By IANS
New Delhi : The Indian media’s reporting on religious controversies has miles to go as it is still ruled by ignorance and prejudices, said veteran journalists here Saturday.
Participating in a symposium on ‘Reporting Religious Controversies’, a group of senior journalists said the Indian media had to adopt a careful approach while reporting on religious controversies.
“Dignity of the individual cannot be ignored,” said B.G. Varghese, columnist and author. Pointing out that religion took over secular rights in religious controversies, he said: “Our religious rights should march along with other rights guaranteed in the constitution.”
Obeid Siddiqui, a senior journalist and a lecturer in Jamia Milia University here, said the main impediments in fair reporting of religious controversies were ignorance and prejudices. “Many of the media people who report about ‘fatwa’ do not know that everybody cannot issue it. It is not a ruling, but just an opinion, and not binding on everyone,” he said.
“In print media you have time to go for a multi-layer reporting by going into different aspects of an incident. But in the electronic media, the time is always limited, which is a major handicap for comprehensive reporting,” Siddiqui said.
Speaking on ‘Challenges for reporting religious controversies in India’, R. Prasannan, bureau chief of the Week magazine, pointed out that the media should be careful enough not to whip up religious passions in its reporting.
“But we also have to report the truth. The genocide in Gujarat was known to the world because of the media,” he said, referring to the 2001 communal killings in the state.
Prasannan also said the “fundamentalism of the majority” was more dangerous than that of the minority as it would “undermine and damage” the system.
Adolf Washington, president of Indian Catholic Press Association, stressed that journalists should focus on the impact on the individual while reporting religious controversies.
The symposium, organised by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) commission for social communications and Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life, London, was inaugurated by Minister for Tribal Affairs P.R. Kyndiah.