“Why Print Newspapers Are Screwed”

Let us do our part in hastening the early demise of our English-language newspapers. Now, two of the most important institutions in a functioning democracy are a government which focuses exclusively on enlightened national self interest and does not narrowly define this as minoritity pandering; and a free press committed to providing the public with facts and intelligent analysis of current events and issues which concern them, unfettered by specific ideologies and refraining from chronic political correctness and/or a paternalistic attitude of trying to protect the public from inconvenient truths which might “hurt” them.

There used to be a time when newspapers reported current events, trying to present multiple points of view about these events, and tried to steer clear of the sensational in favour of presenting “facts.” Then, we had editorials, which represented a specific point of view which one was free to accept or not ,as one saw fit. So where are the facts now?

News now, when it is not sensationalized, actually doesn’t report facts. What it does are one of four things: a) pass of innuendo and rumour as fact: b) treat fact as fiction by questioning evidence ; c) pass of ideological propoganda and advertising as editorials and d)create terminology which actually has no meaning. Let me give examples of each.

1 . Remember the Malegaon incident where a mosque was bombed and people died. Within 24 hours we were told that “Hindu groups” could be involved in this. There was no evidence presented in any of the newspapers. Within a few weeks, the rumour-mongering died, but the damage had already been done. So now we have Hindu organizations viewed through the same lens as other militant organizations. Not one single newspaper apologized for doing something fundamentally unethical in journalism—namely, passing of rumour as fact. (An excellent article by Gurumurthy on this is at http://www.gurumurthy.net called “The Malegaon blast and inventing Hindu terror “.

2. An example of the second catergory would be the case of a convicted criminal Mohammed Afzal. Now, here is a person who was caught, tried , convicted and sentenced. Yet people in news media still refer to him as the alleged perpetrator of the bombings. First of all, do they even know the meaning of the word “alleged”? An “alleged” criminal is one where charges have been filed but none have been proven. When a person goes through the entire legal process and gets sentenced, he is the convicted criminal. Now various NGO’s might in fact question our judicial system, but for the media to impugn the entire judicial system by making it seem that this person was not really a criminal, is quite sordid. I hope the media has solid evidence to back that allegation. However, this same liberal media has no compunctions in calling Modi a mass murderer. Now, there may in fact be plenty of evidence against him. But until he is formally charged, tried and sentenced, he actually is only an “alleged” perpertrator or coordinator in the riots.

3. Since the advent of N. Ram the Hindu newspaper has given up its self-righteous, self-appointed “voice of sanity” approach in its editorial policy. Check out their editorial “Lessons from Nandigram” on March 16, 2007. They talk about the concept of eminent domain when referring to the Bengal government’s hamhanded way of grabbing arable and fertile farmland from those who still make a living from it, to hand over to some company. That is fine. What was not fine is that people protested and there were some killings. Now, when did communism, which is always portrayed as a people’s movement become so anti-people. And how can a newspaper committed to the “truth’ dismiss the killings as merely bad management and not the human rights violation that it is. Here is the irony. The same eminent domain argument could be used in the Narmada dam project since it did provide water to thousands of villages. However, The Hindu had a problem because ,of course, Modi is in power. And unfortunately for The Hindu, he was able to get his way the old Gandhian way , by fasting, rather than firing at people.

4. The fourth and according to me, the most insidious problem of our media is their use of specific words and phrases in ways that don’t reveal the accuracy of the situation. Often they either use similar terms to describe two different classes of events and objects, or they use different terms to refer to similar classes of events. I have stopped believing this to be merely accidental and now believe it to be another manifestation of the mental illness that infests our journalists that inhabit the world of ”liberal” media (can also be called communist rag).

For example, let us talk of the word “ militants”. Now we have groups who routinely round up civilians and shoot at them in Kashmir and various other parts of the world. These people are called militants (as opposed to terrorists). Fine. We find the same term used for organizations like the RSS. Now are these groups really similar? Yes, perhaps in their hatred for those who are dissimilar from them . But here the similarity ends. While one group is routinely given arms training is camps across the border and outfitted with AK-47’s and other weapons, our own “militants” are a bunch of senior citizens in khaki knickers receiving training in the use of wooden sticks at Shaka meetings. I nearly fell over laughing at the Trishul diksha arranged by the VHP which engendered such heated debate in the media. Firstly, at the stupidity of the VHP in thinking that we can be protected from people with bombs by having hand- held trishuls, and secondly, at the media and NGOs who think that objects which are the size of back scratchers are serious weapons.

The second method employed by our media is the use of dissimiar terms to refer to the same class of events . I recall when Hindu protest groups who tried to destroy MF Hussein’s paintings were called Hindu fundamentalists and fanatics. And yes, while protest is legitimate, destroying public and private property is not and the punishment for such destruction should be imprisonment. The media was right in criticizing these vandals and denouncing their acts. However, did anyone notice that muslims who rampaged the streets in many nations following the Danish cartoons, were called “protestors” by our politically correct media. Now that is journalistic dishonesty. Protest in most democratic countries is a legitimate activity; but destroying public property is not “protest”—it is vandalism. These people should have be denounced with the same language that was used for other groups.

Finally, the worst crime of our media is the use of derogatory terms to refer to the religious and cultural practices of the majority population. My personal grouse is against the constant use of terms which the British and Islamic rulers ascribed to Hinduism, which are not only derogatory, but also inaccurate since they do not represent how Hindus understand their own religious practices. Words such as idol, idol worship, phallic symbol (Shiva Linga), idolatry, myth etc. are not neutral terms. These are words with specific connotations which not only question the validity or “truthfulness” of our understanding of God, but also disparage our cultural pratices. These are not even terms that Hindus ascribe to themselves. No Hindu thinks that he worships an idol. Every Hindu worships God or Gods through the use of images which we understand as murthy puja. Deities are considered iconographic representations of the Divine. In fact, at the start of major pujas, one routinely invokes God and asks Him/Her to reside in the image for the period of the puja. The belief is that an omnipresent and omniscient God can be invoked by the devotee . I remember being quite shocked when I first learned that Shiva Linga was a phallic symbol (in a book of Hinduism ) Upto that point, I had always been told that it was a stone pillar representing Shiva. (The word lingam in Sanskrit has multiple meanings: one of them is a sign or symbol).

Hindus generally understand the Ramayana and Mahabharata as itihaasa or relgious history. We don’t think of them as myth (as in a false or imagined story). Now I have no problem with religious stories being referred to as myth if this term were applied universally to all religions. The fact of the matter is that this term is used by our media only to refer to Hindu stories (and as a consequence, in western media also) . You never see in our media the concept of Moses, Abraham and Jesus as Christian myths. Nor do you see references to Islamic beliefs as myth. Here, these are merely referred to as Christian or Islamic beliefs. So when did my beliefs and those of one billion other Hindus become myths?

I truly think that such random and inexact use of terminology is a deliberate attempt to question the very basis of our belief systems and make us less inclined to continue practicing our religious traditions. Hence, you find among the English speaking population in urban India, a class of people who have no real understanding of religion and in turn continue to disparage its practices and beliefs. I don’t have to look far to find members of the journalistic clan who fall into this category. Just pick up any English language newspaper in India ( except maybe the daily pioneer) and immediately you will see language that is slanted and facts which are hidden by the obscure terminology.