Generation of Imagery
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: October 01 2015 -
Almost all the South East Asian States including India had inherited the tendency to respond to internal armed conflicts with their military might in all probability from the colonial regimes in the past.
In India, the military paradigm is more brutal and pronounced in the peripheral States of the Northeast and Kashmir compared to other parts of the country.
What is even more noticeable is the way how the metro-based media endorse the Statist narrative in a position close to supporting the militaristic response.
While one can understand the necessity and imperatives of latching on the overarching process of nation building by what has been often called the national media, there are too many layers added to the local dynamics operating simultaneously.
At the perceptible level, observers have noted that the peculiarity of the situation is quite akin to the manufacturing of chaos neatly packed in little boxes.
When one interrogates whether the media is actually prolonging the armed conflict or if it is facilitating a solution, the pattern of coverage has been more or less based on the selective nature of dissemination of news.
In the process, the media has also unwittingly demonised an imagined “enemy” within.
Moreover, the media representatives in the Northeast also often become the victims of political violence like any other citizens caught between choices of all political actors.
Fear generated through years of militarization has impinged on the autonomy of the functioning of many institutions in differing senses.
This has at times contributed to the reluctance of the media from filing authentic reports.
As a result, one can see that there has been a degeneration of imagination by those in the business of news making heavily constrained by every day pragmatics.
Despite the trend, the media has also seen a certain shift in the use of “words and phrases” considering the larger implications and its impact on the society.
This phenomenon perhaps is responsible for the generation of imagery quite contrary to what has been normatively understood as “the truth.”
Without a serious deliberation, one will find it difficult to truthfully unravel respective positions of both the State and the Non-State actors vis-à-vis the citizenry.
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