KARACHI: The ‘Talking Peace’ editors’ conference, organised under the banner of Aman Ki Asha (a joint initiative of the Jang Group and The Times of India) drew to a close on Wednesday, with journalists from India and Pakistan confident of having evolved a people-centric blueprint to realise lasting peace between the two neighbouring countries.
The concluding event of the conference, held on Wednesday, was an interaction between Indo-Pak editors and anchors, with members of the local media as well as representatives of the civil society. The panel of discussants from the Indian side included Barkha Dutt (NDTV), Rajdeep Sardesai (CNN-IBN), Siddharth Varadarajan (The Hindu), Bharat Bhushan (Mail Today), Shravan Gharg (Dainik Bhaskar), and Arindam Sengupta (Times of India), while the Pakistani perspective was represented by Imran Aslam (Geo Network), Ejaz Haider, Shaheen Salahuddin and Arif Nizami.
As with the editors’ conference, Kanak Dixit, editor of Himal Southasian (Kathmandu), moderated the discussion.
While the session on Tuesday evolved a blueprint for peace and more responsible reportage on matters concerning the two neighbouring countries, the concluding session focussed on the role of the media in a nuclear South Asia. “There is a substantial difference between the print and electronic media,” said Barkha Dutt, explaining that the time-pressed nature of television reporting translates into a great influence to defuse or provoke a certain perspective.
“The English-language media is fairly objective in its approach; it is the vernacular media, or the language media (Urdu, Hindi, Sindhi, Gujarati etc) that is more complex,” said Shravan Gharg.
He explained that the structure of media in India is not so strong that media companies can have full-time correspondents in Pakistan, and thus, most of the news on Pakistan is taken from agencies. He argued that since the outreach of language media exceeds that of the English-language, it was imperative for vernacular media to plead the case of peace.
Imran Aslam contended that the electronic media in Pakistan is an “urbanised media,” which tends to ignore those where its access is not pervasive. “There is a need to bring in those groups or classes of people who are not part of the urbanised media audience,” he said, but maintained that the electronic media in Pakistan is evolving, and its freedoms are new.
“Sometimes we are influenced by the public, and at other times, we mould public opinion. The most important, however, is that things are looked at from a learning approach, rather than a perspective to score points against each other,” he argued.
Arif Nizami said that the premise of India as the enemy still exists in Pakistan, with a sentiment of mistrust in intentions pervading amongst the hawks in the establishment.
“We didn’t get ‘directives’ from the government; directives is a very strong word. What we did get was press advice,” he said.
“The consequences of not following this advice were significant: the government maintains its control over the media through advertisements, and any refusal to accommodate the advice ultimately means no ad revenue for news publications,” Nizami explained.
Arindam Sengupta concurred with the idea that “directives” was a strong term to use, given that it negated any agency of journalists. He said that every journalist goes to his/her foreign office, and any “spin” on a story is based on the statements or counsel provided by the foreign office. “It is only through alternate sources that the effect of spin doctors, if you want to call them that, can be negated. However, there are structural constraints to achieve that,” he maintained.
Shaheen Salahuddin reiterated the demand of free flow of information, and said that different interpretations are often made of news items.
She cited the case of Sania Mirza-Shoaib Malik wedding controversy, and said that it wasn’t clear – despite all attention – if Malik’s passport had been seized by the Indian police.
Rajdeep Sardesai claimed that the Sania Mirza-Shoaib Malik wedding was a big story, and was printed on the front pages of many newspapers. He explained that from an Indian perspective, the story was of a tennis star getting married to a former Pakistani captain. “This angle was the one that the Indian public could relate to,” he said. However, Sardesai asserted, the story of the proposed 18th Amendment was not as big in India, despite it being a great story, because there was no particular Indian angle to it.
Ejaz Haider said that the proposed 18th Amendment made a great copy, but often enough, stories of even more significance take place on the same day.
As a result, the government’s achievements seem to be underplayed. He said that the incumbent rulers haven’t been able to market their successes, such as the NFC Award, because other things are happening at the same time.
Siddharth Varadarajan said that news of the proposed 18th Amendment was carried on the front pages of some Indian newspapers, but were given simple headlines of the ‘Zardari’s powers clipped’ variety. He forcefully asserted that the matter of bias in reportage and editing can be removed if the essence of responsible journalism is maintained. He said that single source reports should not be relied upon, and alternate credible sources can always be brought to the fore.
During the Q&A session, a young reporter questioned Rajdeep Sardesai on his organisation running a story claiming that a temple in Karachi had been razed.
In fact, she said, nothing of the sort happened. Such practices only provoke acrimony, she maintained. Rajdeep Sardesai admitted to the reporter’s point, and said that the statement was issued by an Indian government functionary.
Later on, however, the organisation called the minorities minister, who in turn told Indian viewers that such allegations were baseless.
