Kishore Budha
News narratives are complex, especially during times of crises. Journalism professional values often call for striking a balance between the various demands of the sociology of journalism with a focus on balance and fairness. This is not a simple case of reporting or copy editing, but works at various filtering mechanisms such as newsroom culture, biases and ideology, shared values, competition etc.
The 19 Sep police storming of Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi following the 13 Sep explosions presented journalists with an unfolding story that is challenging.
The Hindustan Times coverage of the events presents interesting insights into news construction, discourse, and the role of newspaper layouts in creating complex and problematic narratives.
On Sep 20, Hindustan TImes ran a headline across its front page that asked: “Case Cracked?â€Â. The newspaper took a distanciated view by stating: “Alleged Delhi bombers shot†and “Investigators claim to have solved recent bombingsâ€Â. The layout narrativised the events as a reconstruction, which included an illustration of the the scene of the police storming. Three stories accompanied the headline. The lead story narrated the police version of the event. The second story rhetorically asked “Who was Atif?†and went on to describe the alleged Indian Mujahideen militant. The third paid a tribute to the fallen police officer MC Sharma. The narrative aimed to put together a What and and Who.
Doubt the first day
The next day the newspaper followed it up with another impressive layout that declared “Solvedâ€Â. The eye is diverted towards the headline “Solvedâ€Â, which is surrounded by a cluster of news elements organised to present a complex narrative. Right below the headline run a series of factual statements. Below that a picture of Inspector Mohan Sharma’s funeral procession is wedged between two stories. One, immediately below the picture (Alvi:2008), is a first person account by Rais, the brother of Atif, a suspected Indian Mujahideen militant. The second, to the right of the picture, is a report (Sharan & Singh:2008b) detailing the scale of the network that the suspected militants ran.
but the next day a complex narrative.
What stands out is the mode of address, which can probably be attributed to newsroom and professional culture. The first address is made by the paper, which unambiguously declares the case “Solvedâ€Â, and follows it up with a list of facts issued by the police. Is the declaration “Solved†made by the police or by the newspaper? On top of the headline sits the statement “Every second day, an Indian policeman dies fighting terrorâ€Â. Problematically, the data to back up this statement (represented as a chart on the page) reads 124 policemen dead in 2006.
The report by Sharan and Singh begins with an address that declares:
It was a deadly three-way alliance among the now dead Atif aka Basheer (24) of the Indian Mujahideen, the pro-jihad faction of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) led by techie Abdus Subhan Qureshi (36) aka Tauqeer, and handlers of the Pakistani Lashkar e Tayyeba (LeT), that executed four serial blasts in the last 10 months across the country.
This statement of fact is an address made by the journalists. The second paragraph begins: “Delhi police’s Special Cell’s Joint Commissioner of police told a media conference on Saturday afternoon that “LeT acted as the mediator between the two groups….â€Â. The leading paragraph is not attributed to the police. Compare this with the Times of India report (Tripathi:2008) on the same day.
Delhi Police on Saturday claimed to have cracked the September 13 blasts which were carried out by 13 bombers. What also points to close links of other members of the IM-SIMI group behind the recent serial blasts are pictures of Abdus Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer  the Mumbai techie who has been seen as the author of the terror emails that have preceded the blasts.
The Indian Express headlined it as “Linked to Lashkar, fan of Osama, Atif was part of 14 behind blasts: police†(Chauhan:2008)
The Hindustan Times page constructs a narrative to the story where the address by the police, which would be treated as a claim (as reported by Times of India and Indian Express) has been turned into a statement of fact. This bold assertive construction of the news sits uneasily when the newspaper’s editor writes in a commentary article the same day:
But instead of wasting time on debates about Pota and Shivraj Patil’s clothes, let’s get to the heart of the problem: why don’t our intelligence agencies ever know anything? (Sanghvi:2008)
There is an ambiguity in the attribution of the discourse. The newspaper copy does not clearly and unambiguously separate the discourse of the journalists and the police. This may be attributed to various filters such as copy editors who may want to make the copy dramatic. Is this linked to the dramatic and eye catching layout of the newspaper? A study of the newsroom sociology is required to better answer this question. Nevertheless, the lack of clarity, along with the conflation of discourse is uneasy.
References
- Alvi, Naziya (2008) ‘My brother, the bomber’ Hindustan Times Delhi, 21 Sep, P1
- Chauhan, Neeraj (2008) ‘Linked to Lashkar, fan of Osama, Atif was part of 14 behind blasts: police’ Indian Express, Delhi Edition, 21 Sep, P1
- Sanghvi, Vir (2008) ‘After the blasts’ Hindustan Times, Delhi Edition, Sep 21, P12
- Sharan, Abhishek and Singh, Vijaita (2008a) ‘Who was Atif’ Hindustan TimesDelhi, 20 Sep, P1
- Sharan, Abhishek and Singh, Vijaita (2008b) ‘Nationwide terror network unravels’ Hindustan Times Delhi, 21 Sep, P1
- Srivastava, Tushar (2008) ‘I’ll be back in an hour’ Hindustan Times Delhi, 20 Sep, P1
- Tripathi, Rahul (2008) ‘Lashkar support for IM-SIMI operation, explosives procured from Karnataka’ Times of India, Delhi 21 Sep, P2
The author has aptly described the disturbing trend among the young journalists
to be sensational and confounding!
Mahatma Gandhi remarked that”an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy!”
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru warned tha”if there is no responsibility and no obligation attached to it, freedom gradually withers away!This is true of a nation’s freedom and it applies as much to the press as to any other group or organisation or individual!”
A good journalist is one who knows the differences between “conjecture”,
“comment” and “fact”!So also the newspaper should not pass on or elevate conjecture, speculation or comment as a statement of fact!
If only our journalists had scrupulously followed this principle some years back, our gullible public would not have got the mind set that only muslims are terrorists.They multiply their numbers quite fast;they prefer madrasa to secular school;they fail to join the national mainstream;they do not respect the religious sentiments of people of other faiths; and they prefer to
use force to solve their problems!
Terrorists the world over are robots to be dictated and directed by vested interests, who emerge as their leaders,and who cunningly transform a political issue as a highly emotive religious issue!
As regards covering of communal disputes/ clashes, the code lays down that”News, views or comments relating to communal or religious disputes/ clashes shall be published after proper verification of facts and presented with due caution and restraint, in a manner which is conducive to the creation of an atmosphere of congenial to communal harmony, amity and peace
!While writing about incidents in which one community is aggressive and another its target,care must be taken as not to inflame passions, aggravate tension or accentuate the strained relations between the two communities.
Let us hope ,atleast, hereafter our writers abnd newspapers turn a new leaf in their lives.
Journalists close to police officers are susceptible to police influences. They lose their objectivity and this causes such blunders.
National newspapers like Hindustan Times should exercise restraint.
Most of Indian media are funded by foreigner whose aim to convert this country into a hindu nation !
Instead of they condeming strongly on the violence in Orissa and Karnataka, they are supporting the BD, and brining up the message of forcebily conversions !
In the series of bomb blast ocurred in so many cities, police caught the suspects without any solid proof, and daily coming up with new stories, media is coming up with new stories instead of bringing the failure of police and security agencies, media is supporting the police and authorities in targeting the youth in the name of terrorists !
Till the blast ocurred police and securities agencies did not get any clue, within one hour of blast police and securities agencies come of with their stories and found immediately who was behind the blast.
Are they suspecting others or others have to suspect for becoming the tool
I’m glad you guys posted this. Social science is one the greatest tools in understanding human problems in the 21st century. I look forward to more such posts.
I agree that media in this country is often sensationlistic. I remember yesterday when Mumbai police was showing 5 suspected terrorists in news conferece, one of TV reporter was so hysterical that it could only ilicit a laugh …”ye..dekhiye…yahi hai wo atankvadi…” in full piched voice.
But media does it for eveything. It is primarily due to the fact that Media , both TV and print has exploded in India and there is lots of competetion among them to break the story. Some of them are plainly immature. But as I said this reporting pattern is seen in all kinds of stories. So @alex what makes you invent this new conspiracy theory that someone is funding media and want to convert this country into Hindu nation?
There have been more than enough noise on TV where questions have been raised on VHP and Bajrang dal’s recent tactics. May be you just dont see those stories?
We will be fooling ourslef if we think that all of the suspected terrorists caught recently are innocents and that there is no truth to so called police version…
ALEX there is something for you on “Kashmir in Protest blog.
MOHIB I am waiting for your comments…
An interesting article indeed! This is something which has been going on for years now. There are so many of those local newspapers that have played into the hands of the powerfull or the zealots, and they continue to do so.
Thanks mainly to the reach of the Internet that such gross violations of ethical journalism are now highlighted to a wider audience.
There is definitely a case for the media to become more responsible.
Unfortunately, there is commerce that lies at the bottom of every thing. What is sensational sells. And like film makers and novelists, they too succumb to this.
Nevertheless, an aware and responsible society can provide balance.
Irony….The HT which has always appeared to be pro-’secularists’….’anti BJP’ suddenly seems to have become the enemy.
INAM & MILIND
Out of context…. But my response about media was for ALEX in this blog, where he accused media being funded by foreign investors to convert India into a Hindu nation. I realised after Mohaib’s reply that I posted in the wrong blog, i.e. Kashmir in protest. So I tried to post it back but somehow it got connected back to Kashmir issue. Any how yesterday and today I aoplogised to everyone for unknowingly getting it off topic. But my post is not published!!! I do not know if there is a real problem or it was knowingly not published.
I do not know how to rectify it. But can I request you to apologise to everyone and bring to notice that it got posted there by mistake and it was actually for Alex!!!!
Nilanjana Som:
I think by now people understand now that you posted your comment in the wrong thread. It doesn’t matters to whom you direct your comment to. This is a public forum and any comment you make is fair game for criticism. Going through your comments, I can only say please be prepared to get loads of it.
Also, just FYI Moderators have the right to edit/disallow comments not abiding by the Comment Policy.
Thanks a lot,
Mohib Ahmad
Editorial Team, Indian Muslims Blog
@Mohib,
I know it is very difficult to get sufficient time to do what I request.
However, if you do, it will help the contributors. Give them a one liner on why their comment got deleted. Don’t do this where it flagrantly violates the policy.
However, you may consider it where there could be some scope for doubt in the contributor’s mind. Nobody minds being opposed. However, people may feel hurt if they are discounted.
Again, this is only a suggestion
Milind Kher:
I appreciate your suggestion but as you yourself note, it is just not feasible right now unless we get a paid staffer to do that job.
I personally feel that we have one of the better managed commenting process for group blogs and most of the commenter are satisfied most of the time. I do communicate to the commenters directly if we feel that they have a genuine reason to feel offended.
No offence meant but it seems that in an ideal world the Terrorists should have actually been the cops. All of us would have been so much better of.
After all how come we have such committed people willing to kill and be killed – driven by mad hate – without any visible rewards. On the otherhand we have the state system that is paid for on the tax payers and is mostly focused on protecting its rear than to achieve something meaningful. They are the resort of last options, mostly incompetent in ability & desire and still we trust them with our lives (or atleast have no other option).
Then we have the journos and bloggers from ultra jehadis asking for a second partition of India to Hindutva vadis who will claim that everyone is out to get them and the future of India actually lies in the glorious past!….the most intelligent arguments sitting in the comfort of homes…lots of shadow boxing but no action….
Mohib,
I agree with you. You have an excellent process for managing comments. Not only that, the moderators are learned and articulate.
It is a pleasure to be part of such a forum.