When Statements Go Unchallenged

Incidents of atrocities against Dalits in Haryana are increasing, says Prakash Javdekar, Rajya Sabha MP and spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party on a television show to discuss the issue in the light of the horrible incident in Hissar, Haryana, where a Dalit girl was gangraped and her father committed suicide because of the humiliation.

He is from the BJP and there is a Congress government in Haryana, so political grandstanding is inevitable.

“Crime being committed per lakh [population of scheduled caste] is the highest in Haryana,” asserts P. L . Punia, Congress MP and head of the National Commission of Scheduled Castes on the same show. Grandstanding on his part is also inevitable, given his official position.

“Why is it that only Dalits get raped by upper castes, whether it is Khairlanji [the 2006 carnage in Mahrashtra] or Haryana?” asks activist Kancha Ilaiah, another participant in the show. He too can be forgiven for being dramatic – he has made a name as a Dalit scholar and activist and is expected to take a certain position.

But is it the job of the media to let all these statements go unchallenged?

NDTV anchor Vishnu Som did not ask any of these gentlemen to substantiate their statements with figures. I am providing the link to the show here.

Does Javdekar have any firm numbers on the rise in atrocities in Haryana?

We don’t know.

Is Punia basing his statement on some study? Can he give any numbers on how many crimes per lakh of population, which is the state with second highest crimes per lakh population? We don’t know.

Can Ilaiah back his startling claim with data? Are upper caste men really raping only Dalit women? Are they not raping upper caste women? Then what about the cases of rape of upper caste women? Who are the perpetrators?

We don’t know.

Okay, so let us concede that Som, in his hurry to wrap up the programme, forgot to ask follow up questions to the panelists.

But does a newspaper have that same excuse?

Punia repeats the same statement in an interview to Economic Times published the following day (Tuesday) and that is taken as the heading of a five-column anchor on page 2: Maximum Anti-Dalit Crimes in Haryana: Punia. Once again, there is no attempt to ask him to elaborate. Nor is there any attempt to double check on one’s own. The newspaper adds to the whole campaign by saying “several cases of atrocities on Dalits have taken place in the state,” mentioning the Mirchpur incident as the most serious. The only other anecdotal example it gives (again no numbers) is of a wall being constructed around a Dalit village in Hissar last year.

Som does fall back on one report. He mentions a 2010 report of the ministry of social justice and empowerment (the report is not named), which apparently mentions that there is an increase in crimes against Dalits between 2009 and 2010 in Kerala, Haryana, Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. But there is no mention of what is the percentage increase or disaggregated figures on the states, which could, perhaps, show that the increase in Haryana is more alarming than in the rest. In fact, the other figures in the report contradict the thesis that Haryana tops in atrocities. In that report, quoted by Som, Rajasthan tops the list of states with registered crimes against Dalits and five states – Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh – account for 70 per cent of registered crimes.

When my boss got excited by Punia’s statement and wanted me to do a story on this, I took the trouble of checking things out. I downloaded the 2011 statistic of the National Crime Records Bureau. Here’s what I found. In 2011 Uttar Pradesh topped the list of registered crimes against Dalits  with 22 per cent of cases, followed by Rajasthan with 15.4 per cent, Andhra Pradesh 11 per cent, Bihar 10.7 per cent and Karnataka 7.4 per cent. Haryana is only 1.2 per cent.

The only report of the ministry of social justice and empowerment report I could find online was the annual report of 2009-10, which takes figures from the NCRB and that report too showed Haryana was way below several states in terms of Dalit atrocities.

I couldn’t find any report on the website of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes.

Maybe Javdekar and Punia were basing their statements on some other data or reports, which they were privy to. Maybe Som had access to a ministry report which is not online or I couldn’t find it because I didn’t have the name.

Maybe Haryana does, in fact, top in atrocities.

For me, which state tops in atrocities is irrelevant. Would it be better if some other state topped?

What is relevant for me is that people on television discussions and newspaper articles, whom people will believe because they are experts (as my boss did) are allowed to go unchallenged on facts and figures they dish out. By journalists, whose job is to challenge people.

What is also relevant for me is that television and print journalists are not checking facts properly and are satisfied with vague numbers and generalized statements.

When private is made public

For a long time, we in India prided ourselves on the fact that our media is not voyeuristic about the personal lives of those in public office. We watched with amusement as politicians in the United States and Britain quit public office following the outing of a stray dalliance or an adulterous affair. Heck, we said, we have Karunanidhi with two wives who keeps getting elected as chief minister. We are more mature and less priggish about these things than the Westerners, we said smugly.
I don't know whether the media refrained from writing about private lives of politicians because of the general disinterest in them or whether the disinterest came because the media exercised commendable restraint. But the fact remains that Indian journalism respected the privacy of those in public office. (I am not using the term public figures because that would cover film stars as well. The issue of privacy is a tad complicated in their case because often film stars use their personal life for publicity. Film stars who want to keep their private lives private manage to do that.)
So we knew about that minister's affair with this media baroness, this politician's dalliance with that film actress, why one lady journalist got more scoops out of one ministry than all other journalists on the beat put together, how one politician and the daughter-in-law of another were an item. A journalist who didn't have a salacious nugget wasn't considered worth his/her salt. But this was all reserved for gossip sessions while taking a break from work, in the club, chilling out with friends.
There was one golden rule: these were not things to be written about.
If ever one did, no names were taken.
Alas, that seems to have changed.
Nothing brings this out more than a chief minister having to put out an official statement about his marriage. Omar Abdullah, chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir, had to do this after two newspapers went to town about his impending divorce and the reasons for it. These were mainstream newspapers, not tabloid rags.
Why did they do that? How was it at all relevant to his performance as chief minister? I have interviewed Omar Abdullah once when he was a junior minister at the Centre and he came across as a bright young man, but apparently there are enough reasons to criticise his performance as chief minister. Shouldn't the media have been content with that?
The depths to which the media has plumbed comes across in the way a newspaper described one woman he has been linked to - "a divorcee and has been in two live-in relationships since her divorce". That statement - the piece was written by a woman journalist - makes the woman in questions come across as some floozy constantly on the make. Why make a woman whose private life no one knew about the object of sleazy gossip?
When did the Indian media start changing? And why?
I think it all began with TRP-hunting television news. My mind goes back some years to when India TV aired clips of some MLAs with call girls in a hotel. Then there was the CD of former governor of Andhra Pradesh N D Tiwari with call girls in the Raj Bhavan. Both were disgusting and uncalled for. And I think the media fraternity was wrong to not have come out and openly condemned these practices.
The print media has, by and large, remained restrained. The only example I can think of is stories about Capt Amarinder Singh of Punjab and his Pakistani friend, Aroosa Alam. But that perhaps had more to do with the fact that Alam was seen in public with Singh and the fact that she was a Pakistani. The media may have restrained itself if she had been an Indian or of any other nationality.
That Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar were an item was pretty well known but the media never wrote about it till the whole controversy about her getting sweat equity in the Kochi IPL team. So the matter became public only because it was perceived to be a misuse of office. I emphasise perceived. I am not saying there was a misuse. Maybe there was. Maybe there wasn't. I don't know.
But even this excuse is not there in the Omar Abdullah case. There is no public interest involved in the state of his marriage or love life. The media had no business in reporting about the impending divorce till it actually happened (maybe not even then) or commenting on the reasons and his future plans. Whether or not he remains married, or remarries will have no impact on the way Jammu and Kashmir is governed. If the attempt is to show that he is more interested in affairs of the heart than in affairs of the state, it won't work. There are many senior politicians in office who indulge in serial dalliances. If that doesn't affect their image as serious administrators why should this affect Omar Abdullah's image as an administrator? If he is misgoverning the state, identify other reasons for it - lack of experience maybe, or immaturity, or closed mind, wavering mind, wrong advisers, or whatever. Don't drag his private life and the people in them into it. 

If the media has done this to discredit Omar Abdullah as a chief minister, then it has become a willing tool for his critics. And that speaks even more badly of it than if it were merely indulging in tabloid journalism, bad as even that is.
There is no doubt that the media has crossed the line in this case. And if it doesn't step back, media ethics, which is already under immense strain, will suffer one more blow.
But does anyone care?

Act, Mr PM, Act

The Prime Minister has said, yet again, this time in the context of the bomb blast at the Delhi High Court, that "we will not succumb".
So we are expected to go around our usual business - breakfast, office, household chores, school, college, back home, saas-bahu serials, trip to the mall, dinner and bed. Just to tell the terrorists that we are not "cowed down". 
But why not show that we are not "cowed down" - and the steely resolve with which those words are said - by carrying out the death sentence on Afzal Guru, Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and Rajiv Gandhi's assassins? And fast-tracking the prosecution of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab?
Wouldn't that be a better way of showing India will not tolerate terrorism in any form? And that terror attacks cannot be used to blackmail us into inaction (in this case stopping the hanging of Afzal Guru)?
In fact the latest terror attacks should be used to tell political and other groups pleading for clemency to these above-mentioned worthies (for that is what they are to these groups, never mind that each of them has indulged in senseless killings) to stop pleading their case. They never showed any mercy to the people they killed, why should they be shown any mercy?
Does this sound churlish, immature? Perhaps.
Should I exhibit more sagacity and moderation? I see no reason to.
I see no reason why India should come across as a soft state, which people can come and bomb at will.
There is a time when sagacity and moderation have to be set aside. This is such a time.
Of course, there will be the usual arguments against death penalty itself. But as many people have pointed out, why does death penalty get debated only when high profile or political convicts are involved?
Perhaps there is a case against death penalty. Perhaps there isn't. Perhaps we need to debate it.
But after Guru, Bhullar, Rajiv Gandhi's killers and Kasab are hanged.

Too Special By Far

 Journalists in Mumbai have stepped up pressure for a law to make attacks on them non-bailable and cognisable. This has come in the wake of the tragic killing of investigative journalist J Dey last week. Apparently this demand is a long-standing one. First the Maharashtra government had a meeting with journalists on this. Now the Union law and justice minister Veerappa Moily is promising a Central law on the subject.
This is absolutely uncalled for.
Dey's killing is extremely sad and brings home to a lot of us the perils we face while going about our jobs. Ours can be a hazardous profession and this article highlights this. In some north-eastern states and Jammu and Kashmir, journalists are routinely threatened by militant groups. I was in Ayodhya in 1992 during the Babri Masjid demolition and journalists were attacked.
But is a special law to protect journalists the answer? Definitely not.
Ours is not an ordinary profession. Journalists relay information to people and in doing so are privy to a lot of information that is not in the public domain. Their reports highlight problems, expose corruption and other misdeeds and help shape public opinion, among other things. That gives them power and prestige but also makes them vulnerable.
There are other professions whose practitioners also face hazards. Doctors, for example, do get attacked by relatives of patients whom they couldn't save. They also go into remote areas where their lives are endangered. So are engineers engaged in the construction of large projects like dams and power plants who could be attacked by people opposed to the project. Remember the case of Satyendra Dubey, the National Highways Authority of India engineer who was killed for fighting against corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral highway project? Or Manjunath, the Indian Oil sales manager, and Yashwant Sonawane, the IAS officer from Maharashtra, both of whom were killed by the oil mafia when they were checking adulteration of fuel?
Why shouldn't all these professions also get special laws against attacks on them?
And, like the Indian Express pointed out today, if special groups are to get special laws to protect them, does this mean that it is okay for all the others to have to make do with less stringent laws? The state is supposed to protect everyone from attacks on their person.
Journalists have got too accustomed to special privileges - government accreditation to allow them easy access to government offices and Press stickers for their vehicles to enable them to go to places in the course of their duty where others are not allowed (e.g. riot-hit areas, areas under curfew), to name just two.
Asking now for a special law to protect them is carrying things a bit too far.
The proposal needs to be nipped in the bud.

Sab mere ko hi bol rahein hain

November 30, 5.30 pm. On my balcony taking a break from work. A grandmother is trying to mediate between two fighting children. And one is saying, `aap sirf mere ko bol rahe ho, usko kuch nahin bol rahe'.
November 30, 10.30 pm. Am watching NDTV's The Buck Stops Here, where the show's usual host, Barkha Dutt, is being questioned by a panel of editors (including Manu Joseph of Open) on her figuring in the Radia tapes. As I watch her alternate between playing wronged victim, being churlish and brazen I am suddenly reminded of that little kid: aap sirf mere ko bol rahe ho; Manu aur Vinod uncle ko kuch nahin bol rahe.
If NDTV organised this to give Barkha a platform to show she is being targeted unfairly, it backfired badly. Barkha behaved badly throughout the show. She first tried playing the injured innocent (`I did not know that much about Niira Radia because I am a essentially a political journalist'; it was a `mere error of judgement', `innocent error of judgement'). Then as the questions got tougher, she kept interrupting (especially Manu, who was ticked off for interrupting her whenever he insisted on his questions being answered), trying to divert attention from her role by talking about media ethics, defamation, questioning of her integrity (when everyone, including Manu, kept saying that her integrity was not in question). As Manu Joseph kept pointing out, she was obfuscating issues. Finally Sanjaya Baru was forced to point out that he had not been invited to a discussion on media ethics but for a discussion on the way NDTV handled  the Radia tapes. Did that silence Barkha? No. `But isn't it connected?' she interrupted. It is, said Baru, and I made that point in the Karan Thapar show, which was a different format.
When two editors made the point that Radia chose her and not any other journalist to convey messages to the Congress, she retorts immediately: how do you know? Only these tapes have been made public. Once again, an attempt to show only she was being targeted.
She also expected the editors and the viewers to believe that she, `a cynical political journalist' as she described herself, didn't know exactly how Radia functioned. `When I look back, with hindsight, with everything that one knows about her, I made an error of judgement.' So now Radia is at fault for being a good professional by someone who blurred the ethical boundaries of her profession, seeing nothing wrong in journalists conveying messages, depending on the content of the message or in not doing an obvious story (a corporate lobbyist lobbying on behalf of a political party in cabinet formation). And being brazen about it: `I am not accepting error of judgement in not doing the story'.
She claimed that she never passed on any message. But when one of the editors read out a portion of the transcript that appeared as if she had, she immediately countered with `I was fibbing (to Radia).' As veteran journalist T J S George pointed out in an article: "Is a veteran networker like Radia so easily fooled? Obviously she is close to her journalist contacts and must have had promises from them before. She wouldn't waste her time if she knew that they were promises not meant to be followed up."
Since Outlook's Vinod Mehta didn't come on the panel, Manu Joseph was alone to bear the brunt of her attacks: "You do journalism where you don't contact the person you report on"; "I don't think you have a full understanding of how political journalism and politics works".
When Baru made the point that everyone makes mistakes and she would have come out better if she had on Day One, expressed regret, she said `In my personal statement I spoke about what I learnt from this.' But that personal statement did not come on Day One. That day there was only a statement from NDTV, which threatened legal action. Her personal statement came much later.
Sonia Singh was an ineffective moderator who couldn't stop Barkha from constantly interrupting and sidestepping questions by attacking others.
Ultimately Barkha Dutt came across as an ill-mannered brat. And NDTV came worse off by giving her a platform to brazen out an indefensible act.
http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/barkha-dutt-other-editors-on-radia-tapes-controversy/178964

Vigilante Justice, Courtesy Media

My revulsion for S P S Rathore - especially the sight of him coming out smiling after the six months imprisonment verdict - is in danger of turning into sympathy. And all because of my profession.

I was watching television news this afternoon and saw the news flash about Rathore being unrepentant. Why? Because while coming out of the court after applying for anticipatory bail, he told the news cameras hounding him: "the day you can satisfy me you are a constitutional power on judicial matters, I will speak (to you)".

What is wrong with that? He is correct. He and other criminals are answerable to the courts where they present their defence. Not to hysterical television journalists.

I completely agree with Abha Rathore’s comment, “There are editors sitting in newsrooms passing judgments on the case, behaving like saviours of law and gaining mileage out of the entire episode.” She also has a point when she says that the media has already started the trial without waiting for them to file an appeal against the conviction by the lower court. The deadline for that was January 4. We may be aghast at the temerity of the man to appeal against the conviction, but, let’s face it, it is his right.

The Rathores have asked the court for protection from the media. And I am ashamed to admit it is probably a valid request. His behaviour all these years does not justify the media behaving like a pack of wolves. (Incidentally, it is only today that I learnt that the Rathores had filed a defamation case against one newspaper some years back. It is typical of the ostrich approach of our profession to our failings that we have kept silent about this).

Though nothing should surprise me any more about the electronic media, I was still aghast at the way they were conducting themselves. "The law is catching up" with Rathore, one channel said. Overlooking the minor point that the law had caught up with him and given him six months jail and then bail (which is also under the law). The point in question is that the sentence wasn't seen as adequate.

Rathore's wife was also the subject of sarcasm for mocking television cameras, saying don't push, take all the pictures you want. But what else can one say when being jostled by camera crew? And when she is being followed by a persistent reporter saying "anything you would like to say? anything about the case?" What is she supposed to say? If she says her husband is innocent (which is obviously what she will say), then she will be inviting further sarcasm on prime time.

There was this other gem on one channel in relation to the Madhukar Tandon case (the Rajasthan police officer who has not been arrested in 13 years on a rape charge): “Two states have either refused to track him down or arrest him.” Refused? Do these reporters/anchors know the meaning of the words they use?

And what has all this media hype resulted in? Things unheard of – like filing fresh FIRs in cases where conviction has been handed out. Legal experts including Ram Jethmalani and K T S Tulsi have pointed out that a person cannot be convicted for the same crime twice. Surely these people know more about the law than journalists do.

I am providing a link to an editorial in The Indian Express editorial, Call off the mob, which highlights the danger of the kind of media-generated public hysteria.

Indeed, the travesty of justice should not become an excuse for vigilante justice.

Media-manufactured Hysteria

Every time I see candlelight vigils for victims of injustice, I wonder how such a disparate group of people comes together. As a nation, we don’t really have a collective soul. Apathy is our first reaction to anything. So how come we turn out in hordes to hold candlelight vigils for Jessica Lal, Meher Bhargava, 26/11 victims. (Not sure if there was one for the Nithari victims, which says a lot about our so-called middle class vigilantes).

I thought the media – especially the electronic media – only disseminated information about the planned event but now am reasonably sure it helps in planning it as well – if not organising it.

The electronic media is setting itself up as the conscience keeper of the nation and the voice of the people. But many of its actions makes one wonder if it has a conscience at all. What it seems to have in the place of conscience is a TRP ticker, which dictates all its actions.

Take the case of candlelight vigils, which first started with the Jessica Lal case (I am not sure if it preceded or followed Rang De Basanti, which also showed a candlelight vigil). That may have been spontaneous but I doubt whether the many others were.

It makes for great visuals – grave faced people sitting with candles under a darkening sky. And it provides great soundbytes. So what if the people ranting in front of television cameras may not know very much about the case or about the law? And then there are the emotional SMS-es scrolling at the bottom of the screen. `Death to Rathore’, went one ridiculous SMS. The sight of a smirking Rathore would make any decent person’s blood boil. But `Death to Rathore’? This, we are told by hyperventilating star anchors of news shows, is a reflection of the people’s anger and distress.

But often this is nothing more than ill-informed hysteria whipped up by the media itself. There are enough examples of how media hype has led to situations escalating out of the control of authorities. Everyone remembers the coverage of the 26/11 attacks but think back to 1999 and the IC 814 hijacking. The relatives of the hostages gathered outside 7 Race Course Road, the television cameras and anchors went crazy getting bytes from them, demanding the government get their relatives out safely. I remember parallels being drawn by emotional relatives with Rubaiya Sayeed (militants were freed to secure the release of this kidnapped daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed) and how that was done because she was a VIP’s daughter. I have no doubt that the hysteria whipped up by the media had some role in the then government’s decision to release the hostages that the hijackers asked for. Should the government have given in to such emotional blackmail is another question. The point here is – should the media have become a tool of emotional blackmail?

The media does have a role in highlighting inadequacies in the system. But this has to be done by well-researched stories, shorn of drama. Not by organising vigils and soliciting angry SMS-es.