Media in the time of war

India waged a limited war on two fronts It justifiably chose to retaliate against Pakistan for the Baisaran massacre With Delhi and Islamabad agreeing to a ceasefire it must now be unequivocally said mdash India unjustifiably chose to fire salvos against its own mediaThe Modi government is presumably unaware of the conflict of emotions that assails journalists every time their own nation goes to war There is the understandable desire in them to side with their own nation triggering a clash with their professional duty of telling the truth This is an onerous task as journalists know that all governments in the time of war engage in fabrications and denials to boost the morale of their citizensThis universal backdrop to all conflicts will help fathom the happenings of May 8 when India awoke to the news of its attack on nine Pakistani terror sites As the hours passed speculations began over whether any of the Indian jets were hit A crack reporter tweeted saying officials albeit anonymous had confirmed losses only to delete the post hours later That correspondentrsquos finding subsequently found an echo in the foreign mediarsquos stories Should the correspondent have waited to regurgitate Indiarsquos official briefings on the May 78 attack as many suggestedBut this question was not asked of cretins masquerading as ultranationalists mdash you need to be one to be the other mdash who spun a narrative on TV channels far beyond the governmentrsquos claims On May 89 they celebrated the Indian Navyrsquos attack on the Karachi port Islamabad being occupied and the Pakistan Prime Minister surrendering to India The TV coverage inspired a Union minister into tweeting the fake news about Karachi being bombed Some newspapers echoed TV anchors in their May 9 editions best exemplified by a Mumbaibased English newspaperrsquos headline ldquoPehle Rokaa Phir Thokkardquo The word thokka in colloquial Hindi has a sexual connotationWhat was the basis of such false newsbreaks Were TV anchors spinning their own yarn or were they responding to deepfake feeds sent to them If yes was the sender so credible as to have them fall for the fakery These questions the government will unlikely ask errant TV channelsBy contrast the governmentrsquos attack on independent media began soon after Baisaran A YouTube news channel lsquo4 pmrsquo was blocked on April 29 Its founder Sanjay Sharma speculated that the government might have been miffed by their two videos one of which claimed that even after the Indus Waters Treaty was put in abeyance Pakistan was receiving ldquomore water not lessrdquo In case the channelrsquos claim was untrue might it not have made sense to shame it through a denial than to block it Although unblocked now the government was perceived of exploiting the conflict to suppress a dissenting voiceLast week independent journalist Hilal Mir was among the over 2000 Kashmiris who were arrested Mir had been Hindustan Timesrsquo assistant editor before becoming the editor of Greater Kashmir and later Kashmir Reader The authorities accused Mir of being a ldquoradical social media userrdquo who aimed to ldquoinstigate secessionist sentiment by portraying Kashmiris as victims of systemic exterminationrdquo If Kashmiris could be influenced so easily wouldnrsquot they have bought into the governmentrsquos claim of normalcy thereShocking too was the blocking of 8000 X handles on the governmentrsquos orders Among them was that of Anuradha Bhasin the executive editor of Kashmir Times Her forthright coverage of Kashmir had the government file a slew of tax and labour cases against the newspaper seal its Srinagar office and harass its journalists Indeed the IndoPak conflict was harnessed to target a journalist who just wouldnrsquot bend This applies also to Maktoob media which focusses on hate crimes against Muslims and human rights issues X had informed Maktoob of having received several requests from the government in the past to block its specific posts culminating in a takedown last year of a video depicting a mob rampaging at a Sholapur mosqueA line was crossed in the governmentrsquos war against the media with the blocking of The Wire a pugnacious voice that has emerged as an alternative to the mainstream news outlets The strike against The Wire came because it published a summarised version of the CNNrsquos story that cited a French intelligence official to claim India did lose a Rafale After The Wire took down the story but reserved its right to ldquoseek appropriate remediesrdquo the website was unblocked The ground for blocking The Wire was specious for the CNN story was accessible in India which obviously canrsquot dare to silence the global media behemothThe Modi governmentrsquos sense of journalists is either poor or its contempt of them runs deep Take Mohammed Zubair the Alt News cofounder against whom Hindutva state governments have filed cases and whorsquos often trolled viciously Zubair did a service to the nation by exposing Pakistanrsquos propaganda in the limited war in real time he also named the Union minister who tweeted about India attacking Karachi Zubair embodies the archetypal journalist in whom the love for hisher nation doesnrsquot and shouldnrsquot supersede the need to speak the truth in the time of warThe writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon Challenging CasteSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paperatOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params