Indian media’s conflict coverage: TV-dominated careless, jingoistic with few saviors in print-digital
From hosting broadcasts in military fatigues to sharing live visuals of ongoing security operations and sensitive details, the Indian newsrooms have often served as subjects of “what not to do” in journalism classrooms.
An overview of Indian media’s coverage of conflict is therefore a relevant subject today on the anniversary of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Rise of broadcast media, fall of standards
Indian media, particularly broadcast media, has increasingly come under scrutiny in recent years regarding its coverage of conflict, particularly armed conflict.
From the Kargil War to Indian cross-border operations in recent years, the coverage has raised serious questions, ranging from those of revealing operational details during live coverage of Mumbai and Pathankot terrorist attacks to the highly speculative reporting every now then.
The speculative reporting was also witnessed in the aftermath of the Balakot airstrike in which information was aired without confirmation. It has also been said that the Indian broadcast media has also got increasingly jingoistic and warmongering, often glorifying conflict and towing the state’s line.
Field reporting dying, studio coverage rising
In his critique of the Indian conflict reportage, Manoj Joshi wrote for The Quint, “Field reporting of conflict is dying in India — assaulted by a government which seeks to control the narrative tightly. But there is also a suicidal impulse in media groups who no longer want to challenge the government’s version of events. The result is that in our era, “war” reporters are jokers who act out their scenes dressed in faux bullet proof vests and combat jackets — but inside “war rooms” constructed in a TV studio.”
Joshi wrote about the Indian military operations in Sri Lanka and appreciated the work of The Telegraph and India Today reporters who brought to India the brutal realities of the conflict as against the rosy picture the state narrative was presenting.
While the broadcast media was criticised in the Kargil War, the print media outdid itself with its dispatches from the field and subsequent investigative reporting that brought to fore the inefficient planning and conduct of the Indian war efforts along with the lapses that led to the war.
Writing in his book, Despatches from Kargil, Srinjoy Choudhury, who covered the war for The Statesman, wrote about the ill-thought and ill-equipped frontal assaults and generals who could not brief the media, but the most moving part of the book was about a young Captain Sourav Kalia who was taken captive by the Pakistanis and whose Commanding Officer was on leave and whose other officers did not wish to take the initiative to find him. Thus, no efforts were made to retrieve him.
If not for the likes of Srinjoy, the country would have never learnt how the Indian Army failed Kalia, one of their own — not the first, certainly not the last.
Journalists like Nitin Gokhale (Outlook), Pravin Swami (Frontline), Manoj Joshi and Harinder Baweja (India Today) also exposed the state failures in their multiple reports in terms of intelligence assessment and perception of threat and preparations for eventualities that led to a war, which, in Gokhale’s words, was a “that should never have been”.
The government’s information dissemination also came under question.
Regarding the flow of information during the conflict, AK Sachdeva wrote in a paper for the government-run Institute of Defence and Strategic Analysis, “We need to take a pragmatic look at our attitude towards considering some inconsequential pieces of information as “official secrets” and safeguarding them; perhaps regulated flow of that information would serve the national interest better.”
Blunders during Kargil War that cost lives
While the print media excelled the coverage, the overall coverage was largely criticised for being overenthusiastic and careless at times — largely due to the prominence of the broadcast medium.
Namrata Joshi wrote in India Today how the Indian media’s coverage affected army operations:
“There were slip-ups like the time when the blazing lights of cameramen outside the Brigade Headquarters at Drass drew the attention of the enemy.
“This led to heavy shelling in which four soldiers were killed and the correspondent of a national daily was injured.
“Then there was much uproar about Star News announcing the date and time of the assault on Tiger Hill, three days before it actually was to take place. Much to its chagrin, the army realised what hungry reporters could do to file a scoop.”
Comparing it with Western standards, Joshi wrote, “However, unlike the Gulf War where CNN’s Peter Arnett did his P-to-C [piece to camera] with the battle in full progress and Scuds [Iraqi missiles] falling all around him, the only live action we had were the phone-ins on Iridium phones.
“Neither was this a completely open coverage. No graphic details of bloody encounters and mortal combats were shown — the reporters could not have gone any closer. And unlike Baghdad, this wasn’t just a missile game but one involving hand-to-hand combats.”
Iraq Invasion — Only silver lining in Indian conflict reporting
Arguably, the only major international conflict that the Indian media has regularly covered in recent years is the United States-led invasion of Iraq. Even as international giants like CNN received flak for their coverage, the Indian coverage was appreciated.
Janet Fine wrote in Arab Media & Society, “Indian war coverage also seems to be at a transnational cross-road of maturity in terms of bringing its own identity and professionalism into broadcasting to one of the world’s largest populations.”
Leading the team that covered the war for Third Eye, an Indian company contracted to produce bulletins on the invasion for the state-run Doordarshan, Satish Jacob was the only Indian correspondent in Baghdad at the time of the invasion.
In his book, Satish Jacob from Hotel Palestine Baghdad: Pages From A War Diary, Jacob has criticised the Western “embedded journalism” and has accused Western journalists embedded with the invading forces of reporting the conflict from the shadows of the invading force.
Jacob-led Indian reportage was among the rare news coverage that covered the war from the point of view of the invaded and from the actual war zone rather than from the invader’s point of view.
Mohammad Kazmi, who was part of Jacob’s team, was the world’s first journalist to interview Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani — Iraq’s pre-eminent Shia Muslim leader. The interview was picked up and aired by all big news channels the world over.
Mumbai attacks and the return of ‘live’ feverish coverage
The overenthusiastic and careless coverage earlier seen in the Kargil conflict returned with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
From the transcripts of terrorists’ conversations with their handlers, it was learned that they were getting operational information from Indian television coverage and were accordingly directing terrorists on the basis of it.
The Supreme Court of India noted that it was “beyond doubt that the way their operations were freely shown made the task of the security forces not only exceedingly difficult but also dangerous and risky”.
During the attack on the Pathankot Air Force station, the Indian media was again seen reporting operational details, which led to the extreme decision to take off the responsible news channel off-air for a day.
Indian conflict coverage in Modi era
Narendra Modi’s tenure as prime minister has been marked by hyper-nationalism and militarism unprecedented in recent history, which is not just limited to the chief executive celebrating every festival with soldiers in fatigues but also extends to the seepage of his extremism into Indian newsrooms, particularly in broadcast media’s.
Indian media has been overwhelmingly criticised for their coverage of the claimed-2016 and 2019 cross-border strikes.
A Foreign Policy article noted, “Television news anchors were not far behind with their competitive beating of the war drum — one even donned army fatigues and brandished a toy gun — and their labeling of more temperate voices as “anti-national”.
“In India, that phrase is often used to question someone’s patriotism or allegiance, especially targeting leftists or peace activists. One commentator on Twitter suggested that those who didn’t support the Indian government’s moves were “traitors”.”
There was also criticism that Indian media published news without proper verification, such as claims that a Pakistani pilot was lynched by compatriots to unverified high number of casualties at Balakot.
Dominance of TV news and rise of populism, fall of news
There is a stark difference between the three mediums of Indian news media — print, broadcast (television), and digital. While print and digital media continue to excel with objective reporting, the prominence of television media means that most of the people consume the 24x7 agenda-setting coverage which is more populist than truthful.
Viewers see what they want to see (populism) or what someone wants them to see (agenda-setting) and not what they ought to see (objective, truthful reporting). They see 300 people dead at Balakot but not the lapses that led to an attack, say in Uri or the Pakistani counter-attack after the Balakot airstrike.
On 28 February 2019, in the fog of war after Pakistani fighters bypassed all Indian air defences and bombed Indian military installations and brought down an Indian plane (and captured its pilot), an Indian air defence unit shot down their own helicopter that led to the deaths of all six air force personnel on board and a civilian on the ground.
While newspapers and digital news organisations (like The Print) covered this regularly, there was not much coverage on television news channels.
The domination of Indian media by television therefore means that Indian news consumers receive a very populist, extremist, and very limited newsworthy coverage. The print and digital mediums continue to report as they should but their marginalisation in the age of a dangerous cocktail of TV news plus social media (particularly intellectually illiterate Instagram influencers) means they are fighting an uphill battle to save the Indian journalistic dignity.
PS: The Zee5 show 26/11 State of Siege, based on journalist Sandeep nnithan’s book “Black Tornado: The Three Sieges of Mumbai 26/11”, features a fictional newsroom that covered the terrorist attacks and the Indian operations that’s indicative of the populist, sensationalist wave that guides a large chunk of Indian television news. The depiction in the show should serve as a primer of how things should not be.
Madhur Sharma is a Meerut-based journalist. He tweets at @madhur_mrt. Views are personal, except for those attributed to other persons, duly attributed and hyperlinked.
