Tidbits of the region’s media
Some Indian media outlets got a little too carried away by dramatics while covering former Nepali king Gyanendra Shah's departure from Narayanhiti Palace in mid-June. Star News, for example, devoted many minutes to flashing pictures of the former royal couple, while Waqt ne Kiya and Na Raja Rahega na Rani Rahegi (talk about stating the obvious) solemnly played in the background. Chhetria Patrakar was thus provided with yet more proof that Bollywood's vast song repertoire truly affords something for every occasion. Amidst all of the sensationalism, CNN-IBN framed the issue in a way that Southasians can relate to: now a commoner, the former king has to pay his own electricity bills.
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Congratulations to DhiTV, the very first private television channel in the Maldives, on successfully broadcasting its test transmissions! Barring last-minute technical glitches, the station should be fully operational within the coming months, just in time for the much-anticipated presidential elections. Now, Maldivians can hope for independent, non-biased reporting, after having endured a lifetime of blind pro-Gayoom coverage by state-owned media outlets.
Knowing that a freer media will actually report the facts, however, the Male government already has a plan to prevent journalists from criticising it. To ensure "greater freedom to the press", Information Minister Mohamed Nasheed is currently seeking to push through a defamation bill that would allow 'victims' to sue for any remarks perceived to be 'defaming'. As befitting its purpose, the proposed bill defines defamation broadly and vaguely. Maybe CP is just a cynic, but does the governing party's haste to ram the bill through the Majlis have anything to do with President Gayoom's soon-to-be-launched electoral campaign?
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On second thought, accusations of defamation seem a rather benign tool with which to muffle criticism when compared with the strategy used by the Ahmedabad police commissioner, O P Mathur. He recently slapped the city edition of the Times of India with 'sedition and treason' charges. A series of articles in the paper had questioned Mathur's supposed ties to a mafia don, after a former henchman of the don in question told the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that the commissioner had at one point been on his boss's payroll. Mathur immediately filed charges, claiming that the articles gave "the impression that state police officers were in league with criminals".
And if it's not seditious scribes keeping the Gujarat police busy, intellectuals can always step into the fray. An article by the well-known sociologist Ashish Nandy, on the plight of Gujarati Muslims and the belligerent religious nationalism of the state's Hindu middle class, has resulted in the police bringing criminal charges against Nandy. He stands accused of damaging national integrity and promoting communal tension.
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Unfortunately, a propensity to yell Treason! is all too common in Southasia. In Sri Lanka, the Defence Ministry has labelled journalists critical of the regime's tactics in fighting the LTTE as 'enemies of the state'. And the ministry is remaining true to its assertion that it would take " all necessary measures to stop this journalistic treachery", with journalists now being followed, threatened, beaten, kidnapped and arrested with complete impunity. CP should also note that respected journalist J S Tissainayagam, editor of www.outreachsl.com and columnist for The Sunday Times, has now been in detention for more than 100 days. In all of that time, he has not been charged with any crime.
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Let us wallow in some perennial good news for a moment. Contrary to the near-global trend of stagnation and outright decline in newspaper circulations, Southasia is still, by and large, seeing a solid growth in this area. In India, newspaper sales increased 35.5 percent between 2003 and 2007, and 11.2 percent in 2007 alone. Similarly, over the same period, the numbers were 40 and just under 7.7 percent in Bangladesh; 32 and 0.5 percent in Pakistan; and 36 and 4.6 percent in Nepal. These rising numbers are being attributed to increasing literacy levels and incomes across the region. At the same time, free dailies and online news, which are eating away at circulation numbers in much of the world, have yet to take root in Southasia. Print journalists around the world are looking to the region with envy!
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Of course, the boom does not end with the print media. Lured by the potential merely in terms of the number of possible Internet users, social networking sites have set their sights on the Indian market. But, sites like MySpace and YouTube, both of which recently launching India-specific pages, have little prospect of immediate success. Despite the stereotype of Indians as tech-savvy, computer ownership and Internet usage remains minimal beyond the larger metropolitan areas. As a result, these investors are looking at the Indian market as one likely to bring returns in the medium to long term. There is, however, a great deal of optimism among these firms, especially as widespread mobile-phone ownership across India could well result in the country rapidly taking to mobile Internet. If CP is not mistaken, that is a notable process commonly referred to as 'leapfrogging'.
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This month's weird event (actually, undoubtedly, one of many) was NATO's Kabul office suddenly requiring all journalists to take biometric eye-scans and fingerprinting tests. Evidently, the military planners will be using this information as identification in allowing access to the headquarters. CP thinks this suggests an improvement in the situation in Afghanistan. Why? Well, for the last seven years, journalists have been made to wait outside, in the open, enduring rain, snow, heat and dust storms during security checks. The only reasonable explanation for this: NATO was so busy getting the country back on its feet that it just could not find the time to build even a simple waiting area for the journalists. That it now has the manpower, not to mention the money, to install all of this fancy equipment must mean that it has fewer pressing things to do. And, just to be on the safe side, NATO is also keeping a database on the journalists' religion, ethnicity and marital status.
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The mid-May murder in Delhi of a Nepali domestic help named Hemraj, and a teenager named Aarushi, has since provided enough masala for Indian news channels bored of the on-again-off-again support of the CPI (M) to the UPA or the BJP winning the polls in yet another assembly election – or even the grand finale of the IPL. The gory murder in Noida, home to many of the national TV studios, has some of these channels suddenly playing sleuth. If trial by media were not enough, insensitive reporters are now doubling as detectives; and, like the venerable law-enforcement agencies in India's capital, which rely mainly on wild speculation, these gumshoes have shown scant respect for confidentiality or most other ethics related to reporting on children. The names, photographs and even SMS and chat messages of the murdered girls' friends have been repeatedly flashed across television screens throughout the Subcontinent. Concerned viewers across the region should be urging the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights to take action, after Nupur Talwar, Aarushi's mother, approached it to stop the unethical media practices.
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The harassment of journalists by the Maoists continues largely unabated in Nepal, even after the former rebels' impressive electoral victory. Party leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka 'Prachanda') even went so far as to warn the media to refrain from criticising his party, as they had been "made victorious by the people". Funnily enough, CP does not remember the party telling the people that the persecution of journalists was a part of their vision for a 'new Nepal'
– Chhetria Patrakar
Illustrations: Bilash Rai