Mukherjee criticises TV channels for Mumbai coverage

Thu, Dec 11 10:03 PM

New Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee Thursday criticised TV channels for their 24x7 coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attack, which jeopardised the lives of hostages, and asked them to learn 'where to stop and where to pause' by putting national interests above commercial considerations.

'In our anxiety to beat the other channels in publicity, we were showing some crowds of people on screens. Instructions then came to the terrorists to throw a grenade at the crowds so that they would run away,' Mukherjee said in the Lok Sabha during a dicussion on the Nov 26 attack.

'Some lives were lost because of the anxiety to get publicity. If the camera was not focused there, if the crowd was not found there, perhaps these things would not have happened,' he said.

'So, we have to draw the lesson where to stop and where to pause,' he stressed.

'When they (security forces) were sacrificing their lives, at a safe distance, if somebody thinks that he will defeat his competitors by buying larger viewers by giving updated news, he may serve the interests of the company but surely he or she will not serve the interests to the nation,' Mukherjee said.

With the Mumbai attacks in the backdrop, the government Wednesday decided to set up a coordination committee with broadcasters to ensure a degree of self-regulation to ensure balanced coverage.

In a meeting with broadcasters, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting and External Affairs Anand Sharma told them that their continued coverage was having a negative effect and also affecting tourism and civil aviation.

Sharma said that while the media in the country was free, it should exercise this independence with restraint and responsibility.  source

Self-regulation by media is best

Editorial, The Asian Age, October 7, 2008 

News and current affairs broadcasting on television can hardly said to have covered itself with glory, although it has been some two decades since private channels made their entry. While production values have been less than ordinary in most cases, it is the content purveyed which often fails to clear the mark of professionalism. Sensational, insignificant and, at times, uncorroborated datum is known to be paraded as news or information. Regrettably, there are occasions when it is hard to tell the difference between some established news channels and those that flaunt their yellow journalism. This was, for instance, the case with the reporting on the Aarushi murder. Both shocked the country — the brutal and senseless killing of a 14-year-old girl and the breathless news reports on television with an eye for little more than lasciviousness. Sensing an opportunity, the government hinted at measures to restrict content. Fortunately, it didn’t go that far. In a democracy, it will be hard to stomach any intervention by government in the matter of regulation of media content. Now the News Broadcasters Association — which represents 30 channels run by 14 broadcasters — has on its own come forward to create a News Broadcasting Standards (Disputes Redressal) Authority for the purposes of self-regulation.

Ungainly as the name sounds, this is a welcome step. It speaks of a sense of responsibility to the viewers on the part of the broadcasters. It is commonly thought that television channels show a propensity to be sensationalist in a competition for eyeballs. With ad-spends shooting up since the liberalisation of the economy and globalisation, leading media players — not just in television — have courted the dramatic, the lurid, and the loud with a view to grabbing readers and viewers. But this appears to be a jaded trick. There are signs of the audience being put off. Many who were in the forefront of the trend now give the impression of mixing the sensible old norms of good journalism with only a dash of the sensational. The establishing of the NBSA last Thursday appears to be a step in the same broad direction. TV broadcasters just need to remember that it might be best for them to tone down a shade in order to remain credible. Given the visual nature of their medium, the sensational often appears to be a purposeful distortion to attract attention. source link 

Media is Unfair to Azamgarh, a place known for Hindu-Muslim unity

For God’s sake, please stop this madness



Azamgarh is shocked, even angry, at the way the police and the media have labelled it a “nursery for terrorists” ever since the Jamia Nagar encounter in which the police gunned down two boys hailing from this district. In Sanjarpur village, which was raided by the Delhi ATS and UP Police, every journalist is eyed with suspicion.
“A news channel is frequently referring to Azamgarh as ‘aatank-garh’ (haven for terrorists). This is ridiculous. For God’s sake, please stop this madness,” frets a visibly upset Zahid, elder brother of Sajid, one of the two boys gunned down in Jamia Nagar.

What upsets them most is that this “historical place known for its Hindu-Muslim unity is getting a bad name just because of some misguided youngsters. Is it justified?” They ask this to every journalist visiting Azamgarh.

 “Because of its name, most people even think Azamgarh is Muslim-dominated, when actually Muslims form only 15 per cent of the population,”  said Islahi who was president of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) Student Union in the mid-60s.

In fact, Azamgarh, founded around 1665, is named after prince Azam, who was the son of a Rajput ruler.  Vikramajit, a descendant of the Gautam Rajputs, had embraced Islam, and Azam was one of the two sons he had from a Muslim wife. A large section of Muslims here were originally Thakurs or Rajputs who embraced Islam.

“The media and outside world are being unfair,” laments Chunnan Rai, a social worker and poet. “Even the forefathers of Allama Shibli Nomani (secular theologist) were Rajputs who converted to Islam,” he says. He also reminisces of Pandit Nehru’s visit to Azamgarh. “He stayed at the Shibli College guest house.” Shibli College principal Md Iftikhar Ahmed says half the 14,000 students there are Hindus. “Azamgarh has never witnessed any communal violence or major crime. Suddenly it is seen as a terror haven,” he says.

“Azamgarh was peaceful even during the post-Independence communal riots,” says former MP Santosh Singh. 

 ... full story  

Attack on Journalists

Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 13 :: Jun. 21-Jul. 04, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents




MEDIA

DIONNE BUNSHA

There is an alarming trend of political parties trying to prevent journalists from coming out with inconvenient truths and the state standing by.

COURTESY: THE TIMES OF INDIA

Kumar Ketkar, editor of ‘Loksatta’, at his Thane home after the attack by Shiv Sangram activists.

KUMAR KETKAR was getting ready to leave for work when he heard what sounded like a war cry in the distance. Within seconds, there was a crazed mob pounding at his door. His wife Sharda immediately bolted it and ran to close the windows. By then, the 70-strong gang had surrounded his home. They thumped on the door with sticks, splashed buckets of tar, and hurled stones to break the windows.

“Luckily, we were saved by the iron grills on the windows, or our lives would have been in danger,” says Ketkar, the editor of Loksatta, the largest and most influential Marathi newspaper, part of the Indian Express group of publications.

The mob that proudly proclaimed its allegiance to the Shiv Sangram, a chauvinistic Marathi group, attacked Ketkar for an editorial he wrote mocking the State government’s plan to build a 309-foot statue of Shivaji in the Arabian Sea off Mumbai’s Marine Drive at a cost of more than Rs.100 crore. The article, titled “All the problems have been solved, now let’s build a statue”, is filled with sarcastic barbs about the state of affairs in Maharashtra.

Not surprisingly, the leader of the Shiv Sangram is Vinayak Mete, State vice-president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), a partner in the ruling coalition. Soon after the attack, he told Indian Express: “Ketkar used derogatory language against Chhatrapati Shivaji to oppose the move to build a statue. So, our workers attacked his house in protest. It was a physical reaction to atrocious writing.”


The next day, the NCP issued a show-cause notice against Mete, known to be close to party chief Sharad Pawar and State Home Minister R.R. Patil. But he was not arrested, despite his public statements. Only 12 of his followers were hauled up by the police.

When contacted by Frontline, Mete said he was a founding member of the Shiv Sangram. “The attack was wrong, but people should ponder why only two journalists in Maharashtra are attacked often – Kumar Ketkar and Nikhil Wagle. They should think before they write. When they write against Shivaji, who is like a god in Maharashtra, it angers our activists. They are not as knowledgeable as Mr. Ketkar, so this was their reaction,” Mete said.

The Shiv Sangram has links with the NCP, which is competing with the Shiv Sena to project itself as the upholder of the “Maratha” tradition. Marathas, who are Kshatriyas by caste, form a powerful group in Maharashtra and occupy top political posts. Many NCP politicians, including Sharad Pawar and Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh are Marathas.

In January 2004, the “Sambhaji Brigade” ransacked the renowned Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) for helping the American author James Laine, who they felt made objectionable remarks about Shivaji in his book Shivaji: A Hindu king in Islamic India. Instead of cracking down on the culprits, the Congress-NCP government filed a case against the author. The Shiv Sangram attacked the Loksatta office in Ahmednagar in 2006 because it did not publish a picture of Shivaji on the front page to commemorate Shiv Jayanti, the birthday of Shivaji.

With elections due next year, political parties are competing with one another in their pursuit of identity politics. First, Raj Thackeray managed to rescue himself from a descent into political oblivion by inciting attacks against North Indian “outsiders” by his party workers. Now, the ruling Congress-NCP is trying to cash in on the sentiment. “It’s because they are playing identity politics and not talking about the real issues that they don’t want the press to be free. They don’t want any criticism. Actually, it is a kind of terrorism,” says Ketkar.

COURTESY: THE INDIAN EXPRESS

Journalists demonstrating outside the office of the Police Commissioner of Ahmedabad after the resident editor of ‘The Times of India’ and one of his colleagues were charged with sedition and conspiracy.

The attack on Ketkar is no longer considered unusual in Maharashtra. There are frequent attacks on the media by gangs belonging to groups like the Shiv Sangram. Rarely is any action taken. “There is lawlessness. Every day we hear of new attacks by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena [Raj Thackeray’s party], not only on journalists but also on ordinary people. But the government does nothing,” says Jatin Desai from the People’s Media Initiative.

Meanwhile, in Gujarat, press freedom was threatened by the police. The resident editor of The Times of India in Ahmedabad, Bharat Desai, and a correspondent, Prashant Dayal, were charged with sedition and conspiracy against the state. The newspaper had published a series of articles exposing the “misdeeds” of the newly appointed Police Commissioner of Ahmedabad, O.P. Mathur. In retaliation, Mathur filed five cases against them. The matter is yet to be investigated. Meanwhile, the journalists applied for anticipatory bail. During the communal violence of 2002, Gujarati newspapers published reports that incited communal hatred. But they were never punished. However, the Gujarat government is quick to clamp down on journalists who are critical of its officials.

“These outdated laws are used to intimidate journalists,” says Digant Oza, renowned Gujarati writer. “In the past few years, a few journalists have been jailed under this section. The authorities gang up to prevent the media from writing. Sedition can carry a sentence of life imprisonment, so it can scare journalists. Particularly in small towns, many have not had the resources to fight the government and had to apologise before they could be released from jail.”

In 2006, the police arrested the editor of Surat Samna, Manoj Shinde, its circulation manager and a computer operator on charges of sedition because the newspaper had criticised the government for mishandling the release of water from the Ukai dam, which resulted in the flooding of Surat city. Shinde did not have the financial resources to fight the case and had to apologise after 39 days in jail. After that, he was released.

A hundred years ago, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was arrested on sedition charges for writing against the callous British administration. He was jailed for six years. In the land of Gandhi, the state is still trying to gag the press. And many journalists are still sending e-mail messages quoting Gandhi, “If sedition means disaffection towards the present system of government, it is a virtue and a duty....We cannot paint the system blacker than it appears to the average audience today.”

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