Uri attack: Who needs Army, media has already declared war on Pakistan

If the Narendra Modi government was to go by the coverage of the Uri attack in the media, India would already be waging war on Pakistan.

And the Pakistani media would make one believe that the attack was staged by India itself to distract attention from the Kashmir situation.

That’s media for you in the age of 24X7 news blasts. In the past few days of raucous and high-decibel coverage, the media was embedded with the establishment in both countries.

The media often gets embedded with national interests on such occasions. In the process, it ends up compromising its core principles of working as a watchdog, maintaining accuracy, objectivity and neutrality.

But that’s not so problematic because in the time of a "war-like" situation, the media could be accused of compromising national interests if it stuck to its core principles. It could even be accused of helping the enemy if it were to question the government’s broader motive and stand.

However, what’s not defendable is media conduct when it assumes the role of leading the government to wage war; when it begins fuelling public opinion through jingoistic coverage to make the government go on the warpath under the pressure of public opinion being created by the press.

In the wake of the Uri attack, our television channels seemed in a race of goading the government to go for war against Pakistan. They also led the opposition parties, former army generals and strategic affairs experts in creating an atmosphere for battle.

Even the generally staid NDTV was no exception. Its flamboyant but voice-of-reason anchor Barkha Dutt was sailing along the general mood. Retribution was the buzzword on her prime time programme The Buck Stops Here.

Not only ex-army generals, but even diplomats and mature opposition party spokesmen such as Pawan Varma were calling for “retribution". Even those who tried hard not to sound warmongers, the most sober prescription suggested by them as a way forward for the government was “retribution but a coherent, calibrated, well-thought out, no knee-jerk strategy".

Peace was a word that was thrown out of the window on television networks. Dutt too seemed to be avoiding "engagement", a more sober-sounding word, like the plague.

If the Indian media was in a tizzy, the situation in Pakistan was like "fair is foul and foul is fare”. They jumped ahead of their government in blaming the Uri terrorist attack on India itself. Their transgression was not limited to compromising objectivity and neutrality, but resorting to fantastic falsehoods. Pakistani newspapers were not reporting and commenting on the story, they were writing fiction.

"The Indian political and security establishment is notorious for designing bizarre pseudo-operations so that it could defame Pakistan in the eyes of the world,” The News International wrote in an article titled “Uri attack is addition to RAW failures".

In another article, the paper quoted sources in the Pakistani security establishment, saying it was "a Pathankot-like Indian-staged drama to trumpet its terrorism mantra against Pakistan" and the battalion headquarters in Uri was "chosen deliberately to antagonise the Sikhs from supporting the Muslims’ struggle in Kashmir".

The Express Tribune surmised that since Indian generals and diplomats had started blaming Pakistan even while the attack was under way, the forgone conclusion was that eventually Pakistan would be blamed.

The Dawn chose to rest its case on what the Pakistani army maintained - “no infiltration is allowed from the Pakistani soil".

The media in general draws flak for reporting of emotionally charged events involving states. However, there are cases of media organisations completely ignoring perceived national interests in favour of professional ethics, and inviting the government’s wrath. 

BBC’s coverage of the Falklands war in 1982 is an example. It famously said that then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was fighting war with Argentina as well as the BBC.

Thatcher accused the BBC of “assisting the enemy” by broadcasting her government’s secret plans in advance. She also accused it of referring to the British soldiers as the “British” instead of “our soldiers".

As for the BBC, its reporters were simply following instructions, the motto of which was: “We are not Britain. We are BBC.”

So angry was Thatcher that she toyed with the idea of taking over the BBC. She wrote later in her autobiography Baroness Thatcher: “My concern was always the safety of our forces. Theirs was news.”

However, global media behemoths have often been accused and found to be reporting stories with slants to serve their government or the state’s interests.

One interesting anecdote involving CNN’s star anchor Christiane Amanpour would bring out how global media giants fall for national interests. Amanpour invited Russia Today international anchor Anissa Naouai as a guest to discuss the Russia-Ukraine limited war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

They got into a scrap when Christiane rather patronisingly began quizzing Anissa over Vladimir Putin’s role in Ukraine, his efforts to muzzle the press and Russia Today’s pro-Putin news coverage.

Anissa told Christiane bluntly that she had been propagating the line of the US state department for years. And that she had encouraged (erstwhile) President Bill Clinton to go to war in Yugoslavia. The conversation went like this:

Naouai: You've propagated the line of the state department for over 15 years, starting with Yugoslavia and all the way into Syria. And now you're doing it for Ukraine, essentially.

Amanpour: Oh, my goodness. Have you seen any of my reports about Syria?

Naouai: I've seen lots of your reports and in not one report were you found questioning the US government and their policy.

Amanpour: You just go and see the interview with President Clinton.

Naouai: I know that interview very well, Christiane, and you were propagating war.

Amanpour: You're… Exactly. Good.

Naouai: You were basically encouraging Bill Clinton to go to war.

Amanpour: Oh, and that was what Bill Clinton wanted, was it?

Naouai: I don’t know what Bill Clinton wanted. I'm talking about your work as a journalist.

Our media is not the only one holding the government’s hand and encouraging Modi to go to war.

Also read: BJP, Congress are sadly the same. So are their reactions to Mumbai and Uri attacks

Also read: Twitter is proof why BJP should have been in Opposition during Uri attack