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Entertainment
Mesmerised by the West
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Political raportage on our television channels toes the CNN or BBC line to a fault. In the bargain it is the Indian viewer who has been short-changed, especially in the post-September 11 context, contends ZIYA US SALAM.
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The gruesome twin-tower tragedy ... a recent example of slants in audio-visual reporting.
FOR THE Westside story of the ongoing Afghan conflict, just switch on to CNN. Those who do not understand Uncle Sam's language — and I know more than a handful, who, following the September 11 coverage, would prefer not to know — they can plug into one of the Indian language channels. The chances are, they would be parroting the same stuff, same clippings, same visuals. Only the language would be indigenous, rest, including the deliberate slants in audio-visual reporting will be just the same.
While Zee News has actually gone to town with its tie-up with CNN, some others have hurriedly rushed in their correspondents to report from the debris of the World Trade Center. They did little more than pick up every line of what the considerable officialdom passed on by way of press despatches, loosely translate it before going to the microphone with the `exclusive'. And only a handful of them made it to the war-ravaged Afghanistan territory — the threat of kidnap notwithstanding — BBC's John Simpson of the `Simpson Show' being one of them. He even made it to the Taliban-controlled territory draped in a demure burqa for an exclusive! Many others could not care less.
Call it sheer indifference to the plight of their own countrymen caught in the U.S. and those who still have their friends in the now-ravaged Afghanistan or a mischievous disinclination to ask uneasy questions. But it is the Indian viewer who has been short-changed in the coverage of international events, post September 11 — not that they were remarkably better off before the unfortunate blasts.
At such a delicate time when it is an absolute must to check and cross-check your facts before rushing with your sound byte and visual clippings, almost all the Indian channels have taken the word of foreign channels as the Gospel truth, and this does not exclude Al-Jazeera which has found a prominent mention in news despatches. For instance, when almost all the Indian channels rushed to provide ``exhaustive coverage'' of the New York twin tower mayhem, it was easy to accept what the CNN guys were wanting the world to know. After all the disaster had taken place in America's prime yard, so there was bound to be authenticity about the coverage of the local channels. And then the belief — how can CNN, Sky or Fox go wrong, leave alone play mischief in their reportage of the events?
Hence, when CNN decided to show more than a handful of Palestinians celebrating the terrorist blasts in America, most Indian channels — including Aaj Tak, Zee News and STAR — showed the same clippings. For days the charade went on until a competitive channel nailed the lie. The pictures of Palestinians in a revelatory mood after the September 11 killings were false, misleading, malicious. They were nine-year-old file pictures of the West Asian people rejoicing at the Iraqi attack on Kuwait — it may be recalled Saddam Hussain had then made placatory noises about the Palestine problem. When the truth was out, there was nothing by way of apology at a suitable hour. Worse, no Indian channel actually sent its staffers — cameramen and reporters — to get the feelings of the average Palestinian, if nothing, but to atone for the serious lapse.
It was only days later that a fringe leader of the Palestine movement was quoted — again first by CNN and then lapped up by the Indian channels — that his nation and people were against all terrorist attacks. This was not the only anomaly. This global catastrophe has proved once and for all, that whatever the pretensions, many Indian channels are nothing but dutiful messengers of the stuff relayed by foreign visual media. Much like those newspapers which have no foreign correspondent and rely exclusively on a tie-up with American and British papers for giving their readers international news.
They saw what the American media wanted them to see. And like good pupils, never asked uneasy — read politically impolite — questions. Hence even as the Japanese Red Army claimed responsibility for the tragedy, no Indian channel devoted any special time to its claim. There was no panel discussion on STAR's ``Big Fight'' or Zee's ``Prime Time'' on the subject. The U.S. was obsessed with Osama. So was the Indian electronic media. Only All India Radio's FM channel aired the news in its bulletins. Similar was the case with a survey in the U.S. which found that more than 40 per cent Americans believed that Israel could have been involved in the terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, Indian channels refused to take the lead given by BBC and look at just how far this war was caused by a clash of civilisations. Interestingly, the programme raised the perennial query: Is the Muslim community right to regard the U.S. as arrogant, and get Pakistan's Abida Husain to call for ``compassion", asking the ``more powerful'' to shun ``arrogance'' in the ongoing conflict. This was besides a pertinent shot at Afghanistan's problem in ``Afghanistan: The Dark Ages".
Even when it came to Indian issues in the global war on terrorism, the satellite channels were found wanting. How many of them actually went to the houses of the 250 Indians who were in WTC at the time of blasts? Even when the question of assault on Sikhs was brought to the notice of the public, it was the American media which first aired the news. Interestingly, because America chose not to say, the Indian channels went mum when it was pointed out by South Asian media that the people from their region in America had been asked to shave off their beards to avoid possible attacks, or else go back home. Surely, India is geographically and culturally closer to say, Malaysia and Indonesia than the U.S.? The only worthwhile contribution of Indian channels during the ongoing tiff has been to provide e-mail facility to Indians living on tenterhooks in America and their relatives back home.
Again, the BBC did better than the so-called Indian channels by getting Mr. Jaswant Singh and Gen. Pervez Musharraf to elucidate their points of view on ``Hard Talk".
Similarly, on other issues relating to the current conflict, American media proposes and its Indian counterpart acquiesces in. For instance, in the first desperate days following the September 11 blasts, a harried American media went looking for the antecedents of the possible people behind the tragedy. Soon, the U.S. media claimed that the guys behind the blasts were Islamic fundamentalists who had frequented some night bars a day before the tragedy. And the Indian channels faithfully translated and relayed the news for every Ramesh and Raees. Nobody bothered to inquire — how come the lead players of the September 11 blasts, if they were actually religious zealots, decided to spend a night at a strip bar consuming liquor before undertaking the suicide mission? As the guys entrenched in orthodoxy, won't they be seeking the forgiveness of Allah and reading the Quran at the last hour before ending their lives — besides those of 6,000 innocents.
As a media friend pointed out the other day, it is because electronic media journalists, unlike those from the print media, have not developed the habit of asking uncomfortable questions. The `why' of journalism has been conveniently set aside to get comfortable sound bytes. Hence, all the channels went to town talking of global terrorism in the wake of the September 11 blasts, but very few devoted any considerable space to know the `why' of it? Not just the visual clippings for which almost all the satellite channels in India are dependent on foreign support, but even in phraseology of events, they just kow-towed to the West. Just recently, Israel made fresh incursions into the Palestine territory in which three people were killed. And STAR as well as Zee News just reported the Israel incursion as an ``operation in which three people were reported killed." No channel called it an assault on Palestine territory, it was not called an ``incursion", just a mere ``operation", almost implying the necessity of undertaking such an activity! One can understand Mr. Bush's and CNN's concerns about global terrorism on the one side and an ostrich-like attitude on the other, but shouldn't Indian media be more responsible?
Should we not be choosing our words with care? After all, unlike Pakistan, India has been a non-aligned nation, never the stooge of the U.S.? Hence, all the more reason why we should not be falling for the American sound byte, their word play and the like.
Interestingly, amid all this, the Urdu media has been more mature. It has refused to accept everything handed down by the Pentagon and the White House as the last word in truth. And all the time tried to present a more diverse picture. Even Jain TV presented a more rounded coverage than some of the big guns. Questions, some of them uneasy, were posed to a cross section of people, and a fledgling attempt was made to present the other side of the coin. But then how many watched it?
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