13 Conflict Coverage JPO Terror News Coverage

7/30/2019 13 Conflict Coverage JPO Terror News Coverage

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OPINION/MEDIA

Terror reporting reveals gaping holesThe pervasive tendency to speculate and insinuate involvement of individuals and selective groupsin instances of terror, without authentication or references to source of information, is not only an

unfair attack on those implicated but against the very essence of journalism. AmmuJoseph elaborates.

Hyderabad horror: IM imprintWas it revenge for Afzal Guru hanging?

(Deccan Chronicle, 22 February)

Hyderabad twin blasts kill 15, injure 60Indian Mujahideen hand suspected

(DNA, 22 Feb.)

Terror strikes Hyderabad, kills 12Hyderabad is a springboard for jihadi groups

(The Times of India, 22 Feb.)

Hyderabad blasts: Indian Mujahideen hand suspected(Business Line, 22 Feb.)

IM stamp on Hyderabad blasts?(Times Now, 22 Feb.)

Was Indian Mujahideen behind the Hyderabad blasts? NIA releases pictures of prime suspects(Headlines Today, 22 Feb.)

Hyderabad blasts: Indian Mujahideen suspected(NewsX, 22 Feb.)

25 February 2013 - The proliferation of headlines such as the above within hours of the bomb blasts inHyderabad on 21 February conforms to a pattern that has become all too familiar in the aftermath of suchdeadly, dastardly, utterly deplorable violence targeting ordinary citizens going about their normal lives.

Even as investigators began the difficult task of hunting for clues that could lead to the perpetrators and

questioning witnesses as well as informers and suspects, sections of the media seemed to see nothingwrong in naming names and indulging in what can only be pure speculation immediately after such anevent. They are, of course, aided and abetted in this process by anonymous sources within investigativeagencies, the customary cast of national security experts and politicians out to score points against rivalparties even if it means misguiding the public.

The embarrassing and, in many ways, damaging mistakes of the past are rarely acknowledged at suchtimes. For example, on 22 February, The Times of India flagged the last terrorist strike in Hyderabad (thetwin explosions at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat in August 2007), recording that three Indian Mujahideenmembers were arrested and investigations are still on. The Mecca Masjid blast, which had occurred just a

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few months earlier, in May 2007, was conveniently left out. Could it be because that act of terrorism, alongwith the bombing of the Samjhauta Express (2007) and the Malegaon blasts (2006, 2008), would muddy thewaters since investigating agencies ultimately uncovered a totally different set of actors who may beresponsible for them?

Deccan Chronicle and DNA did include the Mecca Masjid blast in their lists of earlier attacks withoutmentioning the individuals or groups implicated in the crime, thereby leaving many readers to wrongly

assume that the Indian Mujahideen (IM) referred to in the headlines was responsible for that act of violence,too.

Interestingly, the Hyderabad edition ofThe Hindu carried an important story on 22 February referring to thesensational turnaround in the Mecca Masjid bomb blast case (Mecca blast case casts doubts on narco).

According to the report, after the violence that killed 14 persons, including five in subsequent police firing ona riotous mob on 18 May, the Hyderabad Police had picked up several Muslim youths for interrogation andbooked six based on narco analysis test reports. Three years later, first the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) and later the National Investigating Agency (NIA) concluded that the perpetrators of the blast were ofa different colour and confirmed the involvement of as many as nine right wing activists. The sixHyderabadi suspects were acquitted in the case and the Andhra Pradesh government paid compensation tothem. Yet on 24 February, there were reports that these men have again been picked up for questioningafter the recent blasts.

Concern about speculative reporting

Astatement on the recent Hyderabad blasts, released by the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties in Delhi on 23

February, expressed concern over some sections of the media indulging in speculative reporting andalluding to the alleged involvement of some groups, even when investigation is still underway and pointedout that such competitive posturing and motivated reporting fans communal hatred, creates mass paranoiaand vitiates communal harmony.

Last weeks blasts in Hyderabad occurred the day after the NIA filed a charge-sheet before the SpecialCourt in Bangalore against 12 persons accused of links with banned terrorist organisations such asLashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and/or Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) and involvement in an alleged plot to killcertain individuals, including a couple of journalists and a publisher. Eleven of them have been in custodyfor nearly six months, while one is said to be absconding.

Four of the 15 individuals arrested in August-September 2012 by the Central Crime Branch of theBangalore Police were not named in the charge-sheet. Among them is a young journalist, Muthi-ur-Rehman Siddiqui, who at the time of his arrest was a reporter with Deccan Herald, covering education. On23 February the NIA Special Court ordered his release and that of a fellow accused, Yusuf Nalband, sincethe investigative agencies had found no prosecutable evidence against them despite keeping themincarcerated for close to six months, branded as terrorists.

Siddiquis arrest had initially caused a sensation in media circles, especially since police sources werequick to name him as the mastermind who identified high-profile personalities for assassination by hisassociates. On 31 August, The Times of India carried a headline stating this clearly premature allegation

If the media wish to serve the publicinterest - and not just titillate thepublic - they need to renew their

commitment to providing citizens withreliable, accurate facts put in ameaningful context and, of course, tothe various fundamental rights

conferred on all citizens by theConstitution of India.

Terror coverage raises lots ofquestions In Muslim India, an internal battle
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as fact (Scribe was mastermind). The notion that the discipline of verificationis what separates journalismfrom entertainment, propaganda, fiction, or art is obviously either unknown or ignored in some mediaorganisations.

Interestingly, TOIs front page story on 24 February, headlined NIA clean chit to accused leaves police red-faced, makes no reference to the papers own misjudgement not so long ago. Perhaps thespacegiven tothe relieved families reactions to the imminent release of their imprisoned relatives under the slug, Truth

Prevails and the caption below the young journalists photograph Innocent: Siddiqui are meant tomake up for their unseemly (not to mention unprofessional) haste in earlier labelling him the mastermind ofthe alleged plot.

"Framing" the terrorist

Siddiquis situation was among the several triggers that led to a panel discussion titled The framing of aterrorist Risks and lessons for the media organised by Media Watch Bengaluru(MWB) in the city on 16February, a week after the controversial, secret execution of Mohammad Afzal Guru. The meeting beganwith opening remarks by the moderator, who referred to Siddiqui and other journalists who, like countlessother citizens, have been wrongly charged with links to terrorism over the past decade: K K Shahina, SyedMohammed Ahmad Kazmi and Syed Iftikhar Gilani.

Shahina K K at the Media Watch seminar "The framing of a terrorist" organised by Media Watch Bengaluru

in February 2013 at St Joseph's College in the city.Pic: Media Watch, Bengaluru.

Two criminal cases have been booked against Shahina, Kerala-based Assistant Editor ofOpen, forcing herto travel to Karnataka every month to appear on different dates before separate sessions courts. Speakingat the MWB event, she described the ordeal she has been through since November 2010, when theKarnataka Police charged her under several sections of the Indian Penal Code as well as Section 22 of theUnlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 all for doing her job as an investigative journalist then withTehelka (as described in her recent article, Prisoner of an image, and her speech at the 2011 ChameliDevi Jain award ceremony, I am a Muslim, not a terrorist, which also refer to media coverage based onunverified information supplied by the police).
http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/tag/muthi-ur-rehman-siddiqui/http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102543/The-Essence-of-Journalism-Is-a-Discipline-of-Verification.aspxhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/NIA-clean-chit-to-accused-leaves-cops-red-faced/articleshow/18651840.cmshttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/NIA-clean-chit-to-accused-leaves-cops-red-faced/articleshow/18651840.cmshttp://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArchiveView.asp?Daily=TOIBG&AppName=1&login=default&pub=TOI&Skin=TOINEW&Enter=true&AW=1361680301640&BaseHref=TOIBG%2F2013%2F02%2F24&Page=8http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArchiveView.asp?Daily=TOIBG&AppName=1&login=default&pub=TOI&Skin=TOINEW&Enter=true&AW=1361680301640&BaseHref=TOIBG%2F2013%2F02%2F24&Page=8http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArchiveView.asp?Daily=TOIBG&AppName=1&login=default&pub=TOI&Skin=TOINEW&Enter=true&AW=1361680301640&BaseHref=TOIBG%2F2013%2F02%2F24&Page=8https://www.facebook.com/MediaWatchBengaluruhttp://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/prisoner-of-an-imagehttp://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5177&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=15&valid=truehttp://wearethebest.wordpress.com/tag/muthi-ur-rehman-siddiqui/http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102543/The-Essence-of-Journalism-Is-a-Discipline-of-Verification.aspxhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/NIA-clean-chit-to-accused-leaves-cops-red-faced/articleshow/18651840.cmshttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/NIA-clean-chit-to-accused-leaves-cops-red-faced/articleshow/18651840.cmshttp://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArchiveView.asp?Daily=TOIBG&AppName=1&login=default&pub=TOI&Skin=TOINEW&Enter=true&AW=1361680301640&BaseHref=TOIBG%2F2013%2F02%2F24&Page=8https://www.facebook.com/MediaWatchBengaluruhttp://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/prisoner-of-an-imagehttp://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5177&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=15&valid=true


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Since July 2011, when she was granted bail by the High Court of Karnataka, she has had to make fortnightlyvisits to Bangalore to present herself before the investigating officer. Now she will have to make the trek toSomwarpet and Madikeri in Kodagu district, where the cases against her are being heard. Despite protestsand statements by journalists organisations (like theKerala Union of Working Journalistsandthe International Federation of Journalists) and others against such harassment, the cases against her seemall set to march on.

On 22 February she was granted bail by the Somwarpet magistrate, Jitendra Nath, who posted the case to30 March. Self-styled patriots (aka activists belonging to right-wing groups) reportedly created anuglyscene inside the premises of the court, attempting to intimidate two friends who had accompanied her tocourt and offered to stand surety for her. The mob seemed particularly incensed that one of them was aHindu. They also tried to snatch the camera of a news channel present at the scene. Shahina and hersupporters had to leave the area under police escort. This is the second timeShahina has faced such asituation. The first hearing in the second case is scheduled on February 26th in the Madikeri sessions court.

Syed Iftikhar Gilanis traumatic experience of a decade ago came back to haunt him within hours of thehanging of Afzal Guru on the 9 February. Gilani, then Delhi bureau chief ofKashmir Times, was arrested inJune 2002. Despite the lack of proof, he was remanded first to police custody, then judicial custody andfinally charged under the Official Secrets Act. If the case had been moved against him, he would have faceda minimum of 14 years in jail. In his case, too, some sections of the press used information fed to them bythe police without bothering to crosscheck facts (some details are available inthis interviewand in this

reporton an interaction with him, both dated 2003).

Fortunately for him, an expose in the Indian Express, and follow-up by his family and supporters (includingthe Delhi Union of Journalists, the Editors Guild of India and other media colleagues), establishedconclusively that the so-called "classified" documents in his possession were reports that were freelyavailable on the Internet. And so the case against him had to be dropped, albeit seven months after he wasdetained. Despite this and despite his track record since then, including an award from theSahitya Akademi,he was again detained andhis family (including his children) harassed and intimidated by the Delhi Police inFebruary 2013.

Building false cases?

Syed Mohammed Ahmad Kazmi, accused of conspiring to bomb an Israeli embassy car in Delhi in February2012, was finally released on bail in October last year, after being held in custody for seven months.

The Delhi Union of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists issued several statements insupport of him. In July 2012 a group of senior journalists, academics and activists based in the capital wroteto the editors ofThe Times of India and Times Now, strongly protesting against stories that were highlyprejudicial to Mr. Syed Kazmi, a journalist himself, and the apparent attempt to pass judgement on Mr.Kazmi through their media outlets.

In August-September 2012 the global news agency, Inter Press Service, ran a three-part series by anaward-winning investigative journalist (Gareth Porter) titled, The Delhi Car Bombing: How the Police Built aFalse Case. The articles exposed the tactics employed by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police, including theleaking of false confessions and evidence to the news media.

According to the series, the first wave of leaks to the press about Kazmis alleged confessions suggestingthat he had admitted to having participated in the embassy car bomb plot were timed to generate a wave

of sensational articles in March 2012, just before his first bail application. That manoeuvre apparentlyprompted the court hearing the bail application to admonish the public prosecutor. Kazmi himself denouncedthe disclosure statements attributed to him as false, stating in a handwritten petition to the court that theSpecial Cell had coerced him into providing his signature on blank pages, threatening that his family wouldface dire consequences if he did not do as they directed.

In this context, it is worth taking note of the 200-page document titled Framed, Damned, Acquitted:Dossiers of a Very Special Cell produced by the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association and released inSeptember 2012, coincidentally soon after Muthi-ur-Rehman Siddiqui and others were arrested by theBangalore Police. The detailed report, relying mainly on court documents, chronicles 16 cases in which
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people arrested as operatives of various terrorist groups were later acquitted by the courts. Of course,acquittals do not generally make as much news as arrests so their names are often not cleared in theminds of the public.

Word-terrorism?

Speaking at the MWB session in Bangalore on 16 February, senior journalist B M Basheer highlighted therole of sections of the media in using misinformation about terrorism to stereotype and stigmatise an entirecommunity. According to him, Muslims of coastal Karnataka have been victims of the medias word-terrorism. He cited several examples of irresponsible coverage of terrorism-related news in the Kannadapress to illustrate his point:

(From Left) B M Basheer, News Editor, Varthabharati with Mushin Parari, Writer and Director of Native

Bapa, at "The framing of a terrorist".Pic: Media Watch, Bengaluru.

On 14 January 2008, Udayavani, a leading Kannada daily, published a front page story headlinedTerrorists in Shabarimala. This was clearly shocking news, coming as it did at the peak ofpilgrimage season when an act of terrorism at the shrine would be devastating. According to thereport, a person pretending to be a pilgrim was found to be carrying explosives and was about tobe arrested when he consumed cyanide. He apparently revealed information about the plot before

dying and seven persons were reportedly arrested in this connection. Only one source was quotedin the piece: a pilgrim claiming to be an eye-witness to the incident. No police personnel werequoted.

When reporters from Varthabharathi, the newspaper Basheer serves as news editor, tried to findout more about the incident, none of the officials in Karnataka or Kerala appeared to be aware of it.They eventually discovered that a mock anti-terrorism exercise had been conducted atShabarimala during that period, which may be what the eye-witness mistook for the realthing. Varthabharathireported the following day that no such incident had taken place. However,there was no clarification, let alone apology, from Udayavani. The local Press Council did issue anotice to the paper, which was apparently ignored, but did not initiate any action against it. So the


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readers of the most popular newspaper in the region probably continue to believe the false storyabout the foiled terrorist attack in Shabarimala.

The second example concerned reporting about the blast in the Hubli district court in May 2008.Soon after the blast the then Police Commissioner, Narayan Nadamani, told the press thatpreliminary investigations had revealed the involvement of activists of LeT and the bannedStudents Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Not only was his assertion faithfully reported, but

several newspapers carried stories describing in detail how the whole operation was conducted,from the sourcing of materials for the bombs onwards, without referring to or naming any sources.

As it turned out, of the nine people finally arrested for the blasts, several were found to have directlinks with the Sri Rama Sene and Pramod Muthalik. According to Basheer, no correction or apologywas published and, as far as the general public is concerned, LeT and SIMI continue to beassociated with the crime.

A slightly different example of misreporting relates tothe brutal mistreatment of three personstwo Muslims and a Dalit who were accused of killing a cow, beaten up and paraded naked bymembers of the Bajrang Dal in Chikmagalur district in 2008. The incident caused an uproar and ameeting to protest the atrocity attracted over 10,000 people across communities. According toBasheer, several newspapers including Kannada Prabha, another leading Kannada daily choseto ignore the huge crowd that had assembled to express public outrage at this violation of humanrights, preferring to focus attention, instead, on a young boy holding a green flag. Photographs and

reports on the front page suggested that Pakistani flags were seen at the rally, even though the flagthe boy was holding was the plain green one commonly seen atop mosques in India, which hasnothing to do with Pakistan.

Basheer pointed out that such irresponsible if not mischievous misreporting, of which the above are justa few examples, not only ruins many young lives but could well push youngsters towards extremism.

Creative response

The third speaker at the MWB event, Muhsin Parari, is a founding member of Mappila Lahala, a collectiveseeking to use hip-hop to initiate conversations about religion, violence and related issues. Parari confirmedthe surveillance that has become a routine, uncomfortable reality in the lives of many young Muslim men buthe has clearly opted for a creative response to the situation.

Parari was 20 in 2008, when security forces killed four suspected LeT militants in Kashmir. It soon emergedthat they were from Kerala. When the media descended on their families, one mother declared that she didnot wish to see her dead sons face since he was a traitor. The statement was widely reported, with severalpoliticians and some sections of the media describing her as a role model for Muslim mothers in the state.She subsequently confessed that she had said what she did out of desperation, after days of being houndedby the police and facing suspicion and hostility from neighbours. The incident moved Parari to write a poem:an imaginary monologue by the father of one such youth, expressing astonishment at the discovery that hisson had been branded a terrorist.

The inaugural project of Mappila Lahala,Native Bapa, is based on that poem. Parari set it to music anddirected the video, the official version of which has had 1.6 lakh hits on YouTube since it was released atmidnight on 31 December 2012. Native Bapa, the reluctant secularist, does not ask listeners to take sidesbut condemns violence in all forms: No scepticism in my lyricism / I raise an iron fist against terrorism /Islam is peace in its definition / People are brainwashed by the television / Open your eyes, take away the

prejudice / Bombing innocents, Ill call you a terrorist / I dont care if you are an al-Qaeda militant / Or if theworld calls you the US president.

In October 2011, soon after taking over as chairperson of the Press Council of India (PCI), JusticeMarkandey Katju called attention to the tendency of the media to jump to conclusions about terrorism andterrorists. In an interview with Karan Thaparhe cited the example of the kind of reporting that follows bombblasts: within a few hours almost every channel starts showing that an e-mail has come or a SMS has comethat Indian Mujahideen have claimed responsibility or Jaish-e-Mohammad or Harkat-ul-Jihad, some Muslimname. You see, e-mail or SMS any mischievous person can send, but by showing it on the TV channels andnext day in print, you are in a subtle way conveying the message that all Muslims are terrorists and bomb
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throwers and you are demonising the Muslims. And, 99 per cent people of all communities, whether Hindu,Muslim, are good people.

I do not necessarily agree with all the statements made and stands taken by Justice Katju in his PCI avatar.However, there is considerable evidence to suggest that his observation about the kneejerk response ofmany publications and news channels to terror attacks is, by and large, correct.

It may well turn out that the IM and/or a similar outfit were indeed responsible for the recent bomb blasts inHyderabad. The point, however, is that the news media need to be far more scrupulous about verifyingfacts, critically assessing information from official sources, independently seeking inputs and comments frommultiple, diverse sources and disclosing as much as possible about the sources so that readers canevaluate the information for themselves. And, above all, the media need to guard against prejudging thematter based on partial, unsubstantiated material.

No one in their right mind would want the perpetrators of the terrible violent attacks that seem to recur withfrightening and depressing regularity in India today to get away with their crimes. But if the media wish toserve the public interest and not just titillate the public they need to renew their commitment to providingcitizens with reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context and, of course, to the various fundamentalrights conferred on all citizens by the Constitution of India.

From Principles of Journalism

Journalism's first obligation is to the truth

Democracy depends on citizens having reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context. Journalism doesnot pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but it can--and must--pursue it in a practical sense.This "journalistic truth" is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifyingfacts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their meaning, valid for now, subject tofurther investigation. Journalists should be as transparent as possible about sources and methods soaudiences can make their own assessment of the information. Even in a world of expanding voices,accuracy is the foundation upon which everything else is built--context, interpretation, comment, criticism,analysis and debate. The truth, over time, emerges from this forum. As citizens encounter an ever greaterflow of data, they have more need--not less--for identifiable sources dedicated to verifying that informationand putting it in context.

Its essence is a discipline of verification

Journalists rely on a professional discipline for verifying information. When the concept of objectivityoriginally evolved, it did not imply that journalists are free of bias. It called, rather, for a consistent method oftesting information--a transparent approach to evidence--precisely so that personal and cultural biaseswould not undermine the accuracy of their work. The method is objective, not the journalist. Seeking outmultiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, allsignal such standards. This discipline of verification is what separates journalism from other modes ofcommunication, such as propaganda, fiction or entertainment. But the need for professional method is notalways fully recognized or refined. While journalism has developed various techniques for determining facts,for instance, it has done less to develop a system for testing the reliability of journalistic interpretation.

Ammu Joseph

Feb 2013

- See more at: http://www.indiatogether.org/2013/feb/med-terrorism.htm#sthash.iyLVStit.dpuf
http://www.journalism.org/resources/principleshttp://www.indiatogether.org/opinions/ajoseph/http://www.journalism.org/resources/principleshttp://www.indiatogether.org/opinions/ajoseph/

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