How a section of media passes off the government’s ‘official version’ of events as news gathering

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on January 7, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/01/07/how-a-section-of-media-passes-off-the-governments-official-version-of-events-as-news-gathering

Even as the rising numbers of people infected by Covid-19 is once again front-page news, we have before us another example of how easily mainstream media amplifies the official version of an event.

I am referring to reports about the “massive security breach” in Punjab on January 5. The story is still unraveling.

However, there are some aspects of the coverage in print media that are in some ways similar to the so-called ”botched” security operation in Oting in Nagaland's Mon district on December 4 that resulted in the death of 14 civilians.

The similarities are not the details. They lie in the ease with which mainstream media reproduces the official version of an event without so much as a question mark or quotation marks. It takes several days for other versions of the event to appear, if at all. By then, the majority of readers have already made up their minds about what happened based on the initial reports. (Tellingly, some newspapers did start using quotation marks around the phrase “security breach” two days later or adding the word “alleged”.)

In the case of the prime minister's cavalcade being stranded on a flyover on its way to the National Martyrs Memorial at Hussainiwala in Punjab, the similarities in the front-page stories on January 6 is startling. The outlier, as usual, is the Telegraph which states an opinion in its choice of headline – “Hubris waylaid, Modi goes back” – and then the lead story, “Beating a retreat with 'zinda laut paaya' parting shot'”.

While the Hindu modifies the “security breach” phrase in its front-page headline by attributing it to union home minister Amit Shah – “PM's car caught in Punjab stir; unacceptable breach, says Shah” – the Indian Express uses the phrase as a given, even without quote marks: “Security breach leaves PM stranded on flyover in Punjab; bid to harm him: BJP”. Similarly the Times of India leads with “In security breach, PM stuck on Punjab flyover for 20 min”.

The point here is not whether what happened qualifies as a security breach or not. That is being investigated. But when you have on record the chief minister of the state in which this has happened explaining what happened, and the protesting farmers who apparently led to the hold up giving a different version, is it not legitimate to question?

When you don't have reporters on the spot who could have verified what actually happened, do you automatically go by the official version, particularly at a time when politics in Punjab is so polarised as it heads for an election? Or do you make an effort to get other perspectives?

When it comes to the prime minister, or anything on our borders, the mainstream Indian media has a long tradition of initially going by the official version. Rarely is this even questioned, unless evidence to the contrary is so obvious that it is unavoidable. As happened in Oting, when one of the miners who survived the shooting by the army clearly stated that they were shot at without warning. Reporters who have tried to raise questions have had a tough time surviving in mainstream media.

Another curious aspect of the January 5 incident in Punjab is what the prime minister is supposed to have said to “some officials” as he returned to Delhi from Bathinda. This is what the ANI news agency quoted him as saying, “Apne CM ko thanks kehna, ki mein Bhatinda airport tak zinda laut paaya.” Say thanks to your CM, tell him I managed to get back alive to Bathinda airport.

The Indian Express used the quote in its front-page story while attributing it to ANI. Neither the Hindu nor Times of India used it. The reasons are fairly obvious. Who were these “officials” to whom the PM said this? Was it said on camera? Was the reporter present to take down the precise quote? There is a basic rule in journalism that if you use a direct quote, you attribute it to someone. And if that someone wishes to remain anonymous, you say so.

The importance of those words is becoming evident as it is flogged by BJP leaders in statements and press conferences. Additionally, we now have to watch the spectacle of BJP chief ministers, like Shivraj Chauhan of Madhya Pradesh, urging people to chant the Maha Mrityunjaya Jaap for the PM's long life. And, of course, TV channels have gone to town on this, with some reading into the incident a conspiracy to kill the PM.

It is also striking that while several English language papers either did not use this quote at all, or chose not to amplify it, the Hindi newspapers highlighted it and made it their main headline on their front pages.

There is little doubt that this will now be the main discourse around the January 5 incident, although there is no evidence so far that there was an actual threat to the life of the prime minister. But in election season, who cares about such details? The narrative is in place.

Before the Punjab drama, we had another major story breaking in the New Year, that of an app called “Bulli Bai” that sought to “auction” over 100 Muslim women, including leading journalists and activists.

Significantly, although most of mainstream television predictably ignored this shocking, misogynistic and Islamophobic attack on Muslim women, one that mirrored a similar incident in July last year called “Sulli Deals”, at least some in print media did take note. Stories were done in the Hindu, Telegraph, Indian Express and Times of India. The women targeted were quoted; their experiences of what this breach of their privacy meant in their lives was reported. And strong editorials were written urging that action be taken in Indian Express and the Hindu.

Although social media was abuzz with this news, and many of the independent digital media platforms as well as YouTube channels did focus on this (read here, here, here, and here), I would argue that mainstream print media recognising this as an issue that cannot be pushed under the carpet has helped put pressure on the police to track down the perpetrators.

It is possible that the Delhi police, which reports directly to the union home ministry, was shamed this time into acting not only because the Mumbai police moved with alacrity and tracked down three people connected to the app within a few days, but also because major print media outlets singled out its indifferent attitude.

Last year, when the Muslim women targeted by the “Sulli Deals” app approached the Delhi police, practically nothing was done. The Hindu was trenchantly critical of the Delhi police when it wrote in its editorial: “It is indeed baffling that the Delhi police, that is expected to play a critical role in securing the lives of all important functionaries of the country, threw their hands up when faced with the challenge of identifying some random imposters on social media. Such a level of incompetence or connivance is ominous.”

The significance of such an intervention is that the outrage does not remain a bubble on social media. This time, apart from these legacy media, several international news outlets have also reported on it. Together this has led to the kind of pressure that ought to have been exerted even last year, when the first despicable attempts to demean Muslim women were made.

Coronavirus is a crisis, and a chance at redemption, for the India media as well

Broken News

https://www.newslaundry.com/amp/story/2020%2F04%2F08%2Fcoronavirus-is-also-a-crisis-for-indian-media-and-a-chance-at-redemption?__twitter_impression=true

It’s in the nation’s interest for the media to remain free and questioning during this pandemic. But can cash-strapped organisations resist the pressure to toe the government’s line.

When we look back on this time of disease and death, there are some images that will remain etched in our consciousness, and our consciences. 

For irrespective of the age, class, caste or creed of persons infected by Covid-19, or killed by it, there is one reality that we as a country have been forced to confront. The reality of the invisible millions, the men and women who literally build and keep our cities running, but who are forgotten when a crisis hits us all.

Even the government does not remember them. How else can one explain the March 24 announcement of a 21-day lockdown giving four hour’s notice with no planning strategy in place for these millions who live on the margins?

Despite the prime minister’s advice to media owners, proffered a day before his dramatic announcement, that they should run “positive stories” at this time of the epidemic, the Indian media did tell the migrant story – vividly through photographs, and poignantly through the heartbreaking stories of thousands of men, women and children setting out to walk hundreds of kilometres to their distant homes because there was no source of sustenance in the cities where they had slaved for years.

These are the images we must continue to remember: of the father carrying his child on his shoulders, while another feeds his newborn baby even as he walks. Pictures of calloused feet, of women and children walking alongside the men, carrying small bags with all their worldly belongings. Or of this heartbreaking report about Ranveer Singh, 38, who collapsed and died even as he was speaking to his family.

This exodus from our cities represents over one third of the population, based on the 2011 census data, as this article in the Indian Express explains. That is, one in every three persons in this country is a migrant, either interstate or intrastate. Also 29 percent of the population of our big cities consists of people in the so-called informal sector living on daily wages, exactly the kind of people who picked up their belongings and fled once the lockdown was announced.

What these facts and images ought to have taught us, as Sanjay Srivastava presciently observed, is that “informality is not a staging post on the way to formality. It is a persistent condition of life with no indications of a dramatic change.”

Srivastava also points out something that we in the media ought to heed: “The odd thing about an epidemic is that though it might be global in nature, it is impossible to understand its impact without paying close attention to the local conditions within which it circulates.”

It is India’s local conditions, this persistent state of informality, in which millions are permanently caught that will determine the ultimate nature of this pandemic, how and where it spreads, and who it strikes down and kills.

Given the nature of news, the migrant story has virtually disappeared from our news pages.  But it is still the biggest story that will need to be followed up. This will not be easy, given the spread. Yet, we need to know how many of them made it, did they carry the infection with them and are district level health facilities able to cope if the infection spreads to rural areas. This story in Scroll gives some idea of the challenge we are yet to face. 

We also need to know how the migrants who were held back at state borders are surviving; if they will march on once the lockdown is lifted; when and if they will return to the cities.

Which brings me to the other crisis that the media is confronting. Such stories require investment in newsgathering. Media houses need resources to send out teams to distant places to investigate this reality. But the economic slowdown has also impacted the finances of the media. With cutbacks in advertising as companies cope with the economic downturn, news media has been hit, especially print, which depends heavily on advertising.

Already, the Indian Express has announced wage cuts and it is more than likely that others will follow. It is possible that multi-edition newspapers might have to close some editions. It is almost certain that journalists will face not just salary cuts, but also job cuts.

While running newspapers, and even digital platforms, with a small, lean staff is feasible given the nature of technology today, it’s not conducive for doing the kind of follow-up stories that are needed to record the full impact of this pandemic on all sections of the country. And if the media does not record it at this time, it will not be known. The people who are invisible, who came into focus for a moment during this crisis, will once again fade into anonymity.

There have been a couple of other worrying developments in the last weeks that concern the media. One is the direct message to media owners to focus on “positive” stories. This is nothing short of telling them not to investigate and report the government’s shortcomings in dealing with this crisis, stories that will be seen by those at the helm as “negative”.  No right-minded editor would accept this given that the job of the media is to dig out the truth.

But as I pointed out in my last column, it is striking how little we read about the failures of the government and how much more we see uncritical reporting of all that is given to us. There are always exceptions, and these media houses and particularly digital news platforms have continued to report incisively. But taken as a whole, the image of the Indian media, as this article in the New York Times notes, is of one that echoes the government’s tune.

What better illustration of this than the manner in which Covid-19 was forgotten and the incipient as well as blatant Islamophobia that is prevalent in this country came out in full view on television channels once a link was established between the spread of the virus and a Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhi.

Even those media houses that did not want to feed this anti-Muslim fervour indirectly fell into it by headlining every case that could be traced back to the Tablighi Jamaat meeting. Few took the trouble to explain, as this article in Scroll clearly does, that the sudden rise in positive cases was also because there was much more focused testing over this period, something that had not been done earlier. In fact, many experts have continued to emphasise that the spread in India is probably much wider than is being reported because not enough people are being tested.

Also, given that Indian Muslims have already felt under siege for months with the threat of the National Register of Citizens hanging over their heads, this drumming up of the anti-Muslim rhetoric by the media has ratcheted up their fears to the point they are suspicious of anyone seeking information during this health crisis, as this report in the Huff Post vividly documents.

When India will emerge from this pandemic is not yet known. What is known is that the most marginalised will suffer the most. As many of those migrants making their weary journey home said, even if they don’t die of the disease, they will die of hunger.

What is also clear is that an economically beleaguered media is even more susceptible to pressure, especially from a government that has used every means possible to make it toe the line in so-called national interest. At times of crisis, it is in fact in the nation’s interest that the media remains free, questioning, and unafraid.