In the scramble for ‘exclusives’, media must follow caution while reporting from Manipur

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 28, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/07/28/in-the-scramble-for-exclusives-media-must-follow-caution-while-reporting-from-manipur

This “breaking news” took more than two months to break. I am referring, of course, to the so-called “viral video”, a term that hides the real content of that video. For it ought to be remembered as “the sexual assault video” of Kuki women, disrobed and paraded naked by a mob of Meitei men in the ethnic strife-torn state of Manipur on May 4, 2023. One of them was later gang-raped.

Two weeks ago, when I wrote my last column, one could count the number of stories, especially in national media, on the ongoing ethnic violence in Manipur. Today, post the video going public, this north-eastern state has become the focus of politics and media in the “mainland”.

Much has been spoken and written since July 19 when the video was shared on social media platforms. It provoked shock, disgust, anger, sorrow but also frustration that this atrocity was not reported earlier.  It could and should have been as subsequent reports have revealed that an FIR had been registered on May 18, a fortnight after the assault, but that it took the Manipur police more than a month before it took some tentative steps. It finally moved and made arrests, as is now known, only when Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh was compelled to take note. 

A question that should be asked about the video is what the man who shot the video, who was obviously part of the mob, was thinking. 

Was he inspired by the ghastly videos we have seen with sickening regularity on social media in the last 10 years, of the lynching of Muslim men by mobs of self-appointed cow-protectors? These men loaded their videos on social media without any compunction for they knew there would be no consequences. It was also a way for them to demonstrate their masculinity and virility. 

In this case, it could have been all this as well as demonstrating the time-worn method of teaching the men of the “other” side a lesson, by assaulting and raping “their” women. We still do not yet know how the video travelled from the phone of the man who shot it to social media. Could he and his friends, much like the lynch mobs in “mainland” India, have done this to show off without realising what the consequences would be? 

Now there is a new twist with the Centre asking the CBI to investigate.  The man who allegedly shot the video has been apprehended, and his phone seized. In the end we might never know the true story.

Another question: although the volume of coverage on Manipur has exploded since July 19, has it helped viewers and readers to understand what has been happening there for almost three months? Or has it, as happens with most issues in this country, been reduced to a story about politicians and politics? 

Predictably, most television channels have reduced this to a debating point between political opponents. The usual whataboutery is being witnessed, exemplified par excellence by Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare, Smriti Irani’s dramatic statement in the Rajya Sabha on July 26 where, amongst other things, she claimed Rahul Gandhi put Manipur on fire. 

The signal for this strategy – of always blaming the opposition for anything that is uncomfortable for the government to address – came, of course, from the prime minister. He finally “broke his silence” a full 79 days after the troubles erupted in Manipur, only to churn out meaningless platitudes. 

What is worse, he used even his brief statement, made outside Parliament rather than on the floor of the House, to dilute the gravity of what's happening in Manipur by adding that women were unsafe in states like Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh (that happen to be opposition-ruled) and that all chief ministers should take steps to ensure women’s safety. He appears to have missed the main point – that the Manipur video was not about the safety of individual women, but about the assault on women during an ethnic conflict despite the presence of police and in a state governed by his party. 

We must also acknowledge that despite more coverage of Manipur in this last week, the media has been unable to push this government to act. Would things have been different if mainstream media had recognised earlier the gravity of the situation in Manipur and reported more extensively? 

What is obvious is that it was not anything reported by any established media, but a video amplified on social media that finally drove Modi to make a statement of sorts. Yet he continues to resist facing parliamentarians on the floor of the House.  

Also, although even government friendly television channels have been compelled now to mention the “M” word after ignoring it for two long months, what they are putting out is more noise than substance, adding nothing to the understanding of viewers about the nature of the conflict or the extent of its impact on thousands of ordinary people. It also puts absolutely no pressure on the government to act.

And as was evident even after Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Manipur on June 29, the discussions on these TV channels centre around politicians and political parties, and not the central issue of why things have deteriorated in Manipur to a point where we are witnessing something close to a civil war. Nor has anyone asked why Modi continues to use every chance to attack the opposition, lately mocking the acronym INDIA, at a time when all sides need to sit together to seek a solution on an issue like Manipur.

Unlike television, several national newspapers like Indian Express, The Hinduand others have been reporting extensively and providing explainers that provide useful background. And despite limited resources, digital media platforms like Scroll, Wire, Print, Quint and Newslaundry have maintained a steady focus on Manipur.

However, in the current media scramble for exclusive stories, even digital platforms can fall into the trap of overlooking basic journalistic norms before running with a story. 

For instance, in this troubling story in The Print about the disappearance of two young people, the reporter acknowledges that the video mentioned by the girl's family that makes them believe their daughter is dead is unverified.  Given the proliferation of fake videos, and the fact that one such video triggered the violence in early May, should not reporters be careful before running with such a story? Apart from checking with the police, there are now ways to verify the authenticity of videos that go “viral”.  Note that a gruesome video of a beheading of a girl from Myanmar was passed off as one from Manipur and there has been an FIR filed in this case.

The Print story also quotes an anonymous member of a Meitei group saying that the girl had been raped. Should such information be shared in a story when the police haven't even found the body? In any case, given the way rumours have already triggered sexual violence, shouldn't journalists be exceptionally careful before amplifying unverified information like this? Even in so-called "normal" times there are basic norms that have to be followed when reporting rape. This becomes even more crucial during conflict to ensure that the media does not exacerbate already inflamed emotions. 

As Manipur continues to simmer, the media, both mainstream and independent will be challenged to maintain their credibility even as they try to convey a truthful picture of what is happening in this divided state.

Meanwhile, how have people in Manipur, and the local media located mostly in Imphal, the state’s capital responded to the video? This report in Scroll is significant as it reveals the extent to which the ethnic divide has inserted itself into the media in Manipur. 

As for Modi’s statement, the comments were interesting. Imphal Times had a front-page collage showing Meitei deaths and inside, in an editorial it stated: 

“After 75 days of eerie silence, Mr Modi finally spoke, but to the dismay of many, he addressed only one incident – the purported video showing two women parading naked…Mr Modi’s selective response raises questions about his motives. Many see his statements as an attempt to play the gender card and manipulate emotions to divert attention from the core issue – the urgent need for peace and stability in Manipur.” 

Kuki women, speaking to independent journalist Greeshma Kuthar, who has been based in Manipur since June 4, have a different take, as we hear in this long podcast in Suno India. While they are glad that the media and the government have woken up to the situation in the state, they resent the obsession with incidents of sexual violence. One of them points out that speaking repeatedly to the survivors forces them to live through the trauma again. And they appeal to journalists from the “mainland” to try to understand the larger picture of what’s going on in the state and to report on it, rather than focussing just on one aspect because of the video.

They suggest, for instance, that there should be more reporting on how over 50,000 people living in an estimated 349 temporary relief camps are surviving. On his visit to Manipur on June 29, Rahul Gandhi went to both Kuki and Meitei camps and as a result we saw some visuals.  Since then, although there have been a few reports (read here , here and here) about conditions in these camps, we clearly need more. We do not know, for instance, whether there is any discrimination in the release of funds to the camps in the Kuki areas which appear to be largely run by civil society organisations.  

Manipur is a story that will not disappear. From all indications, its ripple effects are already being felt in other states in the region. 

It reminds us in the “mainland” media that we cannot continue to view what’s happening there as a “breaking” story needing a one-time investment to overcome the “tyranny of distance”, the phrase used to explain the late and minimal coverage. It ought to have been an integral part of our reporting. If it had, perhaps the May 4 sexual assault video would not have had the shock value that it did.  

Stories Big Media missed: Sexual assault in Manipur and, as always, climate reporting

This column in Newslaundry was published a week before the ghastly video went viral of Kuki women being stripped, paraded naked, groped and attacked by a mob of Meitei men. One of them, a 21-year-old, was gang raped.  In the column I mentioned the first stories that had appeared about the sexual violence in Manipur over the last almost three months that the state has been literally burning, in a state of civil war while the state government sat on its hands and did virtually nothing. The central government made some noises but did not move with the kind of alacrity it would have had the government in Manipur belonged to an opposition party. 

Now that the evidence is out there for all to see, the Prime Minister, who travelled the world in these months but uttered nothing, finally "broke his silence" only to churn out meaningless platitudes.  What is worse, he used even his brief statement, made outside Parliament rather than on the floor of the House, to dilute the gravity of what's happening in Manipur by mentioning how women were unsafe in a couple of opposition ruled states. 

I will write more on this in my next column later this week. But in the meantime, here's what I wrote earlier.

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 13, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/07/13/stories-big-media-missed-sexual-assault-in-manipur-and-as-always-climate-reporting

News of the floods and devastation caused by the incessant rain in north India has predictably pushed Manipur onto the backburner – but it should not remain there. It is incumbent for the media to focus on the violence in the state, as I have argued in an earlier column.

After more than two months, we are finally seeing more in-depth reporting on this conflict-torn northeastern state, mostly on independent digital media platforms and some in the international media. 

Greeshma from Suno India has been doing almost daily podcasts from Manipur. They’re remarkable for the detail in them, and lets you hear the voices of the affected people. This report by Suno India focuses on the experiences of two women and illustrates what thousands like them must have gone through. 

The most recent reports by international news platforms on the conflict include one by Aakash Hassan for The Guardian, in which a Kuki farmer tells him, “People are building bunkers on both sides, they are positioning guns…New Delhi should understand that this is preparation for war.” Or this one by Soutik Biswas of the BBC that captures the latest situation in Manipur. Both reports essentially remind us that there is no “normalcy” in the state as the government continues to claim.

Despite the uptick in reporting, however, there is a crucial aspect of conflict, one that often remains shrouded in silence for a long time, and gets overlooked: sexual assault and rape of women.

Sexual violence and rape occur in most conflicts, from those between religious or ethnic groups to the ones between the local people and the police or the army. For decades now, rape has been employed as a weapon of war. Back in 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

It is known that because of the stigma attached to rape in conservative societies, these assaults are often not reported to the police. Women will not speak about them. Their families too are part of the silence that surrounds sexual assault. This happens even in so-called “normal” times, but more so when people are caught in violent conflict.

This week, the first reports of sexual assaults in Manipur have appeared. This report by Sonal Matharu in The Print is one of the first. The disturbing testimonies recorded by the reporter illustrate the hesitancy of rape survivors to report the crime of rape and sexual assault. 

That these stories are only now emerging, a good two months after the horrific violence began in Manipur, is not surprising. From past experience, we know that this is what happened in Gujarat in 2002, following the communal violence. The story of Bilkis Bano is now known because of her determination to fight for justice. But for every Bilkis, there would be many others who kept quiet. 

We saw this repeated in the communal violence that gripped Muzaffarnagar and Shamli in UP in 2013. The stories of rape emerged only after the fact-finding efforts of women’s groups and journalists like Neha Dixit who doggedly followed up on these stories. Although a handful of the survivors did turn to the criminal justice system, their journey to get justice has been almost endless, as this story in Scroll tells us about a rape survivor from Muzaffarnagar. 

Thus, it is no surprise that Manipuri women, both Kuki and Meitei, have hesitated to speak on the record about what they went through. Yet, it is a story that must be recorded, and told, so that we understand the true costs of such a conflict. 

Unlike the silent survivors of rape, women in Manipur, especially Meitei women who are part of a group called Meira Paibi, have been in the news for a very different reason.  While the army has projected them as being obstructionist, the Kuki see them as partisan. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. But, at a time of such heightened polarisation, it is easy to jump to conclusions. What is important is to understand who these women are, the reasons for their militancy which was principally against the security forces, and why they are reacting as they are in the current conflict. 

For people willing to invest their time into reading and understanding their cause, several newspapers such as Indian Express, have laid out useful information about the group. But as news has been reduced to headlines and a few paragraphs, or sensationalism and opinion, especially on the television, the history and the processes that lead to conflagrations, like the one in Manipur, are usually overlooked. 

This understanding of history and process is also essential when reporting the devastation caused by the deluge in north India. We see images of the destruction, but apart from the incessant and heavy rain, what are the other factors that have caused it?

Again, if people have the patience to read, there have been articles in several newspapers by experts and by journalists that spotlight this. They tell you about how infrastructure projects, such as roads, are being built without due consideration to the fragility of the Himalayas. They inform us that despite rules that concrete structures cannot be built close to riverbanks, this is being done in all the tourist hotspots, including those hit badly by the floods last week. And they also speak of the routine and uncontrolled dumping of construction debris into smaller streams that ultimately lead to the images we saw of rivers – of mud and logs – raging through the streets of small towns in Himachal Pradesh. 

All these are human interventions that have contributed to the extent of the damage caused in these last weeks.

Unfortunately, such information appears in the media after the devastation, not before. It is more than possible that local journalists have been reporting about such violations of environmental rules. But the rest of the country only knows once the devastation has taken place.

It is also clear that extreme climate-related events, such as the deluge last week, are now a frequent occurrence across the world thanks to global warming. The New York Times published an article on July 10 headlined: “Climate disasters daily? Welcome to the ‘New Normal’.” It reported on the extreme heat, storms, and floods that the United States has experienced in the recent weeks, and the possible reasons for it.

To fully understand the connections between climate change and a local flood, journalists need to constantly keep up with the science behind global warming. Not so long ago, major newspapers in the country had full-time environment reporters. 

You could argue that any well-trained reporter should be able to understand and report on these subjects. Unfortunately, given the workload of most reporters, this is not entirely possible, and there is a need for specialisation in subjects such as the environment, health, or rural and urban development. If the media had continued specialised beats like the environment, it is possible that some early warnings of the disaster building up, especially in the hill states, would have been sounded or amplified. 

Lakhimpur Kheri: When religious identity of suspects is more important than the crime

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 16, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/09/16/lakhimpur-kheri-when-religious-identity-of-suspects-is-more-important-than-the-crime

The death of two Dalit girls, aged 14 and 17, in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri on September 14 is ghastly enough to invite widespread condemnation. The two girls, who were sisters, were allegedly raped and murdered, and then hanged from a tree. But what is also revolting is the way this crime has been converted into a political football being kicked between the BJP, which governs UP, and those opposed to it. 

Much of the mainstream television news, in a style that has now become the norm, has added fuel to this fire by focusing, not just on the crime, but on the religious identity of most of the accused. 

On September 14, when the first reports appeared of the girls found hanging from a tree near a village in Lakhimpur Kheri, there was little interest. Crimes against Dalits, including women, are such a regular occurrence that we are virtually inured to them. They appear as little snippets in the print media and are rarely considered noteworthy for primetime news. 

In fact, these early stories reported the local police saying there were no other marks on the bodies of these two girls except the strangulation marks on their necks, and that their clothes were intact. 

While the mother of the girls told the media that her daughters were taken away forcibly by three men on motorbikes, and that she could not stop them despite running after them, the police stated the girls had gone with these men willingly. 

Mainstream TV media’s interest in the story piqued as soon as the police announced the names of the six men arrested in this case – Chotu, Junaid, Suhail, Hafizul Rehman, Karimuddin and Arif. Most of the men are Muslim. And predictably, the story played out as “love jihad” on some mainstream Hindi news channels. The aim of such shows is not to focus on crimes against women, but to use such ghastly events to pillory minorities and somehow turn them into a Hindu-Muslim issue even when the police has not spoken of any communal angle to the crime yet.

As for the shouting matches that pass for a discussion on television, we saw much whataboutery as BJP representatives said “what about Rajasthan” in response to the Congress and Samajwadi Party spokespersons talking about the lawlessness that prevails in UP. The main issues – the crime, why it happened, the views of the family, the status of Dalits in the village, the police’s response, and why crimes against women in India are escalating – were barely touched upon. If someone raised the wider context, they were drowned out by the usual screaming match between opposing sides and the anchor lamely wrapping up with “I’ve completely run out of time”.

I’ve said this before and I will say it again: Why, even in the slightly better TV channels, has this ridiculous format continued? It does no justice to any subject under discussion, leave alone one like this that has so many aspects that ought to be considered. It leaves the viewer frustrated and uninformed. And it completely detracts from these serious social issues that reflect the state of our society, by allowing uninformed and insensitive political representatives to use the platform to hold forth and attack each other, regardless of the subject under discussion.

Have we forgotten that only a couple of weeks ago, the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau revealed that crimes against women in India have increased by 15.3 percent in the last year? The BBC India bureau did some number-crunching of the data from the last six years and came up with a set of charts that reveal a 26.35 percent rise in crimes against women in this period. UP topped the list. 

As for Dalit women, the recorded data (and we should remember many crimes are not reported at all, or the police refuse to take cognisance of them) reveals a 45 percent increase in rapes of Dalit women between 2015 and 2020. This is the context the media needs to address even as it looks at specific crimes like the one in Lakhimpur Kheri. 

In fact, this latest incident triggered memories of 2014 when two minor Dalit girls from Katra Sadatganj in UP’s Badaun district were found hanging from a mango tree. They had gone out in the evening to “relieve” themselves – a most inappropriate term that conceals the shocking lack of sanitation in most of rural India that compels women to defecate in the open after dark. 

The two girls never returned. When their families went to the police to report that they were missing, they were ignored. Only when the bodies were found was some action taken and three men were eventually arrested. The trial drags on and the men are out on bail.

More recently, we have the horror story of the rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Hathras, UP, two years ago. Few will forget the images of the grieving family and the forcible cremation of her body in the night by the UP police. Yet here too, there has been no real closure as the family lives in fear in a village dominated by higher castes. Although the government has paid them compensation, it is dragging its feet on the other promises made, such as a house and government job. 

The Indian media’s coverage of crimes against women has revealed a predictable pattern. If a rape occurs in a metro, of a woman or women who represent the consumers of the media, it is investigated and pursued in detail. Think of the Delhi gangrape of 2012, the Shakti Mills rape in Mumbai in 2013, and the Park Street rape in Kolkata in 2012.

Compare that coverage with how the media reported, for instance, the brutal rape and murder of two Dalit women, Priyanka and her mother Surekha, in Maharashtra’s Khairlanji in 2006. It was barely reported. The media only woke up to it much later when Dalit groups investigated the case, agitated, and went to court. Without that intervention, and the fact-finding report by Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde, who is in jail charged in the Bhima Koregaon case, we would not have known about this atrocity. 

An additional factor today that determines how the media picks and chooses what atrocity it will pursue is the communal angle that has infected not just the media but society at large. A crime like rape is abhorrent, irrespective of the identity of the perpetrator. It is even worse when the victims are minors. And when they belonged to a marginalised group, that is an additional factor. 

Yet, for some in the mainstream media, these are not the aspects that count in deciding which crime is worth reporting in depth. It is the identity of the alleged criminals. By doing this, the media, especially the most-watched TV channels, is responsible for actively perpetrating the stereotype that has already been constructed through fraudulent concepts like “love jihad” to target young Muslim men. And of spreading a poison that has infected our society to such an extent that we fail to recognise why outrage for unconscionable crimes, like rape, is so selective.

What kind of justice is this?

Column for Mathrubhumi 

(Translated in Malayalam)

July 19, 2020

A woman is gang-raped.  Within four days of making the complaint, instead of the men who assaulted her being put in jail, she is.  This is the extraordinary story of a 22-year-old woman in Araria, Bihar.

It is relevant above all because it exposes, yet again, the problems women who are sexually assaulted face in dealing with the criminal justice system.

In this case, after the rape on July 6, the woman sought out some social workers to help her file the case.  Four days later, when the case came up before a magistrate, she was asked to sign a written statement.  She refused saying she first wanted to know what was in it, something that is a basic right. As she could not read, she wanted the social workers who had helped her to read it out to her.

Instead of understanding the trauma that this woman had already been through, the magistrate was offended and the woman was charged with contempt of court and obstructing civil servants from doing their duty.  She, and the two social workers were sent off to a jail some 250 km away. 

What is worse, the woman's identity was leaked to the local papers who reported it even though it is strictly prohibited by the law.

And while she sat in jail, the men she had accused were free.

This is happening in our country where, according to the latest crime statistics (only available upto 2017), a woman is raped somewhere in India every 15 minutes.  The Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to have slowed down this assault of women in this country.

The bigger tragedy is that despite campaigns to change and strengthen the law, to make it mandatory that the police register a complaint when a woman comes to them, to use humane methods for the medical examination and to counsel her, the same old story keeps repeating itself.

In the midst of all the reports of death and disease, this particular story stood out not just because it flies in the face of the basic criteria of justice, but that it tells us yet again that just changing the law is not enough.  We have to find ways to make the criminal justice system work for the most marginalised, including women.

In many ways, the protests across the United States and other countries against the racists approach of the police, are based on the same premise: that the justice system fails to protect the marginalised and instead victimises them.

In this particular instance, because the story was reported, and there was a campaign on social media, this young woman was released on bail while the two activists who helped her were denied bail.

But think of the message such an incident sends out to all other women who are assaulted and who try to seek justice.  As it is, if you are poor, you fear turning to the police.  Even when you do, there is no guarantee that your case will be taken seriously.  Even when it reaches the courts, it often fails to convict the rapists because the police are too casual about collecting evidence and making a convincing case.  At every step, it is the survivor of the rape who has to struggle to keep up her courage and her sanity. It is hardly surprising then that so many women still prefer not to report a rape and pursue it through the courts.

Now, after this case in Araria, even the few who know their rights and speak up, as this young woman did, will be afraid that they will be punished.  What a state we have come to in this country.