The
Media in Terror
Analysing Reportage from Theatres of Conflict
Kanchan L*

Is there a symbolic affinity between media coverage and terrorism? Do they feed off and exploit each other? Unlike news coverage of other domains, coverage of terrorism in terms of the focus on terrorist incidents, various terrorist outfits, the publicity generated, the dissemination of information and an analysis of the terrorists' motives and behaviour, raises critical questions of ethics, causation and dependence. A symbiotic relationship has often been posited, and would mean that both media and terrorism feed off and exploit one another for their own narrow interests.

Terrorism as a distinct activity is custom-made for the mass media. Arresting footage and ‘sound bytes’ in the visual media and unsettling photographs and quotes in newspapers and magazines drive both the media’s and terrorists’ interests. Since major terrorist incidents are rich in dramatic, shocking and tragic human-interest, the news media tends to ‘over-cover’ such events,² though without any attendant depth of treatment or approach. Instantaneous communicative capacity and the domination of imagery over substance, consequently, gives a whole new meaning to the episodic twists and turns of a terrorist movement.

Executed to coincide with (then) President Bill Clinton’s visit to India, the Chattisinghpora massacre was believed to have been intended to focus international, and particularly US attention, on Kashmir, and to force the Indo-Pakistani ‘dispute’ onto the agenda of discussions at Delhi and during Clinton’s brief stopover at Pakistan. The near hysterical and frequently distorted coverage of the incident and its day-to-day follow-up secured these objectives admirably, though not, perhaps, in entirely predictable ways.

On March 20, 2000 – the day Clinton arrived in New Delhi on an official visit to India – 35 Sikhs were allegedly killed by suspected Pakistan-backed terrorists at Chattisinghpora in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K).³ Reports mentioned that approximately 17 suspected terrorists dressed in army fatigues had killed the Sikhs, a hitherto neutral community in the State.⁴ The reportage was constructed centrally around ‘the biggest/largest ever massacre’⁵ with deftly combined references to an under-equipped security force (SF) labouring to combat cross-border terrorism and generalised images of the ‘Clinton visit’. There were also prominent reports of unverified allegations that the incident had, in fact, been engineered by the Indian Army or some covert Indian agency.

On March 25, 2000, all major newspapers and the visual media networks reported the arrest of a local ‘terrorist’ Mohammed Yaqoob Wagay, who was allegedly the conduit and guide for the Pakistan-based terrorist outfits responsible for the Chattisinghpora massacre.⁶ The media was unanimous in reporting that it was a major breakthrough for the security forces (SFs). Quoting the Union Home Secretary Kamal Pande, the media reported that according to Wagay, the incident was perpetrated by a joint group of terrorists belonging to the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM).⁷ Reports citing the Home Secretary indicated that Wagay had confessed that he "participated in the carnage"⁸ and had disclosed the names of others involved in the massacre.

The coverage at this stage appeared entirely to be led by, but not faithful to, official disclosures, and was distinctively uninformed and inaccurate. While certain sections of the media indicated that the arrested person was a local conduit,⁹ others reported that he belonged to the Lashkar-e-Toiba.¹⁰ The awry factual documentation of the arrest is discernible in one of the reports conversely asserting that the arrested person was "the Hizb-ul-Mujahideeen kingpin responsible for planning and executing the brutal massacre…".¹¹ The initial reportage on the incident, however, had followed the government line that the incident, carried out to cast a shadow on the Clinton visit, was planned and perpetrated by predominantly foreign mercenaries. In emphasising the spectacular nature of the incident, headline style reportage also led to a great deal of gratuitous glamourisation.¹² It was to be repeated later when five suspects who were said to have participated in the massacre were killed at Panchaltan, Pathribal, approximately 13 km from Chattisinghpora.¹³

On March 28, news reports¹⁴ mentioned that five ‘foreign mercenaries’ allegedly identified by Wagay as the killers of Sikhs were killed in an ‘encounter’ during a joint army-police operation on a lone hut atop a hill at Panchaltan, Pathribal, close to Chattisinghpora. Interspersed within these narratives, a sub-objective – security force denials that the slain suspects were labourers¹⁵ – was being drawn out rather efficaciously by the media. Reports mentioned that the five ‘foreign mercenaries’ killed were, in fact, seasonal labourers working at a nearby brick kiln. Observations regarding the identity of those killed at Pathribal assumed significance in the light of the firing by security force personnel on a group of protestors at Brakpora¹⁶ on April 3, 2000, in which eight persons were killed and approximately twenty injured. The protestors were demanding the exhumation and DNA testing of the bodies of the suspects killed at Pathribal. Commentary on the Brakpora firing emphasized the human suffering of the locals and the victims. The coverage on Brakpora coincided with the J&K government’s order on April 5, 2000, for the exhumation of the bodies of the Pathribal suspects.¹⁷ The coverage generated images primarily of ‘oppressive’ security force personnel bearing down on crowds of protestors, and the poignancy of human suffering.

With the announcement¹⁸ of a judicial inquiry by the J&K government to probe the Brakpora firing incidents, the media focus shifted to the apparent motives of the probe and the discourse on the allegedly excessive use of force by the SFs. Reports attempted to deliberate on the possible political moves and the rationale underlying such a probe, the first of its kind since militancy erupted in the State.¹⁹ Questions on the state’s credibility vis-à-vis human rights were sought to be linked to the announcement of the probe. Certain sections indicated that the probe was meant to assuage the protestors.²⁰ Reports also dwelled at length on the past record of similar probes and proceeded and reiterated the presumption that the whole exercise was futile.²¹

The sequence of actions and reactions following upon Chattisinghpora, and their coverage in the mass media, must be assessed within the context of the fact that such unbridled acts of terrorism constitute a political statement, and have a substantial political intent. Increased and intrusive media coverage is, at once, part of such an intent, and itself becomes an element of the dynamics of its realisation, as it inevitably leads to a global focus on the theatre of conflict, and increasing pressure on the government to generate responses – such as the initiation of steps to secure international mediation (one of the objectives of the Chattisinghpora incident) – that would further the interest of the extremist cause. The killing of 35 Sikhs at Chattisinghpora was an act of sufficient magnitude to make audience attention inevitable. With the backdrop and timing of the act – the Clinton visit, in itself a media event – such attention was infinitely magnified. The dramatic vignettes that followed, often a microcosm of the larger incident, ensured that J&K received considerably greater coverage in the international media than it could otherwise have secured. The sensational and oversimplified scenario projected through the media created images and pressures that were entirely divorced from, and uninformed by, the realities on the ground. Worse, the follow-up reportage was even thinner on facts than the original story, suggesting a displacement of critical perspectives on the scourge and character of international terrorism. The allegations that Wagay "participated in the carnage",²² for instance, were never followed up, and there was no further scrutiny or analysis of his role, or even of his identity as a member of the HM, its ‘kingpin’ or as the ‘Butcher of Anantnag.’

The appearance of reports in a piecemeal fashion tends to create a bland and unquestioning acceptance of the narrative on the evolving scenario. The continuing nature of the incident – as also of the news cycle – necessitates an objective ‘recapturing’ or reassessment of the incident in its entirety, but this rarely happens and the media continues sourcing for ‘side-narratives’, even as the original incident is pushed into the background by the succession of events. For the media, the context appears as a mini-series – Sikhs killed; suspects killed; protestors killed – with an apparent ‘break’ created at each ‘stage’. Fragmentation may be construed here as one of the reasons for the over-simplification in media presentation of the Sikh massacre. The exploration of additional or side-narratives ought to have been an amalgam of inter-related aspects in the specific context, but was seldom treated as such.

The sourcing of such side-narratives is simply not complete enough to encapsulate the entirety of the incident and its linkages. Thus, as the media began to focus on the Pathribal incident, it excluded further sustained analysis of the massacre. Interestingly, the killing on March 29, 2000, of six more suspects in the Chattisinghpora incident,²³ did not receive any comparable coverage since the media thought that the ‘hunt’²⁴ had already plateaued. In a continuous news cycle, the Press never rests to sum up and reassess, but is forever pushing forward, grasping at the latest twists and turns in the episodic succession.²⁵ As the intensity of the incident began to deepen, media intrusiveness increased with a preference for the sensational.

Terrorists have a strong vested interest in converging abnormality and in the projection of a distorted picture. This is why the mass media have a heavy responsibility not to assist them unthinkingly in furthering this objective,²⁶ especially since the presence of several simultaneous themes and the rush of high profile coverage creates immense dramatic focus without any corresponding accuracy in the images projected, or any meaningful contextualisation of the events.

The Chattisinghpora incident was intended to prick the diplomatic conscience of the international community ‘to do something’ or as George Habash, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, put it, albeit in a different context, "we force people to ask what is going on?"²⁷ With a grand background, the violent act at Chattisinghpora underscored the continuum of the terrorists’ goals and the inadequacy of the media and international response that allows a massacre of innocents to define its agenda in favour of the perpetrators of such an act.

The post-Chattisinghpora phase witnessed an extraordinary discourse in the media, a rarity in India. With a surfeit of inter-connected events and a complete lack of authoritative sources to base reportage on, the contours of the Pankaj Mishra – Prem Shankar Jha debate²⁸ are an interesting sample of journalism at its worst, as a range of post-factum assumptions were applied to the question whether the Indian Army or agencies had ‘organised’ the Chattisinghpora incident. Mishra blamed the Indian intelligence agencies for the incident,²⁹ while Jha attributed it to the Pakistan-backed LeT and HM terrorists. Mishra’s narrative in his ‘Paradise Lost’³⁰ argues that "the number of atrocities in Kashmir is so high, and the situation in general so murky that it is hard to get the truth," and on this tenuous basis proceeds to hypothesize that the involvement of Indian agencies in the massacre "lends weight to the … suspicion that the massacre in Chitisinghpura was organised by Indian intelligence agencies in order to influence Clinton…" There is no suggestion in Mishra’s arguments that he secured or sought to secure any evidence, or to consult and assess Army or official sources to arrive at his conclusion, neglecting the most fundamental rule of objectivity in reportage from theatres of conflict – that one should not treat all parties as the same, particularly when all the parties are not the same,³¹ and that a fair hearing should be given to every party before a conclusion is reached. More significantly, where no conclusion is possible, proposing unsubstantiated hypotheses and guessing at the possible is hazardous, if not mischievous, and certainly does not contribute to a reasonable and reasoned debate.

The degree to which the media can be ‘played out’ by interested parties – especially overground groupings sympathetic to the terrorists, and on emotive issues – is well illustrated by the case of the alleged mass rape of women during a cordon-and-search operation by personnel of the 4^th Rajputana Rifles of the 68 Mountain Brigade at Kunan Poshpora on the night of February 23-24, 1991. The incident generated much controversy and enormous publicity given its linkages with human rights and alleged security force excesses.³² The charge was that "not less than 23 but possibly up to 100 women of all ages and conditions…. were raped by one to seven men at a time…. often in the presence of their children and families."³³

The news coverage of the incident crystallised on February 24, 1991, with the national media carrying front page stories, primarily drawn from a range of images and welded together into a specific perspective that established the framework for much of the coverage and debate that followed. Through various news devices – arresting headlines, photographs, descriptive language and a juxtaposition of items – media reportage on the Kunan Poshpora incident converged around the single aspect of presumed human rights violations by the security force personnel. Media narratives also projected evocative images of the allegedly intoxicated state of the security force personnel, and the forced assembly of the village men outside their houses.

Reports mentioned that a fact-finding delegation headed by Chief Justice Mufti Bahauddin Farooqi, which investigated the incident on March 17, 1991, had stated that police authorities had not permitted the women to be clinically examined and that normal investigative procedures were not followed by the concerned authorities.³⁴ There were also indications about a delay – adequately reported by the national media – in registering a complaint of the alleged mass rape and consequent moves to ‘cover up’ the incident.³⁵ Subsequent to the J&K government's inquiry – conducted by Divisional Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah – findings of which became public on April 10, 1991, conclusions were drawn that the women had not reported the incident immediately, and that eleven of the women who reported also admitted that there were too few soldiers in the unit to have committed the number of rapes reported.³⁶ Government sources while releasing the report also stated that the villagers were sympathetic to the militants and that they had concealed weapons for them. These claims, press reports indicated earlier, were false since no arrests for possession of illegal weapons were reported from Kunan Poshpara.³⁷

The Kunan Poshpara incident as reported by the media raised questions vis-à-vis the complexities faced by media personnel in reporting terrorism. While the fact-finding delegation supplemented the media reportage, the subsequent Habibullah report found the villagers’ claims to be riddled with contradictions.

Journalistic credulousness in cases such as the Kunan Poshpara incident is rooted in an endemic mistrust of the establishment and a desire to seek out evidence of errors or misdeeds among persons in authority. Frequently under scrutiny, the SFs fail to respond adequately to unfounded allegations. In the Kunan Poshpara incident, even as the official investigation was in progress, the media continued with its reportage, questioning the credibility and intent of inquiries, and prejudging the case against the Army.

An Inquiry Committee constituted by the Press Council of India³⁸ later explored the charges of misreportage by the media relating to human rights violations by the security forces. The Commission noted that one of the women who had reported the rape informed the Press Council of India Committee (PCI Committee) that she had delivered a baby three days after the alleged rape incident. The Committee observed that the District Magistrate (DM), Syed Mohammed Yasin’s Report,³⁹ noted that the baby had been delivered three days before the alleged rape. The Committee also examined a videocassette⁴⁰ in which 25 women and some men of the village recounted the incident. The same woman is reported to have stated in this cassette that the baby was delivered six days before the incident.

The Committee also noted that the confidential report sent by the DM to the Divisional Commissioner, Wajahat Habibullah, on March 7, 1991, was deliberately leaked to the Press, and subsequent coverage on the incident quoted the DM as saying that "the armed forces behaved like violent beasts… A large number of armed personnel entered into the houses of villagers and at gun-point gang-raped 23 ladies without any consideration of their age…."⁴¹. The Ministry of Defence immediately denied the press reports.⁴² The media reports about the Divisional Commissioner’s alleged outrage at the incident and his supposed resignation in protest were also found to be untrue by the Committee.⁴³ The DM in his meetings with the Committee pointed out that he had recorded the observations of 23 women, and the Committee opined that "the emotional trauma he witnessed in the village appeared to constitute the circumstantial evidence on which he based his report in which he had recommended a fuller inquiry…. Newsmen subsequently took the alleged incident as proven fact because the DM had said so and a FIR had been filed."⁴⁴ The Committee also records a senior J&K media person as saying that, in a conversation after the incident the DM is reported to have admitted to three rapes, but felt compelled to report 23 fearing a threat to his life.⁴⁵ Reviewing the evidence, the PCI Committee concluded:

Commenting specifically on the videotaped ‘evidence’, the Committee added:

The Kunan Poshpara incident is an extraordinary example of the many news reports that routinely rely on information provided by an array of terrorist front organisations alleging atrocities by the security forces vis-à-vis human rights abuse, and that are carried without any attempt to confirm the veracity of the claims. A number of human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Asia Watch, periodically reaffirm such information without any confirmatory procedures, and enter the discourse on human rights without any self-control or objective norms of assessment of reportage.⁴⁸ In this, they lend themselves to the terrorists’ strategy to erode the confidence of the public in, and support for, the SFs, and also to undermine their morale and effectiveness. Terrorists look for portrayals of the SFs as criminals in uniform and as the ‘real’ oppressors. The unsuspecting audience is thus confronted with a barrage of such propaganda by terrorist outfits and their front organisations through the media. Alongside this propaganda, criticism of and allegations against the SFs also emerge from public figures and elements of the media who, while themselves abjuring and condemning violence, attack the security forces from preconceived perspectives and in immoderate language that sometimes echoes that of the terrorists.⁴⁹ This does not, of course, imply that the SFs are entirely innocent of all blemish, but rather suggests that there must be some balance and procedural objectivity in the public critique of these Forces.

Journalistic emphasis on descriptions of what is visible can easily create distortions and confusion in the meaning that is constructed by audiences because much of what occurs in terrorist events is invisible to journalists.⁵⁰ More often than not, journalists reconstruct the events through a reliance on information from authorities and victims and relations who are rarely present at the time of the incident, and each of whom is a party to the conflict. Their knowledge of events is ordinarily limited to the overt violence and its immediate aftermath, and not to the sequence of events itself. The problem is compounded by the fact that the national media relies on local stringers whose understanding of the terrorist incidents are skewed by personal bias and an inability or unwillingness to identify the actual interests underlying specific incidents. The integrity of sources is, in fact, a severe and persistent problem. For instance, The Daily Excelsior, a Jammu and Kashmir-based daily, on July 18, 2000, carried a news item with a headline "2 freed from militants’ clutches". Another Jammu and Kashmir daily, Kashmir Times also carried the news item on the same day with the headline "2 youngsters rescued from militants". Apart from the distinguishing headlines, both the news reports had the same language – indeed, were a verbatim copy of each other. The stories were probably based on an army release or an agency report; but if this was the case, then the effort to pass these off as stories emanating from their own correspondents is clearly an act of dishonesty – either on the part of the correspondents themselves, or on that of the newspapers.

In his discourse on the relationship between media reportage and terrorism, Michel Wievorka rejects the construct of a symbiotic relationship, and proposes four alternative relational modes, the last of which he describes as total break, and which is best explained in terms of a coercive agenda pursued by the terrorists vis-à-vis the media.⁵¹ A total break entails that terrorists regard any dissenting media as an enemy to be punished and destroyed.⁵² An illustration of such a coercive relationship is provided by the six-page ‘code of conduct’ for the Press issued by the Sohan Singh Panthic Committee⁵³ in Punjab, which was published by certain newspapers on November 22, 1990. The ‘code of conduct’:⁵⁴

• Banned the usage of words like terrorist, extremist, alleged or suspected, and subversive. The entire media including the government-controlled and the national media were instead to adopt 'respectable' words like Kharki and Jangju;
• It demanded an omission of the prefix ‘so-called’ or ‘self-styled’ before the rank of terrorist leaders, and the indication of the rank without inverted commas;
• No further reference to the Panthic Committee as being Pakistan-based;
• The mass media was asked to use the word Sant while referring to Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The ‘code’ castigated newspapers like The Hindustan Times, The Times of India, Hind Samachar, Nawa Zamana and Lok Lehar for not using the word Sant as a pre-fix while referring to Bhindranwale;
• Journalists were instructed to take ‘directives’ from the area and district level terrorist outfits;
• Any violation of such directives invited the penalty of death. ‘Memorable punishment’ was to be meted out to those violating the code while ‘reporting from the Land of Khalistan’; and
• The repressive ‘code of conduct’ warned media personnel: "Please remember we watch out everything and shall spare no one…. Report honestly and bravely and accept the creation of Khalistan."

The publication of the Press ‘code of conduct’ alongwith other⁵⁵ suppressive ‘codes’ on the use of Punjabi language for all official purposes, enforcing various ‘social reforms’, declaring Amritsar, Anandpur Sahib and Damdama Sahib as ‘holy cities’, a dress code for college girls and school children, etc., elicited instant and widespread compliance. The publication of such revanchist ‘codes’ was also directed towards securing a larger communicative reach, since conventional forms such as letters, posters, proclamations or oral messages possess a limited comparative efficacy.

The threats issued by the Panthic Committee was reinforced by the chilling murder of R K Talib, Station Director, All India Radio (AIR), on December 6, 1990.⁵⁶ The unnerving nature of the ‘code’ and the methods of its imposition is discernible in the testimonies of editors and correspondents to the Press Council Sub-Committee⁵⁷ which confirmed that they had no doubt about the seriousness of the threats received. By and large, they took recourse to safety through silence. The larger sense of insecurity prevailing within other professional groups – including empowered segments in the administration and justice system – made them ponder, "Why newsmen as a class should act or react differently from civil servants, judges or other sections of society."⁵⁸ Unwillingly and under duress, a major section of the media in Punjab was compelled to adopt the ‘code’. The only newspapers to defy the ‘code’, openly and totally, were the two leftist Punjabi papers, Nawan Zamana (published by the Communist Party of India) and Lok Lehar (published by the Communist Party of India - Marxist), six radical left (Marxist-Leninist) weeklies published from Ludhiana, Patiala and elsewhere,⁵⁹ and the Hind Samachar-Punjab Kesari group.⁶⁰

Prior to the repressive ‘code’, Sikh terrorist outfits had made deep inroads into the media in Punjab with the forced publication of the full-text of the 21-page Sukha-Jinda letter to the then President of India, R Venkataraman, in the last week of July 1990.⁶¹ Consequent to the text being despatched by terrorist outfits to newspaper offices with an emphatic threat in the event of non-publication of the full text, a majority of the newspapers in Punjab carried abridged versions on July 27, 1990. The Tribune and Dainik Tribune (in Hindi) carried abridged versions, but the Punjabi Tribune, one of whose correspondents had received a direct threat carried the complete text.⁶² According to the Verghese Committee findings:

The Hind Samachar Group, which attempted to report terrorist incidents fearlessly, was made the prime target of terrorist attacks. Violence was unleashed against every section of the media that was ideologically opposed to the terrorists. The journalist’s right to life was made conditional on ‘media co-operation’. The Babbar Khalsa, a terrorist group, issued a ten-point ‘code of conduct’ after abducting M.L. Manchanda, Station Director of All India Radio (AIR), at Patiala and subsequently killing him in May 1992.⁶⁴ The Manchanda killing was intended to inflict a specific Panthic ‘code’ for the electronic media that, at its most innocuous, required women newsreaders and anchors on television to cover their heads; banned the words 'terrorist' or 'atankvadi' and their derogatory equivalents and sought an end to all non-Punjabi language programming.⁶⁵

Coercion, however, is not the only relational mode, and collusive arrangements play an equal part in the dynamics of terrorist-Press relations. Apart from their intimidating tactics, the terrorists in Punjab were also able to win-over and influence Press correspondents in key positions. Evidence of collusive networks emerged in the context of certain Press personnel in the vernacular media reportedly assisting in finalising the Resolution on Khalistan and also working for the Sohan Singh Panthic Committee.⁶⁶ Instinctively or as a tactical move, the terrorists felt at ease with and cultivated the vernacular media, since such inputs were directed at projecting the legitimacy of the ‘struggle for Khalistan’ among the rural constituency.

Where specific terrorist outfits failed to influence or terrorise journalists or otherwise secure their propaganda objectives, they started their own publications. J.S. Rode, a former Jathedar (chief priest) of the Akal Takht, started a pro-terrorist newspaper Aj Di Awaz from Jalandhar. A letter written by the then Pakistan-based Wassan Singh Zaffarwal, Chief of the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), to one of his associates in November 1991, details the various components of the terrorist agenda vis-à-vis the media:

The terrorists also relied on certain sections of the foreign media to openly preach sedition and propagate terrorism. It was necessary from the terrorists’ perspective to sustain the support of expatriate Sikhs. Moreover, these publications could not be influenced or pressured by the Indian state, as laws in these countries were different from those in India. Various terrorist outfits launched publications in Europe and the USA to propagate their ideology and to serve as a fund-raising mechanism.⁶⁸

In Punjab, the role of foreign television channels was limited since airwaves were still government controlled and the current surfeit of news channels was still to come into being. But, radio programmes, especially broadcasts from abroad, provided substantial publicity to the terrorists’ agenda. Mention is made in this context, of the role played by Ankheela Punjab, a radio programme run by Billu Hansra from Canada.⁶⁹ It consistently carried interviews of terrorists and the leaders of their front organisations to cater to the expatriate Sikh populace. Ankheela Punjab’s broadcasts in the form of interviews with the leaders of terrorists outfits and the dissemination of information relating to their activities and agenda was, to a large extent, linked to the emerging foreign operations of Sikh terrorist organisations.

On August 10, 1990, the Punjab government sent a circular to all newspapers instructing them not to carry ‘objectionable advertisements and subversive writings’ as these were liable to attract a number of provisions under the Indian Penal Code and the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act 1987 (TADA). The government also stated that it did not wish to employ these penal provisions, and preferred to leave it to the newspapers themselves to exercise due discretion.⁷⁰ However, all District Magistrates were empowered to enter newspaper and related premises and seize or forfeit papers and publications violative of Section 95 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Sec 95 CrPC).⁷¹ Thus, within the space of a year beginning with the forced publication of the Sukha-Jinda letter in July 1990 to the above-mentioned Punjab government order, the media was caught in a quagmire. Given their conflicting agendas, one of the parties – either the government or the terrorists – was bound to be displeased with the what was printed at one point of time or another.

Thus, the Chandigarh administration seized copies of an edition of The Tribune on February 2, 1991, for carrying a news report on the ultimatum issued by the Panthic Committee, which listed certain named officials for ‘dire punishment’ if they failed to switch to the exclusive use of Punjabi in all matters, as demanded by the Panthic Committee.⁷² Consequent to the report being dropped in subsequent editions after the administrative action, the Panthic Committee issued a three-page directive addressed by name to Punjab and Chandigarh-based editors threatening them with execution if they did "nothing to resist what was described as Government censorship."⁷³

In response to the action taken against Ajit in Jalandhar, its editor Barjinder Singh wrote to the Press Council of India (PCI) on March 28, 1991, providing clarifications to the effect that his newspaper was being discriminated against.⁷⁴ The PCI scrutinised one of the news item (February 7, 1991) that was impugned and found that it carried a bandh (strike) call in Amritsar and Gurdaspur, issued by the Khalistan Armed Force, a proscribed terrorist outfit. The PCI concluded that the news item could scarcely be regarded as ‘news’ or ‘another point of view’, which was one of the points of defence of the Ajit group. The Ajit in its February 26, 1991, edition carried a report entitled ‘Panthic Committee opposes Press Censorship’ containing a threat from the Panthic Committee (Zaffarwal) that the terrorists would ‘impose counter-censorship to oppose Government censorship’ with effect from March 15, 1991.⁷⁵ Although the Ajit group defended the report by indicating that The Times of India had also carried the story albeit under a different header,⁷⁶ the aforesaid news report distinctly carried forward the agenda of terrorism. The Verghese Committee notes that a case was also registered by the Chandigarh administration against The Times of India under TADA for publishing an item on January 18, 1991, based on a press note issued by the Sohan Singh Panthic Committee.⁷⁷

The media in Punjab, consequently, had to manoeuvre through a troubled structure of restrictions imposed by the administration and ‘censorship’ by the terrorist outfits. With regard to the former, the Verghese Committee discerned that not all Punjab editors and journalists felt aggrieved by the government’s notification regarding the use of Sec 95 CrPC. It cites the editor of a leftist newspaper Nawan Zamana as saying:

The vortex of conflicting pressures within which the media is forced to operate in situations of strife is visible in India’s Northeast as well. Here we see a ‘quagmire scenario’ and a variety of ‘pulls and counter-pulls’. As a senior journalist from the Northeast expressed it, "Militant groups would force a newspaper editor or reporter to publish a certain statement and the government would then question the editor or the reporter on why the statement by forces working against the Indian state should be published."⁷⁹ Indeed, the complexity of the conflict in the region compounds the complexity of media presentation. Terrorist outfits like the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (both the Khaplang and Isak-Muivah factions), the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) have very strong propaganda units in their respective spheres of influence, and these exert enormous pressure on journalists and newspaper establishments.⁸⁰

With the waning of support base of terrorist groups and increasing popular revulsion against the use of extremist violence, these groups have now begun to cultivate the media more vigorously to secure legitimacy. The mushrooming of insurgent groups⁸¹ in the region has also led to the phenomenon of small and medium newspapers – usually the vernacular Press – being supported and sustained by terrorist groups. These newspapers provide publicity and ideological succour to the terrorist outfits.

The publication of underground literature – under duress or otherwise – often makes the media a conveyor belt of the ideas of various terrorist and secessionist groups. The vernacular media in the Northeast has often been accused of obliging proscribed groups by publishing, verbatim, the press releases and propaganda literature of such organisations.⁸² Reasons for such a phenomenon are not far to seek – the obsession with underground outfits⁸³ and their literature within the context of the competitive environment of journalism in conflict situations that propels them to push controversial, sensational and speculative stories. The problem is deepened further by the fact that the vernacular media lacks the professionalism required for reportage from theatres of conflict.

Reprisals and the threat of reprisals against media personnel whose coverage is considered inadequate or unfavourable by the terrorists is another reason why the media often ends up toeing the terrorists’ line. In October 1999, A. Lalrohlu, editor of a Manipur daily, was killed by unidentified terrorists.⁸⁴ Brajamani Singh, editor of Manipur News, an Imphal-based English daily and President of the All Manipur Journalists’ Association, was killed by suspected terrorists on August 20, 2000.⁸⁵ On October 26, 1998, the Assam Police claimed to have foiled a possible attempt on the life of D.N. Bezboruah, editor of The Sentinel and a harsh critic of the ULFA.⁸⁶ The office of the Pan Manipur Youth League (Pan MYL), which publishes Lamyanba, was attacked by unidentified terrorists on August 25, 2000.⁸⁷

Coercive pressure is also exerted on the Press by the government. The archaic Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act, 1911, has often come in handy for this purpose. The then Nipamacha Singh ministry in Manipur used this Act in April 2000 to arrest N. Biren, editor of Naharolgi Thoudang,⁸⁸ a vernacular daily. Ajit Bhuyan, editor of the Assamese-language daily Asomiya Protidin has been the target of repeated arrests since August 1997⁸⁹ under the National Security Act, though this is not necessarily because of what he publishes in the paper. Bhuyan, in fact, has been linked by the authorities to the outlawed ULFA, though charges have never been proved. Similarly, Prakash Mahanta, a reporter based in the Central Assam district town of Nagaon, was arrested on February 7, 1998, on charges of allegedly aiding the ULFA. In this case, however, the arrest was subsequent to a series of reports filed by Mahanta on alleged corruption and other irregularities in the ruling Asom Gana Parishad-led government.⁹⁰

In order to understand the relationship between the media and insurgency in the Northeast, mention must also be made of certain student and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that operate as part of an extended collusive network with the terrorist groupings. The Shillong Times, for instance, published a letter containing 35 questions addressed to a ‘students’ association’ in Shillong, Meghalaya. The students’ outfit admitted to the ‘collection of tax and free petrol’ in the city, but refused to answer the rest of the charges listed in the letter.⁹¹ In Arunachal Pradesh, The Eastern Citizen, a local daily had to close down for a week as a result of the aggressive response of certain ‘NGOs’ after these were criticized in the paper. Similarly, on October 31, 2000, a violent attack was made on Gabriel Wangsu, the editor of The Dawn-Lit Post in Arunachal Pradesh.⁹²

The government also exerts other patterns of pressure against the media, including the denial of advertisement support to newspapers. This is particularly crippling for the small and medium papers.⁹³ Geoffrey Yaden, editor of the Nagaland Post, a leading English daily in Nagaland, observes: "We experienced the worst of times when the government blocked advertisements and subjected us to all kinds of pressure, accusing us of siding with extremist groups. Why should the government be afraid of what appears in the newspapers? The government has its own machinery to counter such reports."⁹⁴

There is also another, less noticed but more complex distortion in the reportage on terrorism and conflicts in India’s Northeast: the arrogance of the mainstream or ‘national’ media (read, the Delhi Press) vis-à-vis the region. The neglect by the national Press is compounded by its fitful and exclusive focus on incidents of violence that contribute to an image of a simplistic and undifferentiated ‘Northeast’ depicted as an area of continuous and overwhelming violence. This evidently neglects the enormous diversity of the States in the region, and the many areas of peace and relative development within even those States that are afflicted by strong insurgent and terrorist movements. The exclusive focus on violence underplays the normal and peaceful developments in the region, and projects an imbalanced and poorly informed perspective that underlines discontent and furthers the alienation of the people of India’s Northeast. There is, clearly, enormous need to secure a more balanced coverage and perspective on events in this troubled region.

The Kargil War caught the government and security forces unaware, even as it did the media. Media reportage on Kargil, India’s first ‘televised war’, cut across the normal divisions of stance and style and converged around a single dramatic image of a nation at war.

The security force establishment deemed it fit to clamp down on any kind of news coverage in the initial phase of the Kargil War. The imposition of restraints was primarily justified in terms of the logic of operational security. Commencing with indications of heavy infiltration on May 3, 1999,⁹⁵ and the Pakistani attack at an ammunition depot in Kargil on May 15, 1999, till May 25, 1999, when the Indian Army permitted its first official media coverage,⁹⁶ the media was barred from any kind of access to the theatre of conflict. The decision to allow media coverage after May 25, 1999, albeit for a short while before another clampdown was imposed, was influenced by the perceived advantages of the media acting as a ‘force multiplier’⁹⁷ or to ‘win the battle for hearts and minds’. The clampdown was eased when the security establishment began to realise that the entire exercise was proving counter-productive.

However, on the night of June 4, 1999, the Army Headquarters (AHQ) in New Delhi abruptly cancelled travel permits of Press personnel proceeding to the Kargil front. No justifications were provided by the AHQ, except an unsubstantiated brief that certain photographs appearing in the media had disclosed Indian gun positions.⁹⁸ Operational security justifications nonchalantly conceded during the Kargil War appear skewed in the post-factum explanations by the government. Nevertheless, the failure of understanding was not restricted to the Army’s handling of the Press, and extended to the character and content of reportage as well. The Kargil Review Committee Report observed that "the full dimensions of the Kargil episode and its implications were not gauged or properly appreciated by the media for weeks after the first discovery of the intruders until the Indian Air Force was committed on May 26."⁹⁹

In addition to the restraints imposed on the domestic media, the government also proscribed the website of the Pakistani daily, Dawn, and the Pakistan Television (PTV).¹⁰⁰ The mass media responded feebly. The then Information Broadcasting Minister, Pramod Mahajan was given space to clarify the government stand on censorship in Indian Express with a news item: 'Why I blocked Pak TV?'.¹⁰¹ The same daily, in a vacillating stand in an edit-page article entitled ‘Let the media witness the mess’, made a fervent plea to allow Press personnel to cover the war from the scene of firing.¹⁰² The Kargil R