Of Media, violence and prejudice

By
Randeep Wadehra

Troubled Reflections: Reporting Violence by Gobind Thukral
Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Pages: 214. Price: Rs.495/-

The only thing I don’t like about the press is I can give as many answers as you want, and be totally honest, but finally it’s you who shapes the final product...often what comes out isn’t what I meant at all.

Roddy Doyle (1958–  ) Irish novelist and playwright. The Observer, 1 May 1994

Media has come a long way since 1609 when newspapers were first published in Germany. It now comprises – along with newspapers – journals, TV and Internet. Inevitably the multiplicity in its composition has led to sophistication in its outlook resulting in multipoint engagements with governments and societies at large. Today, its role is not confined to mere collecting and retailing of news. It has become a major opinion maker. It can make and break reputations of individuals as well as communities and governments, to wit, Osama bin laden, Saddam Hussein and Muslims – the former two were once favorites of the American government and media before they were damned as devils forcing the entire Muslim world to pay the price.

Gobind Thukral, a veteran journalist, who has worked with India Today, Indian Express, Financial Express, Hindustan Times and The Tribune, and has been in the midst of various conflict situations during the days of terrorism in Punjab, decries the commoditization of news. This trend has brought in several undesirable vested interests and generated unhealthy practices. Editors have to factor in the prejudices and interests of various sponsors, advertisers and proprietors while deciding upon the content of their publications – be they print or electronic.

Thukral has attempted to study the media’s role and impact on various issues that have had an enduring influence in the evolution of the global village with specific reference to India. He points out how Americans have used this powerful opinion making tool for demonizing its opponents in the international arena – be it Khrushchev or Saddam Hussein. In fact, media has also been used by Americans in manipulating public opinion on such issues as its war against Islamic terrorism even as it uses the same media to camouflage its geo-strategic and economic agendas for carrying out mindless violence against smaller nations.

In India, too, the state has successfully used media to manipulate public opinion – be it on Bhindranwale, who was the ruling Congress Party’s creation; a creation that went out of control and left enduring scars on the psyche of Punjabis – both Hindus and Sikhs – known more for their commercial acumen and creative enterprise than the culture of anarchy. Over a period of time the most patriotic community and the most prosperous state was reviled and blackballed. He also describes how connivance between politician and the press gave Bhindranwale a larger  than life image of arch villain; how words wrongly attributed to Ribeiro widened the Hindu-Sikh divide. Similarly, in the current scenario the voice of the marginalized has been so gagged that violence seems to have become their only language. The media – imbued with bourgeois ethic – has wantonly ignored the tribals, the subaltern castes and other poor and marginalized sections of the society, thus reflecting the respective proprietors’ prejudices that coincide with the establishment’s agenda.

There is a need for creating space on the democratic platform for the have-nots and the wronged. Only the intelligentsia and the media can facilitate this process. The debates should be less middle-classy and more subaltern-oriented. The discourse must generate all-inclusive creative impulses in the economic as well as political domains. The government often uses media to divide people – as it did in Punjab – a diabolic impulse that needs to be resisted by the mainstream media. However, right now this is not happening. Whether it is the “Maoists” or those agitating for better economic conditions in different parts of the country – the media, perhaps unwittingly but invariably, treats them as the “other”, thus hardening the fault-lines and intensifying the gloomy conflict scenario.

Time and again voices of sanity try to wake up the conscience of the political establishment and attempt to r

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