From Gaza to Dhaka: Missing Indian lens in global reportage

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on October 4, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/10/04/from-gaza-to-dhaka-missing-indian-lens-in-global-reportage

October 7 marks one year since the attack on Israel by Hamas and the ongoing war on Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians, including children, have been killed in this past year, and much of Gaza has been reduced to a pile of rubble. Meanwhile, many of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas after its attack remain in captivity.

The world has watched this war through the media’s coverage. The heart of the conflict zone, that is Gaza, has been inaccessible to most journalists except those based there. We have seen their reports even as they came under fire. Their reports, often circulated through social media, gave us an unfiltered view of the devastation. And we know of the many who died while reporting or were targeted by the Israelis even when they were off duty. 

Since October last year, much has been written and analysed about the coverage of this conflict by Western media, including the words used to describe the devastation. For instance, when leading newspapers like the New York Times report that X number of people “died” in Gaza, the use of that word hides the ugly reality that these people, including small children, were “killed” by Israeli bombardment on civilian areas. They did not just die. 

Pointing this out is not nitpicking. It is essential to understand how what appears as factual, unbiased reporting can colour the understanding of the reader or viewer of a war. 

But this column is not about the reporting on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but on how we as Indians view what is going on. What is the filter through which we get our information when war breaks out outside our immediate region? Would we have paid more attention if journalists from Indian media organisations had also been reporting from the region? If we do not see Indian bylines in the reportage from there, why is that so?   

If you look at the “World” page of any major Indian newspaper, you will notice that most of the stories are from international news agencies like Reuters or by the news service of major Western newspapers like the New York Times. Rarely do you see an Indian byline.

One could argue that the Israel-Palestine conflict does not touch most Indians. Hence, media houses would not be interested in investing in sending journalists to cover the conflict. However, it must be noted that two small independent digital platforms, The News Minute and Newslaundry, have raised funds to send veteran television journalist Sreenivasan Jain to report from the region. Here’s a link to his first report.

Even if mainstream news organisations in India conclude that their average reader or viewer is not interested in a war taking place in some other part of the world, what about our immediate neighbourhood? Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal.

There was a time when several national newspapers had correspondents in all these countries. That did not last long. It was only The Hindu that persisted and sent correspondents to report from our neighbouring countries.

For decades, Haroon Habib, a veteran Bangladeshi journalist, reported for The Hindu from Dhaka. His reports were nuanced. They had context, and for anyone wanting to understand the developments in that country, Habib’s reports were a must. He stopped reporting some years ago. And since then, despite the recent tumultuous developments in that country, neither The Hindu nor any other paper has had a full-time correspondent in Dhaka.

In Sri Lanka too, The Hindu has always had a correspondent, and today, it is the only one that has one in Colombo. In fact, with the election of President Anura Kumar Dissanayake last month, it was The Hindu’s reporting that provided important insights into the impact of this change on relations between Sri Lanka and India. This comes through in this podcast featuring Amit Barua, who worked with The Hindu till recently, Nirupama Subramanian, a former Sri Lanka correspondent of the publication, and Meera Srinivasan, who is currently based there.

The Hindu also had a presence in Pakistan for decades. But in 2014, its correspondent and the journalist representing PTI were asked to leave by the Pakistani government. Since then, there has been no Indian reporter in the country, although PTI has a local journalist who files stories. As a result, all we read is agency copy, usually on statements by politicians, unlike in the past when at least The Hindu carried stories on the different aspects of life in Pakistan, including arts and culture. 

Even in Nepal, which is easily accessible to Indians, no Indian newspaper has had a full-time correspondent stationed there. We get news of disasters and changes of government, but little else.

The result is that even when there are dramatic developments, as in Sri Lanka two years ago and last month in the presidential elections, and more recently in Bangladesh, the news coverage is at best perfunctory. Agency copy gives us the bare facts. Rarely does it have adequate background or context that a correspondent based there can provide.

Apart from our immediate neighbours, Indian newspapers don’t at present have anyone reporting from China, a country that is constantly in the news on various counts. Again, in the past, most major newspapers stationed journalists in Beijing. The reason was obvious. An Indian journalist would be able to sift what news would interest Indian readers. 

Coming back to West Asia, for years The Hindu had a correspondent based in Dubai whose remit was to cover the region. He had the resources to travel and report. The bylines of journalists like Kesava Menon and Atul Aneja were known to the readers of The Hindu. Today, you will not find an Indian byline for any story on the Israel-Palestine conflict or even from Iran that has now been drawn into this rapidly escalating conflict.

A major reason for this drastic reduction in people reporting from around the world is economics. Print media has faced drastic cuts in advertising revenue. As a result, barring those media houses that dominate a particular market, most have had to scale down news coverage.

Context, of course, is needed in all news coverage. Take, for instance, the dramatic developments before Gandhi Jayanti, October 2, in Delhi, when the march led by Sonam Wangchuk from Ladakh was stopped at the Delhi border. Wangchuk has been leading the demand for full statehood for Ladakh ever since it was reduced to a Union Territory in 2019 along with Jammu and Kashmir with the reading down of Article 370. His latest demand is for Ladakh to be included in Schedule 6 of the Constitution, which will give the people of Ladakh the right to decide how their natural resources will be used. While the political demand has featured in the reports, not enough is known about the latter.

This article in Scroll explains why pastoralists in Ladakh are objecting to the plan to set up a 13-gigawatt integrated renewable energy project with solar farms and windmills. The energy generated will be used not in Ladakh but outside the region. Setting up this kind of project, which will occupy vast tracts of land, will deny these people access to their traditional pasture lands and affect their migration routes. This is one of the reasons the people of Ladakh want the right to decide whether they want or need these kinds of projects. 

Such stories illustrate how essential it is for the media to have feet on the ground, in India, and in our neighbourhood.

Beyond PM’s front-page guarantees, silence on Ladakh, and threat to digital media

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on February 9, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/02/09/beyond-pms-front-page-guarantees-silence-on-ladakh-and-threat-to-digital-media

The prime minister has spoken. He speaks all the time, but when he decides to speak in Parliament, we are compelled to listen. It is an institution that he visits infrequently. However, given that the 17th Lok Sabha is winding down as we face a general election, we must pay heed to his words. 

Apart from the predictable rhetorical flourishes for which the PM is now well-known, what continues to amaze those who care to listen carefully is his skill at proclaiming half-truths, or even untruths, as unquestionable facts. 

Electoral politics is a battle of perception, and visibility. And we have seen in the last decade how Narendra Modi, and the Bharatiya Janata Party have mastered this. 

Given that Modi has been the prime minister for a decade, everything and anything he says or does is news. In addition, he has a dedicated space on radio for his Mann ki Baat monthly programme, and even a YouTube channel.

 

As if this was not enough, we have been deluged with daily front-page ads in leading national newspapers. Without fail, at least one national newspaper will display below its masthead on the front page an advertisement that has Modi’s face and the words “Modi Sarkar ki Guarantee”. The ad boasts of schemes launched by the government that have apparently been brilliantly successful. 

 

As these are advertisements, there is no space to question the so-called facts stated in them. But just below the advertisement is often a front-page story quoting the prime minister. Even as the media feels obliged to report everything he says, is there no space to do a fact check on what he says?

No one expects mainstream media, given its current state, to call out partial truths uttered by the most powerful person in this country. Fortunately, we still have space to do this on social media and on independent digital news platforms.

A video worth watching on YouTube is this one by former television anchor Abhisar Sharma. He dissects the prime minister’s speeches in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha made earlier this week. He looks specifically at some of the PM’s comments about India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and establishes the half-truths and sometimes outright lies that were spoken.

Sharma is one of several well-known television journalists who now run channels on YouTube as there is no space for their kind of plain speaking on mainstream television channels. Incidentally, the subscriber base for YouTube in India is an estimated 462 million.

In print media, fortunately, there is still space to expose some of this wrong information being sent out to the entire country. Apart from blaming the Nehru-Gandhi family for all the ills the country faces today, the prime minister also ticked off state governments in the south for raising their voices against what they perceive as inequity in allocation of central resources.  

There is no discrimination towards the southern states, the PM insisted. It is leaders from the southern states who are creating a “north-south divide”. 

The facts, in this case too, tell a different story. Some newspapers, like Hindustan Times, are using data to inform people, such as these charts by Roshan Kishore. Ideally, people ought to go through such data charts and see for themselves why the south has a legitimate grievance. However, in these distracted times, perhaps it is asking too much of the lay reader to spend time going through such data charts. As a result, in the battle of perception, the accusation that a north-south divide is being artificially created by the opposition wins, while the facts lose.

If you are someone who turns to social media for news, comment, and information, as an increasing number of people are doing in the country, you will come across much that escapes the eye of the established media. Sometimes when you watch videos on social media, you wonder whether the reports are really about the country we live in.

Take for instance, the recent developments in Ladakh. In the last week, tens of thousands of Ladakhis have been out on the streets demanding full statehoodfor what became a union territory on August 5, 2019, when the Modi government read down Article 370. 

Size matters and when thousands of people demonstrate, the media generally has to take note. Yet despite the size of the protests in Ladakh, you will find hardly any reports on them in print media, and next to nothing on television. As a result, most news consumers in this country would not have a clue about what is happening in Ladakh. 

Ladakhis are protesting because they say there is no one to represent them. While Jammu and Kashmir might have assembly elections later this year, Ladakh does not have an assembly. It had district councils when it was still a part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. When will they have elections, and who will they elect, they ask. 

The best-known environmentalist and civil society activist in Ladakh is Sonam Wangchuk. He has joined the protests and threatened to go on an indefinite fast. He wants the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which safeguards the rights of tribals on their land, to be extended to Ladakh. Yet although Wangchuk is a prominent personality, you do not hear his voice in mainstream media. For that, you need to make time to watch videos like this one in The Print.

The voices from Ladakh are not getting through, either to the rest of the country, or to the government, because the media is not amplifying them. This works in favour of a government that chooses to ignore protests like these and will say something, or do something, only when it suits its larger agenda.

The Ladakhis should pay heed to the way Manipur has been handled by this government. What began in May last year is still festering. It has the potential to blow up into a major conflagration that could affect all of the northeast. Yet, the prime minister has not found the words to say anything about Manipur. And the only solution that the home minister has devised is to say the border between India and Myanmar will be fenced! 

Meanwhile, mainstream media has switched off Manipur. Once again, the only news available of the ongoing violence in the state is on social media. 

This is why the small window of freedom that social media, and independent digital news platforms, provide must be protected. 

Irrespective of the outcome of the 2024 general elections, it is now clear that when political power and business are aligned, the space for free expression in the media gets restricted. 

Additionally, when a government brings in laws that will create more hurdles for independent media, as this government has done with changes in the IT Rules that will permit it to set up a “fact-checking unit” (currently challenged in courts) and the proposed Broadcasting Bill, the chances of it surviving are even dimmer.