For pe­cu­liar and of­ten in­cor­rect rea­sons, In­dian Eng­lish lan­guage dailies are cred­ited with car­ry­ing more heft and ob­jec­tiv­ity, than they ac­tu­ally de­serve. One pre­sumes that man­age­ment and ed­i­to­r­ial staff of these news­pa­pers will be un­der lesser pres­sure to plunge to sa­ti­ate com­mu­nal, par­ti­san agen­das, but his­tor­i­cally, Pun­jab’s ex­pe­ri­ence has been dif­fer­ent. World Sikh News ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh looks at some re­cent re­port­ing and com­men­tary in the In­dian Ex­press and fears the nadir that such jour­nal­ism has touched. Let it be known that it is not al­ways that the Big Brother is watch­ing you, the Small Brother also does and speaks out too.  

IN THE GIVEN PO­LIT­I­CAL AT­MOS­PHERE IN THE COUN­TRY, some me­dia houses have come up bet­ter than the oth­ers, and the In­dian Ex­press has of­ten been cred­ited with keep­ing its head above the wa­ter, though no news­pa­per or news tele­vi­sion house is now free of the pres­sures ex­erted by the In­dian regime.

For­mer ed­i­tor of the In­dian Ex­press Arun Shourie fa­mously re­marked not very long ago that every­body in the jour­nal­is­tic world in Delhi knows whether Venka­iah Naidu can pen two para­graphs in Eng­lish but still the news­pa­pers carry long ar­ti­cles, pre­sum­ably writ­ten by him. The In­dian Ex­press has car­ried sev­eral ar­ti­cles by In­dian Vice Pres­i­dent Naidu in re­cent times. So, as we said, any hope about the In­dian Ex­press must come with a rider.

In Pun­jab, we have been notic­ing clear agen­das and bi­ases in sev­eral news­pa­pers. The kind re­flected in the In­dian Ex­press in re­cent times is some of the most wor­ry­ing kind since the news­pa­per oth­er­wise en­joys a bet­ter rep­u­ta­tion.

Re­cently, in Pa­tiala, a man pro­cured a pass from the state gov­ern­ment to pre­sum­ably dis­trib­ute lan­gar. In­stead, he used it to sell books across the state, and in the process, be­came a coro­n­avirus spreader.

What was the job of the re­porter? It was to re­port the facts and ask the au­thor­i­ties some hard ques­tions. The news­pa­per should have asked who did the ver­i­fi­ca­tion when some­one ap­plied for the pass. It should have asked which of­fi­cial was held re­spon­si­ble and what ac­tion was taken. It should have asked who was giv­ing clear­ance to the ve­hi­cles in which the clever fel­low was car­ry­ing books from dis­trict to dis­trict to sell them. It should have asked where were the au­thor­i­ties in all those dis­tricts.

In Pun­jab, we have been notic­ing clear agen­das and bi­ases in sev­eral news­pa­pers. 

In­stead, the news­pa­per puts out a story on 24 April, that starts by say­ing, “Dis­tri­b­u­tion of lan­gar, dis­trib­u­tors trav­el­ling to other cities de­spite the lock­down” were among the rea­sons why Pa­tiala and Ra­jpura be­came hotspots of coro­n­avirus. And this was a clearly provoca­tive and sweep­ing state­ment backed by zero facts. In fact, the de­tails in the story ac­tu­ally prove that de­duc­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of lan­gar from the facts re­ported by the same news­pa­per could only be an act of ex­treme prej­u­dice.

World Sikh News ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh looks at some re­cent re­port­ing and com­men­tary in the In­dian Ex­press and fears the nadir that such jour­nal­ism has touched.#De­r­aBeas @In­di­an­Ex­press #Jour­nal­is­mof­Courage #Tableeghi­Ja­maat #vaishn­odevi @MVenka­iah­Naidu https://​t.co/​1e­qH2mJvnx

— The World Sikh News (@World­SikhNews1) May 1, 2020

You take a pass to dis­trib­ute lan­gar. You do not in­tend to do so at all. You sell books. The re­porter knows all that. Top of­fi­cials tell the re­porter that. The of­fi­cials are quoted in the story say­ing ex­actly that. Still, the first line of the story says “Dis­tri­b­u­tion of lan­gar” was re­spon­si­ble!

Why do we say it was de­lib­er­ate prej­u­dice? Be­cause by the time the story was pub­lished, many more de­tails were al­ready known. The role of the Shiv Sena lead­ers in the en­tire im­broglio was well known and had been re­ported by the me­dia widely, but the re­porter did not even touch that as­pect. This kind of stance of the re­porter could not have es­caped the news ed­i­tor and ed­i­tor but it made it to print. It was given a huge dis­play.

Once a news­pa­per’s re­porters are found har­bour­ing such pro­nounced prej­u­dices against a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­nity in their re­port­ing and their per­sonal so­cial me­dia out­pour­ings, how can any­one ex­pect even a sem­blance of ob­jec­tiv­ity from them?

The po­lice had not blamed the lan­gar dis­tri­b­u­tion. The coro­n­avirus had not spread be­cause of lan­gar. It was spread be­cause a bunch of crooks wanted to make money and a bunch of in­ef­fi­cient or cor­rupt or both of­fi­cials ei­ther did not do their work or looked the other way.

The In­dian Ex­press al­most be­came a part of the cover-up and fudg­ing. When the In­dian Ex­press was claim­ing that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of lan­gar was re­spon­si­ble for turn­ing Pa­tiala into a coro­n­avirus hotspot, the Pa­tiala SSP was ac­tu­ally telling it that those held ac­count­able for the wrong­do­ing had ob­tained passes for lan­gar but in­dulged in buy­ing and sell­ing of books, and it was a mis­use of the passes is­sued for lan­gar.

Which part of this was com­pli­cated for a se­nior jour­nal­ist and an en­tire hi­er­ar­chy of ed­i­to­r­ial su­per­vi­sors not to un­der­stand?

Once a news­pa­per’s re­porters are found har­bour­ing such pro­nounced prej­u­dices against a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­nity in their re­port­ing and their per­sonal so­cial me­dia out­pour­ings, how can any­one ex­pect even a sem­blance of ob­jec­tiv­ity from them?

“Why have you brought back Sikh pil­grims from Ma­ha­rash­tra?”  asks this slip of a re­porter. Se­nior In­dian Ex­press peo­ple who are “friends” of this re­porter on the Face­book ac­count. Is it any­one’s case that the In­dian Ex­press does not see the re­porter’s bi­ases and prej­u­dices? 

It is well known in mod­ern jour­nal­ism that you find a story that you go out look­ing for. What kind of sto­ries do you think such re­porters are search­ing for? Will these re­porters ask the hard ques­tions to the ad­min­is­tra­tion as to the con­di­tions in which the pil­grims from Nanded were kept, the way they should have been screened, who was re­spon­si­ble for sani­tis­ing the ve­hi­cles and why were these not sani­tised, why were they housed in in­hu­man con­di­tions and why are there scenes of peo­ple cry­ing for food in iso­la­tion and quar­an­tine cen­tres? Or will they be blam­ing the vic­tims and ask­ing the CM to an­swer them “per­son­ally” why the peo­ple ven­tured to come to their homes?

Surely, work­ing from home could not be blamed for lethargy, shoddy jour­nal­ism and provoca­tive par­ti­san re­port­ing aimed at vil­i­fy­ing a com­mu­nity and hu­mil­i­at­ing the grand tra­di­tion of lan­gar. In a lot of coun­tries, the news­pa­per would have been hauled up be­fore courts and me­dia om­buds­man bod­ies.

There is an­other tale of an In­dian Ex­press re­porter clearly not just work­ing from home but ov­er­en­thu­si­as­ti­cally mess­ing up from home. This jour­nal­ist, whose re­ports in the news­pa­per leave much to be de­sired when it comes to ob­jec­tiv­ity and bias, has now made her po­lit­i­cal lean­ings and bi­ases very clear.

This re­porter be­rates the Sikh devo­tees vis­it­ing Nanded, ques­tions why were they brought back and wants di­rect an­swers from none other than the chief min­is­ter, but does not do any of this in the news­pa­per. Face­book pro­vides the space and courage to spew venom and ma­lign Sikhs.

This re­porter be­rates the Sikh devo­tees vis­it­ing Nanded, ques­tions why were they brought back and wants di­rect an­swers from none other than the chief min­is­ter, but does not do any of this in the news­pa­per. Face­book pro­vides the space and courage to spew venom and ma­lign Sikhs.

“Why have you brought back Sikh pil­grims from Ma­ha­rash­tra?”  asks this slip of a re­porter. Se­nior In­dian Ex­press peo­ple who are “friends” of this re­porter on the Face­book ac­count. Is it any­one’s case that the In­dian Ex­press does not see the re­porter’s bi­ases and prej­u­dices?

One would be forced to ask why this re­porter does not want to ask Yogi Adityanath who sent buses, Ni­tish Ku­mar-Sushil Modi who want spe­cial trains or Amit Shah who is pulling the strings or gov­ern­ments who trans­ported stu­dents from Kota but wants Amarinder Singh to an­swer.

And this re­porter wants di­rect an­swers. One is forced to pre­sume that this is the new news­gath­er­ing pro­ce­dure sanc­tioned by the In­dian Ex­press ed­i­tors since they all can­not feign ig­no­rance about this re­porters’ ven­omous com­ments.

One needs to ask all such poi­son-spout­ing hacks why they do not ques­tion sim­i­lar ef­forts be­ing made by Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Ma­ha­rash­tra to bring back their peo­ple from other states, not to speak of In­di­a’s ef­forts to get In­di­ans from Canada, US, Aus­tralia and Eu­rope or cit­i­zens of these coun­tries re­turn­ing to their coun­tries?

Who will ask about evac­u­at­ing pil­grims from Vaishno Devi and the gath­er­ings at Dera Beas?

Surely, work­ing from home could not be blamed for lethargy, shoddy jour­nal­ism and provoca­tive par­ti­san re­port­ing aimed at vil­i­fy­ing a com­mu­nity and hu­mil­i­at­ing the grand tra­di­tion of lan­gar. In a lot of coun­tries, the news­pa­per would have been hauled up be­fore courts and me­dia om­buds­man bod­ies.

But then, should we re­ally have any hope of the In­dian Ex­press when it comes to com­mu­nally-coloured jour­nal­ism? The news­pa­per has the ca­pac­ity to match the toxic lev­els of a Su­dar­shan chan­nel or a Re­pub­lic TV virus-tinged pro­gramme against Mus­lims in the name of some mo­rons of some Tableeghi Ja­mat.

Sam­ple this 12 April 2020 In­dian Ex­press col­umn by Coomi Kapoor that de­fines mis­ad­ven­tures in jour­nal­ism.

In her gos­sipy In­side Track dri­vel, she found that the In­dian Health Min­is­ter Mr Harsh­vard­han was the best man for the job. That’s a cer­tifi­cate and leaves the read­ers will lit­tle hope of bring­ing crit­i­cal fac­ul­ties to the cov­er­age of the pan­demic. The Health Min­is­ter has al­ready been pro­nounced a mes­siah. Maybe he even has wings. Coomi Kapoor would know.

Af­ter all, she knows so much about the pan­demic and those who spread it. You would be shocked by her knowl­edge, the kind that has al­ready gone vi­ral in In­dia -right from the lynch­ing of Mus­lims to the ef­forts to dis­en­fran­chise them through mis­con­ceived cit­i­zen­ship laws. The vet­eran jour­nal­ist says, among many of her other in­sin­u­a­tions: “Since this or­tho­dox sect does not be­lieve in vac­ci­na­tion, some feel it but­tresses the the­ory that those not vac­ci­nated with BCG are far more vul­ner­a­ble. Oth­ers be­lieve that the Tab­lighi’s com­mu­ni­ty’s liv­ing and eat­ing habits helped spread the in­fec­tion.”

What is the In­dian Ex­press do­ing? How is this not jour­nal­is­tic lynch­ing of an en­tire com­mu­nity?

So, Mus­lims eat some­thing be­cause of which coro­n­avirus spreads. What ex­actly is that since clearly, peo­ple of other re­li­gions do not eat that stuff?

What is the In­dian Ex­press do­ing? How is this not jour­nal­is­tic lynch­ing of an en­tire com­mu­nity?

Long dead are the claims about Jour­nal­ism of Courage if jour­nal­ists and ed­i­tors are be­ing coura­geous only in openly and shame­lessly flaunt­ing their bi­ases on the news pages of the daily, in their columns or on their Face­book ac­counts.

Hope­fully, bet­ter days will pre­vail and some­day, we will find a cure to coro­n­avirus. How­ever, there is lit­tle hope to rid some in this coun­try of a dan­ger­ous mind­set, which is now men­tion­ing the Tableeghi Ja­mat and the Nanded Sikh pil­grims in the same breath in print and on TV.