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By Kalpana Sharma
The recent serial blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad have exposed, yet again, the dilemma the media faces in covering such events. While reporting in detail the horror and the tragedy surrounding the event are a natural part of the media’s task, how should it handle the speculation about the culprits behind the attack?
The media’s ability to independently investigate terrorist attacks is severely limited, particularly in India. Rarely do news organisations allow a journalist or a group of journalists to pursue the issue to the exclusion of all else. Nor are they willing to provide the resources required to conduct such an independent investigation.
As a result, most media organisations depend on information passed on to them by official investigating agencies such as the local police, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) or the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). They do not have the ability to independently verify the accuracy of such information. As the informants mostly do not want to be identified, the information thus gleaned is attributed to the ubiquitous “informed sources”.
In the circumstances, such stories are acceptable as long as the reporter attributes the source, the so-called “informed source”. But how does one explain the tenor of many stories about the possible suspects for terrorist attacks that tend to present the information as authentic and therefore unquestionable?
Typically, you get stories with details about a particular “terrorist”, what he wore, what he thought, how he planned every step of the attack, who he met, his other links to groups outside India, the “sleeper cells” he worked with etc. The story is written in a style that would make an ordinary reader believe that the reporter has actually met the person he is writing about and has gathered all these details first hand. The truth, however, is that all the information has been given to him by his “source” within one of the intelligence agencies. The graphic descriptions are his contribution to making the story come alive, thereby making it appear credible.
The problem with such reporting, apart from the fact that it does not stick with the norm of attribution before reporting information as “facts”, is that it authenticates versions put out by one side without the slightest hint of scepticism. The media is routinely sceptical about other claims by the State on a whole range of issues. Why, then, on the subject of “terrorism”, does it suspend disbelief?
Such reporting over time obscures the reality. It also confuses readers who wonder why, if the authorities know so much about the plans of terrorists, they can do nothing to stop them. Or after they happen, why can they not prove the guilt of those they arrest? Admittedly, such conspiracies are difficult, if not impossible, to prove. In the 1993 Mumbai serial blast case, the police were fortuitous in finding physical evidence within a day of the blasts. The leads from that helped unravel the entire conspiracy within six months so that chargesheets could be filed. Even then, it took over a decade before the case concluded and 100 people were convicted and given various jail sentences. But apart from the Mumbai blasts, and the attack on Parliament in 2001 for which Afzal Guru has been awarded the death sentence (Prof S A R Geelani was also charged and convicted and finally let off as the court accepted that most of the evidence was unconvincing), the police have failed to pin charges in any other major terrorist attack.
Following the recent serial blasts in Bangalore on July 25, 2008, when eight low-intensity blasts were reported from seven locations in the city leading to one death and many more injured, the media coverage was predictable. Television news channels went into overdrive. While some stuck to describing what had happened and following up on the injured, at least one channel immediately began speculating about the possible motive behind the attack and the probable perpetrators. Within an hour, the familiar and usual suspects were touted – SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) and Laskhar-e-Toiba. No attribution, only “sources”. Meanwhile, the same channel was telecasting the Bangalore Police Commissioner repeatedly saying that it was too early to tell even the nature of the bombs used and that it could be the work of “miscreants”.
Print media had the whole day to gather evidence and report on the incident. Once again, while the news pages of some newspapers reported what had happened and what the officials were saying, others carried speculative stories about the possible perpetrators. The Hindu of July 26, for instance, carried a report that began: “Although it is far too early to arrive at any conclusions of who the perpetrators might have been”, it then went on to say, “investigators will be focusing their energies on a group of Karnataka residents known to have trained at one of half-a-dozen training camps run by the Students Islamic Movement of India in 2006-2007.” The story then moved on to describe the actions of a man called Shibli who reportedly set up a SIMI home in Bangalore’s Vivek Nagar area. “Named Sarani after his old hostel in Kerala, Shibli’s house-of-hate (emphasis added) later moved to larger premises on the Residential Association Road in Eejipura.” The writer gave details about the training camps held by SIMI in different locations and some of the plans it had hatched, including bombing tourists in Goa during New Year’s celebrations in 2008.
How did the police get all this information? Was it a ‘confession’ by Shibli, who is now under arrest? Should the article not have attributed this information clearly to the official source rather than writing it in a style that dramatised the version and included phrases like ‘house-of-hate’? It is possible that SIMI is involved in the blasts but is it the job of the media to put out such speculative information? If in the days to follow, a ‘suspected’ SIMI supporter is picked up for interrogation, or even charged, no one will object. Because somehow the media has helped in making the charge more credible even before there is any proof.
The question here is not whether the information provided by intelligence agencies is suspect or credible -- it could well be the latter -- but what role should the media play in taking such information, sometimes half-baked, into the public realm? Is it the job of the media to be identified with the State on this issue to the extent that it reports everything uncritically? Or should it follow basic journalistic norms of remaining independent and equidistant from the authorities and the perpetrators of such crimes? Is ‘terrorism’ a crime that supersedes these journalistic norms? These are some questions that the media should debate.
While the story in The Hindu was strictly not a ‘news’ story, the Times of India of July 26 included speculation about likely perpetrators of the crime in its front-page story that read:
“In what now seems to be a familiar pattern, terrorists struck yet again even before the nation had fully recovered from its last shock – the May carnage in Jaipur – and left it traumatised once more.” Claiming Bangalore was already in “terror’s shadow”, the report went on to add, “While the police are still groping in the dark to identify the key criminals in the blasts there (meaning Jaipur), terrorists cocked a snook at the security agencies here to trigger eight serial blasts within 35 minutes at seven places during the busy lunch hour.”
The report has already concluded that the incident was a terrorist attack and has linked it to the Jaipur serial blasts that took place in May. Nothing in the report attempts to explain how the reporter came to these conclusions in less than 24 hours, before the official agencies had even completed forensic tests on the bombs. It also seems to suggest that the police are inept.
With the intensely competitive nature of the media in India today, with every channel and every newspaper wanting to be not only the first with the news (“as first reported in this newspaper or on this channel”), but also to beat everyone including the authorities in establishing the real culprits behind the crime, the ground is fertile for manipulation.
The media’s vulnerability was on display recently when major daily newspapers fell for a hilarious hoax cooked up by a group of Goan journalists. On June 29, several journalists in Goa and Bangalore received an email message from ‘Hamman Smit’, press officer for ‘Perus Narpk’ in Berlin. The latter was described as the ‘intelligence wing of the German Chancellor’s core’ and claimed that it had arrested Johann Bach, a Nazi war criminal responsible for killing 12,000 Jews in the ‘Marsha Tikash Whanaab’ concentration camp, on the Karnataka-Goa border.
Even a cub reporter should have been able to detect this as a hoax. Yet major newspapers sent their reporters scurrying after the story. The Telegraph, Indian Express and Deccan Herald reported it without an iota of scepticism. As it turned out, the email was a prank played by a group of Goan journalists who call themselves ‘Penpricks’ and try and expose the media’s incompetence. They were spectacularly successful in this instance.
Writing about this in The Hindu (July 1, 2008), Siddharth Vardarajan concluded:
“It is easy to laugh at the gullibility of reporters and editors in the ‘Bach’ case but is our profession any less gullible when it uncritically regurgitates improbable, unverified and unverifiable details provided by the police in virtually all terrorism cases? Do any of us ever stop to ask how the police is able to reveal intimate details about a suspect's prior movements and associations within hours of arresting him? One of the country's worst kept secrets is that the police admit to having arrested a suspect days and sometimes even weeks after first taking him into custody. During this period of custody, the suspect is worked over and only after there is nothing more to extract is his ‘arrest’ announced to the media. More often than not, the suspect will be paraded before photographers and journalists who will faithfully note down every ‘fact’ provided to them by the police. Some of these ‘facts’ may well be true; but in accepting them at face value, that too from a source whose tendency to distort and mislead is legendary, are we really all that different from the victims of Perus Narpk?”
Vardarajan articulates the challenge before the Indian media when it comes to reporting on terrorism. If we stick to the highest norms of our profession, we would verify and if possible independently investigate before we report any stories about any ‘suspects’ in such crimes. By not doing so, not only do we undercut our own credibility, but we also deny the public the truth. Worse still, we reinforce stereotypes of members of a particular community always being the ones responsible for such heinous crimes. And we fail to detect the gross human rights violations that occur under our very noses to innocents detained for months, even years, as ‘suspects’, while we continue to have ‘chai-pani’ with our favourite source, notebook firmly in hand and gullible pen willing and ready to write everything but the truth.
(Kalpana Sharma is an independent journalist and media commentator and author of ‘Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's Largest Slum’, co-editor of ‘Terror/Counter Terror: Women Speak Out’ and co-author of ‘Whose News? The Media and Women’s Issues’)
InfoChange News & Features, August 2008
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