her father Ved Bhasin, one of the most respected editors in India.

 

In the last month, Jamwal has had to face a physical intrusion into her home in Jammu, a place allotted to her as a journalist.  People forced themselves into her house claiming it had been allotted to them, turned things upside down and stole her personal belonging.

 

As if that was not enough, this week, the office allotted to Kashmir Times in Srinagar's Press Enclave was sealed by the Estates Department. All this because Jamwal remains an outspoken critic of the government's actions in Kashmir. She rightly calls this a "political vendetta".

 

The message this sends out to all media, not just in Kashmir, is clear.  If you cross a line, there is a price to pay. Either toe the line, or perish.