Interestingly, the Indian electronic media — with a few exceptions — turned hysterical minutes after the terrorist attack on the popular tourist spot in occupied Kashmir. Without waiting for an investigation, the media, most of it controlled by big business groups linked to the right-wing Hindu nationalist ruling party, started to point fingers across the border. Some of them even laid out their own war plan much before the Indian government announced a series of punitive actions against Pakistan.
A section of the Pakistani media, too, is not without a xenophobic approach. Religion is also often misused to whip up bigotry in this country. Yet the madness witnessed on the Indian media has no precedent. TV channels spewing hate and demanding retribution against a rival country, without substantiating its culpability, have crossed all limits of rationality and objectivity.
Such frenzy cannot be separated from the prevailing political environment in India. The jingoism witnessed on the Indian media is a manifestation of the rising nationalist militancy and hegemonic approach in that country. Even mainstream journalists and media organisations are used as weapons of war.
The growing importance of the media and information in modern conflicts and disputes has led some to observe that a large part of conflict is driven by the media, which creates a national psyche that allows the ruling elite to mobilise mass sentiments.
A widely accepted definition of objective journalism is the “detached and unprejudiced gathering and dissemination of news and information”. Maintaining such objectivity can lead people to reach their own conclusions about an event, without being influenced by subjective views. Indeed, media persons should present the facts as they are whether they agree with them or not.
But the question is whether such objectivity is possible given the complex world in which we are living today. Unfortunately, the media is not free of prejudices and is often dictated by status quo powers and the national and security interests of their respective countries.
This is also true for Western democratic countries that claim to uphold freedom of expression and democratic values. There is certainly much more freedom enjoyed by the media in the West. But there is no true sense of objectivity when it comes to national security issues. In fact, there have been many instances when unverified reports in reputable mainstream publications have been used to justify military action against other countries.
I have worked with several international publications including The Times (London), the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, covering Pakistan and Afghanistan for almost three decades. There is no denying that I enjoyed complete freedom in the regular reporting of events. But there were certainly some restrictions on issues considered ‘sensitive’ with regard to ‘national security and foreign policy matters’.
Sometimes, parts of my story would be cut out. One such instance occurred when I filed a report for the WSJ mentioning that Raymond Davis, who was arrested in Lahore in 2011, was an undercover CIA operative. That part of the story was removed. It happened twice before some British papers exposed Davis’s identity — one of these reports was mine and published in The Times.
It was then that the WSJ finally acknowledged that he was an undercover agent. When I asked my editor why that bit of the story had been initially removed, he said the paper had received advice from top US officials not to report Davis’s real identity. In fact, Washington never publicly acknowledged the real identity of the detained American who was later allowed to leave the country after a deal was struck between the US and Pakistan.
The Indian media’s frenzy cannot be separated from the country’s political climate.
There are many instances when mainstream publications carried unsubstantiated stories fed by vested interests to serve as the basis for starting a war. In the early 2000s, the New York Times (NYT) published detailed reports by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Judith Miller on Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These reports were used to emphasise the threat and provide justification for America to invade Iraq. The paper fully supported the war that by some estimates killed over a million people and destroyed Iraq.
But in 2004, the NYT itself acknowledged that much of its WMD reporting had been based on questionable intelligence. In an extraordinary statement, arguably the world’s most influential paper admitted that it had been misled by sources, including the controversial Iraqi leader Ahmad Chalabi who lived in exile in America for many years. It admitted that “accounts of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq were never independently verified”. In a note to readers published under the headline ‘The Times and Iraq’, the editors admitted that there had been a “a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been”, and indicated that they had accepted the claims of “United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq”.
The NYT was not the only mainstream American publication that supported the invasion of Iraq on false grounds. The then editor of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “The place is so dysfunctional,” he said, “any stirring of the pot is good.” In 2017, Zakaria supported President Donald Trump’s strike against Syria saying, it was the moment he “became president of the United States”.
While appearing extremely crude in its war cry, the Indian electronic media too has been weaponised to serve its country’s hegemonic designs. There is also a lesson here for our media.
Published in: Dawn News
Link here: Weaponisation of media