By Mohd. Zeyaul Haque,
The demise of the 168-year old News of the World has evoked a sense of relief, even an occasional “good riddance” from victims of media excesses everywhere, writes Mohd. Zeyaul Haque
News media in democratic societies pride themselves on being watchdogs of human freedom and dignity. No wonder, they are accepted as the “Fourth Pillar” of state informally (and, sometimes, grudgingly). However, this is the brighter side. There is a darker side too: media’s relentless blackmail and unjustifiable hounding of innocent people has destroyed many lives, ruined families, sullied reputations and helped an unjust order sustain itself. This is the situation everywhere, including in India, to which we will come later.
News of the World, a weekly British newspaper, said in its founding document that it would serve the middle and upper classes, and would also do the same to working class, ordinary people. It turns out that it had been doing just the opposite, tormenting everyone right from the Queen and the royal family to commoners, choosing people as targets who had already been sufferers of personal tragedies or were victims of serious crimes.
Last edition of the ‘News of the World
Through a web of deceit, bribery, phone hacking and blackmail, it had held the ruling elite in its thrall and made common people victims of its predatory tactics. If bribing policemen and victimising victims is the service of democracy, it was serving democracy rather well. As the horror story unfolds, it is likely that a couple of more publications will follow News of the World into extinction. Good riddance!
It is tempting to look at how our own newspapers have been behaving vis-à-vis victims of violence, perpetrators of fraud and official corruption. The record has not always been encouraging. Sometimes some of the big names of Indian journalism themselves have been found involved in shady deals (like in the Radia case) and all manner of wheeling dealing.
Indian media too have their share of mischiefs and sins of omission and commission. Every time a bomb goes off somewhere–including mosques and dargahs–within minutes intelligence officials begin the familiar narrative of Indian Mujahideen, HUJI and the usual suspects, aided by ISI and, even some “al-Qaeda proxies.” News media begin parroting all this hocus pocus uncritically, unquestioningly, unfailingly.
Within hours Muslim youth are rounded up from all over, transparently false stories are concocted by police and intelligence officials and repeated ad nauseam by television and newspapers. The media put on trial and condemn innocent Muslims much before a proper trial begins in courts.
In case after such case the accused have been acquitted. In case after case the stories parroted by media have been rejected by courts as false. Yet, never did a newspaper say sorry to victims of its excesses. More often than not, the stories of the acquitted have not been carried by newspapers which wasted columns of space on false propaganda against the Muslim victims of injustice. Even after reminders, newspapers have failed to take note, not even on inside pages.
One of the leading English newspapers, which is primarily from the South, but has a “national” presence now with its Delhi edition (English newspapers published from Delhi are called “national newspapers” for some unfathomable reason) is justifiably regarded as “fair and pro-weak” by Muslims. This newspaper too has been regularly carrying stories planted by intelligence agencies which are defamatory to Muslims and threaten their security and wellbeing.
The long, elaborately-argued stories about Muslim youth in this newspaper were rejected by court verdicts. In Hyderabad, Malegaon, in Samjhauta Express and Mumbai our “national” newspapers maligned and condemned Muslim youth while these blasts turned out to be the handiwork of Hindutva gangs. The “fair and pro-weak” newspaper, the southern giant, never bothered to take note. It is possibly the only newspaper which has an ombudsman, but the ombudsman, too, failed the victims of its excesses.
These are sins of commission, but news media’s sins of omission are no less ruinous for the weak. The omission is often the result of unrestrained enthusiasm for big-impact stories, which leaves a huge black hole in the news agenda of the day for significant stories to drop through into oblivion. Stories of sufferings of media excesses go untold.
The media in our country are great suckers for disinformation sourced from Western agencies. Two of such recent instances are the first day’s reports on the Oslo terror attack in our media which parroted, almost reflexively, a piece of disinformation sourced from a “jehadi” website that was supposed to be run by an organisation called Ansar-al-Jehad-al-Alami. Muslims know that most of such sites are run from locations in some non-Muslim countries and many organisations like these do not exist. However, the media never bothered to check their sources
Next day’s newspapers carried an entirely different picture: an anti-Muslim Norwegian Christian carried out the deadly blasts and also shot people trying to swim away to safety. The incessant chatter on TV about Ansar-al-Jehad changed into an incessant chatter about the Norwegian. No regrets. No apologies.
The second case is that of the hotel maid in New York who has accused former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape. Strauss-Kahn has been accused of rape by others as well, including a senior IMF official and a 20-year-old French writer. Early reports on the episode said French president Nicolas Sarkozy had expressed concern about Strauss-Kahn’s propensity to rape women.
It was quite clear that Strauss-Kahn, who had already spent a few hours in jail in this case, would use his money and connections to wriggle out of the mess and the maid would finally have to eat humble pie. In what was a planted story (according to the maid) in New York Post,it was insinuated that the maid also worked as a prostitute. Naturally, this would likely dilute the maid’s case, although legally it should not prejudice it.
The interested party fed this piece of disinformation to news agencies, which fed it to media worldwide. The maid slapped a defamation suit against New York Post, but by then the damage was done.
The Indian media used this piece of disinformation widely. Indian languages newspapers, which are not generally bothered about such news, also used it extensively. People who had any idea of how disinformation campaigns are run could quickly tell this was a plant to weaken the maid’s case. However, the PTI correspondent in Washington, who did not cover himself with glory for picking up such trash and harming the victim, did not think that it was not a piece of information worthy of his attention. If tomorrow PTI closes shop in Washington (God forbid), how will the victim of Strauss-Kahn’s rampant libido react? Of course with a sigh of relief and “good-riddance.”
It is better our august media organisations mend their ways in time. Remember what people everywhere said when a two and half centuries-old newspaper died in Sweden? Nothing. Not even a sigh. Nobody noticed. Let us hope our media don’t make themselves that irrelevant.
[Photo courtesy: inthenews.co.uk]