NEW DELHI: Journalists from India and Pakistan turned the spotlight onto themselves on Wednesday while trying to find an answer to whether media jingoism was fanning India-Pakistan tensions and found the rabid voice — even if from the fringes — capturing the headlines.
Three men shouting anti-Pakistan slogans brought instant attention to the discussion — organised by the Foundation of Media Professionals — and as television broke the news of the disruption, a horde of reporters and cameramen descended on the venue.
Fleeting disruption
The fleeting disruption of proceedings took place when Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai quoted from an article written by an Indian academic advocating severance of ties with Pakistan.
This was first greeted with a feeble round of applause from a far corner of the auditorium after which one of the Sri Ram Sene activists got up and shouted ‘War with Pakistan.’ The trio was immediately driven out of the auditorium as proceedings resumed. While Mr. Yusufzai lamented the way journalists in the two countries were increasingly speaking the language of the security agencies, Nirupama Subramanian, Islamabad Correspondent of The Hindu, urged the Indian media to be more sensitive to the problems facing Pakistan.
“The Indian media seems to take a voyeuristic pleasure in Pakistan’s problems,” she observed.
Muniba Kamal of The News was of the view that neither India nor Pakistan can shut out the terrorists like the U.S.
“Extremist elements are part of our societies. To describe them as the other and shut them out will only radicalise them further. It is easy for the U.S. to treat them as the other but they are a part of our societies and bombing them will only make them feel more disenfranchised.”
Sceptical of the media’s ability to shape India-Pakistan relations, columnist Swapan Dasgupta said part of the problem could be linked to the emotional linkages.
If only the two countries viewed each other as neighbours — and not an estranged family — there would be less ground for fear and suspicion on both sides, he said.
Describing the sub-continent as a delta of poisonous ideologies, Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy said that despite the exhaustive coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks little attention was paid to the root cause.
Similarly, according to her, governments all over had stopped taking note of all forms of protest action. Stating that demonstrations and hunger-strikes were a form of discourse, she warned that because they were being ignored, there were small new wars brewing in different parts of the sub-continent.
Questioning the overemphasis on the negative in the media, Amit Baruah of the Hindustan Times said too much fiction was going around masquerading as fact and this could well affect the media’s credibility in the long run.