Came across a poignant article about the media in today's The News. It is copied below for the benefit of Hon Members. I dont know of any other who has so succinctly described the situation. This is what I call honest journalism.
Mumbai and the media war
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Foqia Sadiq Khan
The Indian as well as the Pakistani media, particularly the electronic one, has been extremely irresponsible in its coverage of the Mumbai carnage. India and Pakistan have dozens of electronic media channels but they seem, by and large, to lack the responsibility that comes with running such channels at times of crisis.
It was distasteful to see the Indian media and officials implicate Pakistan even before the operation to flush out militants was completed. It was equally distasteful to see the Pakistani electronic media raise emotions against India, rather than showing solidarity at such an hour of crisis.
It seems both India and Pakistan are living in denial of their deeds. India seems to be in denial of its treatment of its minorities, particularly the over 150 million Muslims who live in extreme poverty and deprivation. India also seems to be in denial over its role in suppressing the struggle for independence in Kashmir. As William Dalrymple noted in an article in The Guardian on Nov 30: "If Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is the most emotive issue for Muslims in the Middle East, then India's treatment of the people of Kashmir plays a similar role among South Asian Muslims."
Pakistan seems to be in denial that it has become a hotbed of terrorists from all over the world and that terrorist acts all over the world often have links to outfits in Pakistan. Whether it is the July 7, 2005, bombings in London or the attack on commuter trains in Spain, there is always some kind of connection to Pakistani actors and/or groups. The mastermind behind a plane to bomb trans-Atlantic flights through the use of liquid bombs in 2006, Rashid Rauf, was also allegedly killed in a US drone attack a few weeks ago in Bannu. Pakistan seems to have become a safe haven for terrorist who kill innocent people mostly in Pakistan but also in the rest of the world. This grave realisation was completely missing in any analysis by the electronic media in Pakistan.
Sure, the US has a role to play in all of this. Had America not imposed its proxy war on Pakistan from 1979 onwards, Pakistanis and the rest of the world would have been a much safer place now. It was the CIA-financed war, operationalised by the ISI, that created a network of global jihadis and which has now blown back on America, Pakistan and the rest of the world. American imperialism played a definite role in making Pakistan do its dirty job and Zia-ul-Haq's military government and military top brass was more than willing to receive huge military aid and be an active promoter of jihadi culture that has come to haunt us and the rest of the world today.
But we cannot turn back the clock. We have to deal with the fallout and clear our mess. This cannot be done if both India and Pakistan continue to live in a state of denial and blame each other. Indian security forces have usurped the rights of Kashmiris and have killed them and tortured them mercilessly. Indian groups have burned churches and destroyed mosques and carried out massacres of minority groups Gujarat 2002 is a case in point. It is a complete failure of the Indian state that something as gruesome as the Gujarat massacre happened, in the first place. It is even a bigger failure that the government of Narendra Modi has not been held accountable for it so far. Having said that, no amount of injustice condones murderous attacks of Mumbai. Violence cannot end violence it leads to only more violence.
Most of the Pakistani intelligentsia, much like the Indian intelligentsia (barring a few exceptions on both sides), suffers from moral bankruptcy. Watching the coverage of Mumbai attacks, one got the impression that many journalists, opinion-makers, and so-called security and defence "experts" were almost as bad as the Indian hawks and jingoists. Both sides were looking at only the ubiquitous "foreign hand" behind everything, without accepting any responsibility for their own actions though in the Indians' case this was more pronounced.
To quote an example from Pakistan, Lt-Gen (retired) Salahuddin Tirmizi openly referred to India as "dushman mulk" and this was while the tragedy was still unfolding in Mumbai, with militants still in a shootout at the Taj. Is this the way neighbours express solidarity at such a delicate moment of mayhem and crisis? One wonders why such a jingoistic commentator was invited, in the first place.
Unfortunately, Pakistanis cannot watch Indian media; otherwise there would have been far more such examples to quote from the Indian side as well. One gets the sense from media coverage and talking to people that Indian media has been extremely jingoistic as well. Just the way, they have made the whole world believe that militants just came off the boats from Pakistan and launched this unprecedented massive assault on the financial heart of India. How could they reach such a conclusion while investigations are still at primary stage? How could people who have just come off the boats launch such a massive attack without being familiar with the city and its environs? Then this changed and one began to hear that the attackers came to the city at least a month before the attacks and a few may have actually stayed at one of the hotels that was attacked.
Equally irresponsible were the statements by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, as well as a major-general of the Indian Army. All of them directly or indirectly implicated Pakistan while the situation was still developing and it was premature to be sure of the attack's definite links and causes.
At the end, we also have to come clean on the ISI's role once and for all. The agency's political wing has been disbanded but we all know that in the past it has worked closely with jihadi groups, especially as a result of the war against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. It is also not a hidden secret anymore that the agency was involved in the past in helping groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad fight in Kashmir. As a nation, we need to know where the ISI stands in its relationship with jihadi groups now though we are told time and again that this is now non-existent. If we fail to ascertain that, it would be very hard to refute the label of Pakistan being a haven for terrorists or of it indirectly being behind such attacks.
One can only hope that better sense and sanity will prevail and that the unadulterated blame games and muscle flexing on both sides will give way to restraint. Of course, the Indian media and officials have been more irresponsible because they started the blame game. But that doesn't mean that the Pakistani media necessarily reply in the same coin. It needs to show sympathy and should not give in to the tendency in such situations to reply in the same coin.
The writer is a doctoral candidate at the SOAS, University of London.
Mumbai and the media war
