The Indian soldiers who attacked terror targets in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir may have returned home without any fatalities on their side but there is one casualty that the surgical strike did cause on our side of the border: Indian journalism has been left grievously injured.
Marching right behind the special forces who crossed the Line of Control to deliver “five slaps” on Pakistan – to use defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s phrase – most news channels have crossed the line that separates journalism from PR and worse.
If one channel is trying to get its anchors to end their bulletins with a ‘Jai Hind’ sign-off, another has created a ‘war room’ for its staff to play soldier – complete with an anchor wearing an imitation ‘flak jacket’ to shield him from enemy fire as he plans his own surgical strikes on Pakistan.
Even before the army operation, NewsX declared via its editor-in-chief that the channel would no longer be referring to Pakistan as ‘Pakistan’ on its prime time show but as ‘Terror State of Pakistan’. On its part, Times Now has led the charge against the presence of Pakistani artistes in India and has even demanded that diplomatic relations with Islamabad be downgraded.
It’s too early to tell what this surge of nationalist reporting has done for the ratings of these channels but the aggressive manner in which they have led the charge against analysts and opposition politicians who suggested the government provide more information on the surgical strikes has drawn praise from Amit Shah, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The BJP’s position is that it was the army which decided to go public with the news about the strikes and that asking for more information would lower the morale of the army and undermine national security.
As a news organisation that always kept its head when others around them lost theirs, NDTV was one of the few channels willing to discuss the strikes rationally –with several of its studio guests making a case for the government to release more information. But in a dramatic turnaround which suggests the channel has bought into the BJP’s arguments about the danger of asking questions, NDTV has now declared that it would no longer air “any remarks that risk security for political advantage.”
On October 6, the channel decided not to telecast an interview with Congress leader P. Chidambaram – who as a former home minister and finance minister was a member of Manmohan Singh’s cabinet committee on security for a decade – because he was critical of the Modi government’s political handling of the surgical strikes the Indian army had conducted across the Line of Control in Kashmir last week.
In extracts that played out on the channel on Thursday morning, Chidambaram criticised statements made by defence minister Manohar Parrikar in the aftermath of the September 29 surgical strikes and noted that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had since cautioned his ministers against thumping their chests on the issue.
The full interview, which Chidambaram had recorded with NDTV’s star anchor Barkha Dutt, would be broadcast in the evening, viewers were told. Except that it wasn’t.
Dropping Chidambaram’s interview wasn’t the only act of censorship at the channel that day. Editors were instructed that Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s statement in Uttar Pradesh about Modi trading in the blood of Indian soldiers was not to be run on the channel either.
http://thewire.in/71640/ndtv-censor-news-compromises-national-security/
Marching right behind the special forces who crossed the Line of Control to deliver “five slaps” on Pakistan – to use defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s phrase – most news channels have crossed the line that separates journalism from PR and worse.
If one channel is trying to get its anchors to end their bulletins with a ‘Jai Hind’ sign-off, another has created a ‘war room’ for its staff to play soldier – complete with an anchor wearing an imitation ‘flak jacket’ to shield him from enemy fire as he plans his own surgical strikes on Pakistan.
Even before the army operation, NewsX declared via its editor-in-chief that the channel would no longer be referring to Pakistan as ‘Pakistan’ on its prime time show but as ‘Terror State of Pakistan’. On its part, Times Now has led the charge against the presence of Pakistani artistes in India and has even demanded that diplomatic relations with Islamabad be downgraded.
It’s too early to tell what this surge of nationalist reporting has done for the ratings of these channels but the aggressive manner in which they have led the charge against analysts and opposition politicians who suggested the government provide more information on the surgical strikes has drawn praise from Amit Shah, president of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The BJP’s position is that it was the army which decided to go public with the news about the strikes and that asking for more information would lower the morale of the army and undermine national security.
As a news organisation that always kept its head when others around them lost theirs, NDTV was one of the few channels willing to discuss the strikes rationally –with several of its studio guests making a case for the government to release more information. But in a dramatic turnaround which suggests the channel has bought into the BJP’s arguments about the danger of asking questions, NDTV has now declared that it would no longer air “any remarks that risk security for political advantage.”
On October 6, the channel decided not to telecast an interview with Congress leader P. Chidambaram – who as a former home minister and finance minister was a member of Manmohan Singh’s cabinet committee on security for a decade – because he was critical of the Modi government’s political handling of the surgical strikes the Indian army had conducted across the Line of Control in Kashmir last week.
In extracts that played out on the channel on Thursday morning, Chidambaram criticised statements made by defence minister Manohar Parrikar in the aftermath of the September 29 surgical strikes and noted that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had since cautioned his ministers against thumping their chests on the issue.
The full interview, which Chidambaram had recorded with NDTV’s star anchor Barkha Dutt, would be broadcast in the evening, viewers were told. Except that it wasn’t.
Dropping Chidambaram’s interview wasn’t the only act of censorship at the channel that day. Editors were instructed that Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s statement in Uttar Pradesh about Modi trading in the blood of Indian soldiers was not to be run on the channel either.
http://thewire.in/71640/ndtv-censor-news-compromises-national-security/
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