When embedded journalists are used by the State to suppress people's voices

Yenning *

When embedded journalists are used by the State to suppress people's voices, then surely democracy is as good as dead. It does not mean to suggest that India is a democracy in the liberal sense of the term. The very AFSPA operating in the Northeast and Kashmir, which the Indian Army and RSS vehemently endorse on operational grounds, is a black spot on India's democracy. This is what Perry Anderson and other scholars submit. Moving to the India heartland, tumultuous onslaughts on educational institutions in the name of nationalism are only evidences of the decadent nature of the Indian State.

Yes years back at least few sections of the Indian journalists attempted to be away from the State, for democracy and the people, and above all for upholding the only two beautiful sections of the Indian Constitution – the Preamble to the Constitution and the Directive Principles of State Policy – in spite of knowing that these two were simply principles or ideals to mislead the peoples. But the trend has changed.

Today embedded journalists are having a field day– a point most starkly made evident by the fiasco in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi when journalists "revealed" that there were anti-India slogan shouting led by JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar (against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru) and closer home "framing inner line permit campaigner with a militant flag," courtesy Esha Roy of the Indian Express.

Pitfalls of Embedded Journalism

A cursory reading of the term in the Wiki will provide the reader that the sole purpose of attaching (sic. embedding) reporters to the military units involved in armed conflicts is to win the war. And as Lt. Col. Rick Long of the U.S. Marine Corps asserted, "Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment." While the term, "embedded journalism", could be applied to many historical interactions between journalists and military personnel, it first came to be used in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the common parlance, today, the term also refers to journalists acting as intelligence in sensitive areas under the cloak of journalism.

The ethics of embedded journalism are considered controversial. The practice has been criticized as being part of a propaganda campaign and an effort to keep reporters away from civilian populations and sympathetic to invading forces; for example by the documentary films, "War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" and "The War You Don't See".

On June 14, 2014, The New York Times published an opinion piece critical of embedded journalism during both the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. It was written by PVT Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking the largest set of classified documents in American history. At no point during her 2009–10 deployment in Iraq, Manning wrote, were there more than a dozen American journalists covering military operations—in a country of 31 million people and 117,000 U.S. troops.

Manning charged that vetting of reporters by military public affairs officials was used "to screen out those judged likely to produce critical coverage," and that once embedded, journalists tended "to avoid controversial reporting that could raise red flags" out of fear of having their access terminated. "A result," wrote Manning, "is that the American public's access to the facts is gutted, which leaves them with no way to evaluate the conduct of American officials."

Manning noted, "This program of limiting press access was challenged in court in 2013 by a freelance reporter, Wayne Anderson, who claimed to have followed his agreement but to have been terminated after publishing adverse reports about the conflict in Afghanistan. The ruling on his case upheld the military's position that there was no constitutionally protected right to be an embedded journalist."

The above critique mainly centres on international affairs. But what about embedded journalism in domestic politics, that too from the perspective of the people's resistance and movement against excesses committed by the State and its military apparatus? People's voices (both resistance and movements) are barometers of the level of democracy they enjoy, and is therefore, a voice for justice and democracy. In other words, it is for improving their lots materially as well as from the perspectives of rights. Now, the issue is what if the so called "people" friendly journalist turns out to be the informer – the true enemy of the people.

Doctored Material without Evidence

In the article, "Journalism as Genocide" Suchitra Vijayan of The Wire, writes, "Journalism demands detachment and objectivity that allows for dissent, disagreement and freedom of expression. In the absence of such ethics, it clears the ground for violence and does great disservice to the democratic way of life". She cites the example of the 2003 verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which found Rwandan journalists Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza guilty of genocide, incitement to genocide, conspiracy and crimes against humanity. The case against Nahimana and Barayagwiza raised important questions regarding the role of the media and their social accountability. For the first time since Nuremberg trials, hate speech was prosecuted as a war crime. The judgment declared that the way the journalists had acted constituted "journalism as genocide".

Suchitra Vijayan compares the Rwanda case with the Godhra incident in Gujarat and states that "The sinister parallels were evident in the 2002 Gujarat". She cited a study report by PUCL in 2002, which found that two vernacular newspapers – in particular Gujarat Samachar and Sandesh – ran false stories, fabricated sensational headlines with the intention to "provoke, communalise and terrorise people", which incited and encouraged Hindus to kill Muslims. Rather than perform the ethical duties that journalism demands, these papers published doctored material without evidence, and furthered arguments that incited violence.

Suchitra Vijayan observes, "The Gujarat riots are not an exception; it simply follows the trajectory of hate entrepreneurship practiced by some journalists and a section of the media. It has a genealogy starting from the Jabalpur riots in 1961, to the riots that consumed Aligarh; Ayodhya to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots."

She further adds, "The reporting and editorialising of communal violence in cases like Gujarat are not isolated. It has to be seen through the editorial narratives broadcast in other incidents like the censorship and silencing of author Perumal Murgan, the arrest and custodial treatment of G.N. Saibaba, the notorious and dubious reporting on "love jihad", the beef politics that led to the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq and others, the reporting of the death of Rohith Vemula and the JNU crackdown. In all these instances, some media commentary chose to perform the function of legitimising the ideology of the ruling government, its political projects and equated it to nationalism."

Finally, she asks, "What happens to journalism when it willingly wraps itself in a flag? To borrow from Adorno it facilitates a politics of murder and destruction."

Sabotaging the ILP related Movement

The "revelation" by Esha Roy comes at a tragic time, at a time when the All Party delegates from Manipur are heading to Delhi to get approval of the three Bills. This being the case, the question is why was Esha Roy so interested in a picture that went viral on the facebook on Wednesday which purportedly shows the key leader of the agitation for inner line permits in Manipur taking an oath of allegiance with the flag of a banned insurgent group?

About the authenticity of the photograph, she only has assurance from a police informer! She also happens to be the same reporter who on August 4, 2015 quoted Security analysts in Manipur stating that the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), a banned militant group, was behind the ILP agitation. But most confounding of all, she was the one who took centre-stage when she brought out in the public eyes "Why Manipur head constable Herojit Singh became an encounter cop".

General public in Manipur would have understood Esha Roy in a better light if the photograph first reached her, and then she made it public through a false facebook account and then finally reported to her paper. In the case of Herojit, the materials and the very person of Herojit was handed over to her by a local journalist. It was Esha who took all the credits. But the present story seems to be different.

The moot point is Esha Roy has been in Manipur for a very long time, attending every social event with a friendly smile, and she is the one who knows the best of: how reliable is the "police truth" in Manipur and how many "truths" are being doctored by them. Now the question that is currently viral on the facebook is without her own "verification" how could she attempt to sabotage the movement related to Inner Line Permit in Manipur.