Tweeters and bloggers have accused Indian TV news channels
of ignoring the ongoing ethnic riots in Assam, due to a bias in favor of the
Congress Party.
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| Indian Army Soldiers Helping Flood Victims In Assam |
Of course the Indian media is biased to some degree, just
like Fox News or the New York Times. And there might well be a tilt against
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who continues to take the blame for an
unspecified role in the 2002 riots despite various court rulings that there is
not enough evidence to hold him responsible.
Yet since the first tweeters drew attention to the spotty
reportage, all the main newspapers have moved the Assam riots to their front
pages, various web-only publications have opened up the debate on the causes
and larger ramifications of the conflict, and even the international media have
zeroed in. (Anybody who still expects to get their news from TV should stop
reading here).
Thursday's Times of India reports:
Even with the state machinery out in full gear and soldiers
maintaining vigil in four districts, violence in lower Assam continued unabated
on Wednesday, with the conflagration scorching new areas in Kokrajhar and
Chirang districts where eight more bodies were found.
The toll of those killed in ethnic and communal clashes,
fuelled by animosity between Bodos and the rising population of Muslims who
settled on tribal land, now stands at 40. The killings have led to one of the
largest ever exoduses in Assam's recent history, with officials saying 1.7 lakh
(170,000) people from 400 villages in Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri districts
are now homeless and sheltered in 128 camps that dot the conflict zone.
So are the critics overstating the case for a bias-inspired
media blackout because TV coverage was tardy?
Since Partition -- the bloody 1947 division of India and
Pakistan -- the occasional flare-ups of violence between Hindus and Muslims
have been seminal news events, while the riots in Assam involve a usually
ignored tribal group that is vying for a separate state and a Muslim population
that includes illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Moreover, not only Assam but
the whole of India's northeast rarely receives national news coverage, for the
simple reason that so-called "mainstream India" hardly bothers about
the region or its people, who are distinct enough ethnically to seem, anyway,
to hail from another country altogether. Gujarat, on the other hand, has
always been part of the mainstream.
But these arguments have not gone down with critics.
The suggestion that the number of deaths in the two riots –
Gujarat 2002 and Assam 2012 – established a hierarchy of news interest received
extraordinary pushback, and was subsequently retracted. (Only 40 people have
been killed so far in the Assam riots, whereas the toll in Gujarat was in
excess of 1,000.),FirstPost reports.
Similarly:
The reasoning that logistical challenges to getting live
cameras in place across the trouble spots in the northeastern State too was met
with cynicism. In the perception of the media critics, the fact that in this
day and age of advanced technology and 4G connectivity,television cameras
couldn’t get to the scene of the crime quickly enough and beam live images was
merely an extension of their political bias.
There are, indeed, points to be made against both arguments.
It is a morally repugnant reality that 1,000 deaths make a bigger story than
40. But it is a reality. And it is absurd that India's
"national" TV media devotes 80 percent of its time to events taking
place in New Delhi. But that, too, is a reality. And it's the
result of solipsism and ethnocentrism rather than a blinkered allegiance to
Congress Party-style secularism (which is the Indian equivalent of America's
multiculturalism, or, in its worst form, political correctness).
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/india/india-media-assam-riots
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