conflict, media and human rights in south asia

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about tHe iCHRp

The International Council on Human Rights Policy (ICHRP) was established in Geneva in 1998 to conduct applied researchinto current human rights issues. Its research is designed to be o practical relevance to policy-makers in international andregional organisations, in governments and inter-governmental agencies, and in voluntary organisations o all kinds. TheICHRP is independent, international in its membership, and participatory in its approach. It is registered as a non-protoundation under Swiss law.

www.ichrp.org

MeMbersoftheinternationalcouncil

Lydia Alpizar Duran (Costa Rica)Roberta Clarke (Trinidad & Tobago)Lyse Doucet (Canada)Roger Raupp Rios (Brazil)Wilder Tayler* (Uruguay)Devendra Raj Panday (Nepal)Fateh Azzam* (Palestine)Marco Sassoli* (Switzerland)Hina Jilani (Pakistan)

Jelena Pejic (Serbia)Fouad Abdelmoumni (Morocco)Juan Mendez (Argentina)Chidi Anselm Odinkalu* (Nigeria)Maggie Beirne* (United Kingdom)Usha Ramanathan (India)Cynthia Brown (United States)Ghanim Al-Najjar (Kuwait)Emma Playair* (United Kingdom)

*Board Member

about tHe tata institute o soCial sCienCes

Tata Institute o Social Sciences (www.tiss.edu) is a premier deemed University in India, now in its 75th year, which oerspost graduate education in the human service proessions and in social sciences. It is also actively involved in research,advocacy and eld action on human rights, social justice and equity issues. The Centre or Media and Cultural Studies (cmcs.tiss.edu) is an independent centre o Tata Institute o Social Sciences, engaged in media teaching, production, research anddissemination. A unique eature o the Centre is the close linkage between the technical and academic areas o its work. Thework o the Centre straddles both realms, thus acilitating a synergy between research, teaching and production, all o whichare inormed by a keen sense o connection with local subaltern cultures o resistance and invention.

ISBN: 2-940259-98-4

2011 International Council on Human Rights Policy. Most rights reserved.

2011 Panos South Asia. Most rights reserved.

2011 The Tata Institute o Social Sciences. Most rights reserved.

This material may be reely copied and distributed subject to inclusion o this copyright notice and our World WideWeb URLs:

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Design and layout by Benjamin D. Peltier at the International Council on Human Rights Policy.

about panos soutH asia

Panos South Asia has its headquarters in Kathmandu (Nepal) with country oces in New Delhi (India), Colombo (SriLanka), Karachi (Pakistan) and Dhaka (Bangladesh). The regional oce in Kathmandu was established in 1997, the Indiaoce in 2000, and the Sri Lanka and Pakistan oces in 2004. The Bangladesh oce opened in 2005 as also the NorthEast project oce in Guwahati. Panos South Asia moved south to Chennai in July 2006, to establish its GlobalisationProject oce. Recent developments include the addition o new programme sta and the creation o a state-o-the-artmedia centre in Kathmandu.

www.panossouthasia.org
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2011 International Council on Human Rights Policy, Panos South Asia, and the Tata Institute o Social Sciences.

ConliCt, Media and HuMan RigHts

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Contents

Acknowledgmentsii

introduction.ii

1. the.Post-coloniAl.nAtion-stAte.in.south.AsiA,.nAture.of.conflicts.And.the.mediA.1

2.Questions.of.rePresentAtion.of.conflicts. 3

Box 1. Representation o Conficts and Human Rights in the Media: Some Key Tendencies in South Asia

Box 2. The Changing Nature o Newsgathering

3.relAtionshiP.between.the.mediA.And.humAn.rights/civil.society.Activists. 6

4.censorshiP.And.control.v.AccountAbility. 7

5.institutionAl.structure,.stAte.And.mediA.in.south.AsiA. 9

Box 3. Regulation and Free Markets: Media and State Dynamics in Post Liberalisation India

6.new.mediA.And.emerging.sPAces. 12

APPendix.A.list.of.PArticiPAnts. 14

Confict, Media and Human Rights in South Asia: Roundtable Report i


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ii Confict, Media and Human Rights in South Asia: Roundtable Report

aCknowledgMents

This Report has been prepared by Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar o the Centre or Media and Cultural Studies,TISS, Vijay Nagaraj o the ICHRP and Xonzoi Borbora o Panos Asia. All authors have contributed equally to this drat.The box items are by Pamela Philipose and Sukumar Muralidharan with a signicant contribution on new media andemerging spaces (Section 6) by Beena Sarwar. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support received romtheir respective institutions in organising the Roundtable and producing this report. The authors grateully acknowledgethe contributions rom all the participants. We grateully acknowledge the support received rom the Swiss DevelopmentCooperation (www.sdc.admin.ch) towards the organising o this Roundtable.

intRoduCtion

Securing peace and ending armed confict and indiscriminate acts o violence against civilians present signicantchallenges to peace and the protection o human rights in South Asia and around the world. Central to an eectiveresponse to this challenge is to understand how public discourse, especially within the media, can be steered towardsenabling a more transparent, well-inormed policy response with positive human rights outcomes. A discussion thatcritically refects on the South Asian scenario is timely and pertinent, given contemporary South Asian realities: the post-confict situation in Sri Lanka; insurgencies in Jammu and Kashmir and the North East o India; the turmoil in Pakistan overthe blasphemy law and other issues; the political tensions in Nepal; and the struggle in Bangladesh to deepen democracy.All o this is happening in a context where the media has become increasingly commercialised and simultaneously subjectto state controls o various kinds.

The Kathmandu Roundtable on Confict, the Media and Human Rights in South Asia (jointly organised by the Internationalhe Kathmandu Roundtable on Confict, the Media and Human Rights in South Asia (jointly organised by the International

Council on Human Rights Policy, the Centre or Media and Cultural Studies o the Tata Institute o Social Sciences andPanos South Asia) brought together senior media proessionals, social scientists, peace and human rights advocates, andsecurity analysts (see Appendix A) to consider how confict, peace and human rights questions are discussed in the publicdomain, especially in the media, in South Asia. The Roundtable was held in Kathmandu on 20 and 21 November 2010.er 2010.

The Roundtable was intended to strengthen ongoing eorts towards developing a more layered representation ointernal conficts in South Asia, so as to include human rights concerns. The discussions were aimed at developing abetter understanding o the nature o the state, media and civil society interactions and dynamics in the region, whichhave such a signicant impact on public discourse and policy. Hence, in addition to analysing and questioning thedominant vocabularies within the media on contemporary conficts in the region, the Roundtable also intended to enableconsideration o working towards a plural media that refects the diverse positions on these conficts.

This report presents, succinctly, some o the most important issues and questions discussed at the Roundtable. While itbroadly refects the structure o the agenda, it is not a detailed record o discussions at the Roundtable. On the contrary, it

ocuses on some o the most important broad themes o the discussion and seeks to present important insights emergingrom the discussions relevant to these themes. The report also includes brie contributions rom some o the participantson specic issues (see Boxes 2 and 3 and Section 6).

At the outset, it might help to clariy the perspectives that ramed the Roundtable discussions in considering the placeo the media in the construction o the discourse on confict in South Asia. The media is not an institution that mirrors agiven reality out there; i that were the case then the kind o questions one would ask would be dierent or example,objectivity and reliability would be an important ocus. Rather, in this Roundtable, the ocus was on critically examininghow the media imagines specic versions o reality, within given and dynamic relations o power and resistance. Sucha perspective underlines the need to understand what are the exclusions, the taken or granted terms o debate, theunspoken and unquestioned premises, the normal space rom which the media gazes at the world o confict. Thisperspective eschews an assessment o how true to reality the media are; rather, it seeks to map the ways in which themedia both reproduces and questions the dominant ramings o confict.


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Confict, Media and Human Rights in South Asia: Roundtable Report 1

Discussions at the Roundtable suggested at least three wayso viewing the struggle or resources, territory or identitythat are at the heart o conficts in South Asia. Firstly, thereare conficts that arise rom challenges posed to the statebut within the ramework o the existing constitutional andpolitico-legal structure. Somewhat in contrast are confictsthat arise because o a rejection o the existing constitutional

and politico-legal ramework. Lastly, there are confictsarising rom challenges to the idea o dominant nationhoodunderlying concepts o the modern state in South Asia. It isalso important to point out though that these ault lines maywell intersect as some o them embody multiple claims, areby their very nature embedded in complex historical andcontemporary contexts and are constantly evolving.

Discussions at the Roundtable also underlined theimportance o locating any analysis o conficts and thenature o public discourse around them in the context oneo-liberal globalisation and the pervasive transormationexperienced by South Asian states, especially since theliberalisation o economies in the 1990s. This has created

urther schisms within the multi-layered polities o the region,creating new discourses and concentrations o powerand exacerbating the exclusion o signicant numbers opeoples rom access to wealth producing capacities. Thus,despite rapidly increasing inequalities amongst citizens odierent countries in South Asia, most governments haveactually increased their deence budgets, at the expenseo social welare. Moreover, debates on ederalism anddevolution o power in erstwhile centralising states likeNepal have not been adequately grounded in realities oresource-sharing and demands or social justice.

An analysis o the nature o media discoursearound conict in South Asia has to be located inthe context o deeply stratifed societies, the rise oidentity politics, the transormations engendered byeconomic globalisation and the imaginaries o nation-state ormation.

The re-emergence o identity politics, especially religiousand linguistic, is something that is common to most post-liberalisation South Asian states. Participants at theRoundtable noted that this is refected in the manner in whichgovernments have wooed majority communities bothreligious and linguistic in an eort to ragment resistanceagainst other inequities and discriminatory policies. Thus,or instance, it was suggested that in the case o Sri Lanka

a post-civil war makeover projecting a Sinhala-Buddhistversion o history rom a mythical past into its contemporarypolitics complements a signicant push towards rapideconomic growth spearheaded by privatising wealth-producing capacities, both o which combine to delegitimiseany claims to empowerment including autonomy orethnic minorities. Indeed, many participants opined thatthis observation could apply to other countries as well.

The resistance to domination and exclusion takes manyorms across South Asia. This includes the expansion ohuman rights advocacy and more dynamic and nuancedunderstandings o civil society in the region but also theuse o violence. The public discourse refects the realities

o deeply stratied societies and the inequalities central tothem. This is most evident in the nature o media discourseswhere elite consensus and rule o law oten collide withcountervailing attempts at establishing more populistregimes and structures.

Participants observed that social divisions and expansionsand contractions in democratic spaces were oten rstrefected in the media, which is a key site or the evolutiono a public sphere in which partisan political dierencesare oten more pronounced than substantive ones. Theparticipants also noted that like other social and politicalinstitutions, the media in South Asia also carries a burden o

seminal events, such as the partition o colonial South Asia(including Myanmar). For much o the dominant media,the nationalist grid is most commonly used view o theregions complex, layered history and this constructs theperspectives that delegitimise the various movements thatseek to reorganise territory or renegotiate power relations.

Dominant media oten masks the tensions betweenelite consensus based rule o law and countervailingattempts to defne national interest and ideas o rightsand belonging.

Moreover, the dominant media impoverishes therepresentation o these realities because it is allied to aproblematic series o images that are driven by a war-on-terror security discourse, rather than one that highlightsthe increasing volume o human rights advocacy. Giventhe larger context o liberalisation, privatisation andglobalisation, traditional print and electronic media inSouth Asia (with some notable exceptions) have beeninstrumental in eecting the shit rom a discourse basedon ideas o rights and citizenship, to one based on choiceand consumers.

The role o the media in the construction o ideas o nationalinterest within public discourse emerged as a matter orecurrent critique at the Roundtable. This is an important

question because ideas o national interest oten serve asa yard-stick or evaluating the legitimacy and even legalityo competing ideas and positions and by extension othe advocates o these ideas and positions. A number ospecic concerns are relevant in this regard.

The inability to separate critiques o the government romcritiques o the state is a major concern. Governments,constituted by a dominant political party or coalition, maywell act in ways that promote their own interest. The state,as a repository o the broader set o interests vested inmaintaining the current conguration o political authority,tends to requently use the anti-national tag to deny thelegitimacy o all challenges to it. This tag is commonly used

across South Asia to characterise struggles o peoples whochallenge established ideas o economic development,or raise human rights questions or challenge dominantconceptions o nationhood. This is especially true oquestions that involve national security, real or apparent. Aresearch report on the role o the media in national securitya in national securityproduced by the South Asian Strategic Stability Instituteis instructive in so ar as it underlines the medias role asorce multiplier arguing that today decisions are no longerbased on events but on how the events are presented.1

1 The Role o Media in National Security: A Case Study o 1998 NuclearExplosionsby Pakistan, Dr. Nazir Hussain, SASSI Research Report20, June 2008, p.10. Available at www.sassi.org/pds/Report-20.pdaccessed December 2010.

1. tHe post-Colonial nation-state in soutH asia, natuRe o ConliCts and tHe Media
http://www.sassi.org/pdfs/Report-20.pdfhttp://www.sassi.org/pdfs/Report-20.pdf


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2 Confict, Media and Human Rights in South Asia: Roundtable Report

To the extent that national security embodies thehigh politics o the contemporary context in South

Asia (as elsewhere) it has increasingly become thepre-eminent prism employed by the dominant media inassessing challenges to the legitimacy o the state.

Several participants agreed with the observation thathuman rights challenges or other interrogations o dominantperceptions o national interest are thus oten dealt withacross the region by resorting to the 3Ds disinormation,denial and de-legitimation. Representations o confictswithin the media not only oten refect dominant ethnic,class and caste biases but are also mediated by selectivememory and erasures (discussed in detail in Section 2

below). In addition, the nexus between the dominant mediaand powerul corporate2 or political interests and the militaryor intelligence agencies has also recongured in alarmingways the basic tenets o newsgathering and journalism(see Box 2).

2 Clearly exemplied by the Radia tapes controversy in India, whichdemonstrated the cosy relationship between big business andtheir lobbyists, prominent journalists and political gures. For a brie

account o the controversy, see or instance www.deccanherald.com/content/116306/radia-tapes-scandal-media.html.

The importance o media institutions challenging projectionso the states vision o national interest is highlighted in thecontext o the Sri Lankan governments total media blockadeo the North and parts o the East during the nal phases othe confict with the Liberation Tigers o Tamil Eelam (LTTE).The ailure o large sections o the media in Sri Lanka tochallenge the blockade has now let it with little ability andcredibility to actually report on stories in connection withthis crucial stage o the confict that has given rise to someo the most serious human rights concerns in the SouthAsian context.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/116306/radia-tapes-scandal-media.htmlhttp://www.deccanherald.com/content/116306/radia-tapes-scandal-media.htmlhttp://www.deccanherald.com/content/116306/radia-tapes-scandal-media.htmlhttp://www.deccanherald.com/content/116306/radia-tapes-scandal-media.html


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Given the crucial place o the media in the constructiono the discourse on confict in South Asia, the Roundtableexplored the question o media representation by criticallyexamining how the media imagines specic versions oreality, through its reporting o events and processes, itsdelineation o the actors involved in these events and itsinvocation o categories (e.g. national interest, terrorism,

secessionism).

The discussions at the Roundtable brought to the oretwo primary considerations. Firstly, the importance ooregrounding the unequal nature o the public spherewithin which the media is situated. There are exclusionsbased on gender, class, caste, ethnicity, religion, region-a system o structured inequalities that is oten taken orgranted. The attempt must be to understand how theseexclusions operate to create the taken or granted termso debate, the unspoken and unquestioned premises, thenormal space rom which the media gazes at the world oconfict.

Secondly, that in understanding issues o representation, itis also necessary to historically locate the ways in which therelationship o the media with the state and the market havechanged over a period o time (discussed in detail in a latersection). There is no doubt that the market plays an importantrole in shaping the dominant discourse. The increasingcorporatisation o the media across South Asia and its closelinks with industry and industrial barons deserves specialmention. In India, this has been coupled with the breaking ojournalists unions, the mainstreaming o the contract systemand the emergence o successul models o paid news.The increasing presence o the state and its control over themedia in zones o confict is also an overarching reality inverarching reality inSouth Asia. The emergence o a hard, security state with

political cultures intolerant o dissent has made or a privatemedia where by and large the publishers are a part o aparadigm o dominant rule.

Dominant media representations are rooted bothin the inherent exclusions in an unequal publicsphere and the changing state-media and market-media relationships.

The media is a terrain o struggle where competing realitiescirculate and interact with other public discourses, a spaceo unequal fows where a range o stakeholders, rom thestate to big business to political parties to civil society

organisations and movements jostle or voice. In otherwords, the media provides spaces or alternative versionso reality, while at the same time tending to arm a dominantsense o the real and a taken-or-granted space o normality.The media is a highly dierentiated space encompassing arange o political, social and economic interests, modes oproduction, dissemination and consumption, locations andlanguages, genres and narratives.

The reality o confict as represented and constructedby the media and the ways in which this representation oconfict infuences and shapes the responses o citizensand groups to ongoing and past conficts is dierent acrossthe nations in South Asia. Moreover, it is dicult to make any

general statement about how the news and current aairsmedia in South Asia, whether print, broadcast or online,tend to represent confict, given the diversity o channels,newspapers, and new media sources.

From discussions at the Roundtable, certain key tendenciesin the reportage and media debates on confict, seem tocut across the region and are fagged in Box 1, below.

The tendencies discussed in Box 1 make or a mainstreammedia discourse that is impoverished in terms o its criticalpotential and that constructs the reality o confict with

inadequate concern or the human rights o marginalisedgroups aected by confict. There are certain popularand dominant imaginaries around which explanations,evaluations and ramings o confict are constructed. Theseinclude the nation-state, global terrorism, development,law and order, among others and are requently invokedby political parties across the spectrum and appear to bequestioned only by voices on the margins. Their circulationis not conned to the news media but they emerge and arereproduced by a variety o sources, including popular media.It is important to recognise that representations o conficteven in the popular ctional media, such as Bollywood couldbe as infuential in reproducing or questioning stereotypeso, or instance, terrorists, minorities and ethnic groups,

the nation-state and the law and order machinery. Thesepopular images circulate along with images and notionsemerging rom other sources, such as the rhetoric opolitical parties, the memories o traumatic events passedon orally, the histories told in school text-books- all o themorming a system o belies, stereotypes, images and otenunquestioned ways o seeing through which events will beinterpreted, represented and responded to.

Those seeking to provide alternative narratives ace asignifcant challenge in countering many dominantand ubiquitous imaginaries circulating in the publicsphere.

It is a major challenge or media and civil society groupsthat would like to provide alternative narratives, to counterthese imaginaries, given their ubiquity and naturalness inpublic discourse. Across South Asia, providing a dierentperspective, especially one that questions dominantrameworks, runs the risk o being declared seditious, anti-national and subversive. However, with digital technologiesand the new media, the emergence o new modes oproducing and distributing news allows or possibilities thatwill be discussed in Section 6 on New Media.

2. Questions o RepResentation o ConliCts


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bx 1. Rr Cc Hm Rh h M: sm k tc sh a

1. There is clearly c rm cc hm rh . There is a ocus on immediate events and outcomes

rather than processes and histories. For instance, participants pointed out in the case o Pakistan, there is oten little coverage and even

less inormed analysis about the confict in Baluchistan while the same is oten the case in India with respect to conficts in Kashmir or

the North East, or example. Media coverage oten tends to be devoid o a historical lens and to uncritically invoke dominant, taken or

granted imaginaries in raming and narrating events.

2. There is rm hm rh ccr hr r -c rr ccr such as nationalinterest, law and order and state security or partisan politics.* 1 In this, the media tends to reproduces the larger social consensus, which

is that there are certain groups, such as terrorists and insurgents, whose human rights do not count and those who deend their rights are

seen as sympathisers or riends o terrorists.

3. There is rm c h ccr. In some sections o the media, particularly the broadcast

media, the intense competition and the pressure to constantly produce breaking news results in a construction o events as

spectacle, lacking in any analysis or background inormation, ailing to grapple with complexity and raising several ethical concerns.

This infuence o sound bites journalism and the constant need or polarisation and political theatre in television journalism to make

news and current aairs into drama that will grab the eyeballs and enhance TRPs sets the norm or what constitutes news as well

as shapes viewers expectations o the medium and views o world around them.

4. The media shows a tendency to stick to mc cr cmm c h

rr , leaving out the shades o grey and the complexities in the processes. This representation o confict as

a struggle between good and evil, where the state and the rule o law and order are unambiguously represented as right is ound

across South Asia particularly when reporting events rom zones o confict, be it with respect to Kashmir, the North East and the

Maoist-dominant tribal areas in India, the ethnic confict in Sri Lanka or in Pakistan. The media tend to veer between over-simpliying

or over-contextualising (and thus mystiying) any resistance, challenge or contestation.

5. This taking o sides by the media is demonstrated by its oten crc rm rm in ways

that are rc r rr r c. Participants cited several examples o such practices including, or

example, the widespread use o the term stone pelters to characterise youth engaged in the recent outbreak o protests in Kashmir

or elsewhere; dubbing certain regions as Maoist-inested; and the tendency within sections o the Hindi language press in India to

use the term sharanaarthi(reugees) to reer to Bangladeshi Hindu migrants and ghuspaithiye(inltrators) to reer to Muslim migrants.

All these examples point to the need to critically interrogate the terms used or reporting, particularly in confict situations.

6. There are clear c c hr r r h rm h c and

how the actors in events are represented. For instance, across the board, there is a ocus on the opinions o gures o authority and

celebrities rather than o common people aected and a tendency to represent those aected as helpless victims.

7. A most disturbing eature which emerged in presentation ater presentation was the mc c xc h

r h c mr r mr z o confict. This is coupled with a tendency orselective amnesia relating to past traumatic events such as civil wars, ethnic cleansing, pogroms and riots, where the perpetrators,

i they are important political gures, tend to be whitewashed clean by the media. For instance, the Sri Lankan model or the Gujarat

model, based on the East Asian model o a dictatorial regime that runs a disciplined, modern, undemocratic capitalist consumer

paradise, where ethnicity is marketed as exotica and messy ethnic strie ruthlessly suppressed cleansing, is not questioned enough

by the media. The media plays along with the agenda o majoritarian democracy, celebrating the economic miracle that tight control

on dissent might make possible. Overall, the media across South Asia exercises a high degree o sel censorship (also discussed

urther in Section 5, on Censorship).

8. There are instances o the media narratives challenging democratic values rom time to time. For instance, in the context o

Pakistan it was pointed out that the media has oten tended to refect an elite consensus against democracy. While in Sri Lanka, the

treatment o rights claims o Tamils are generally couched in a paternalistic discourse o giving them their rights rather than oneo equality.

9. In discussing media representations, c hm, c c r play a key role. In India,

or instance, the English press tends to reach an elite readership while the vernacular press has a much wider class base. In act, theobservation that the size o the democratic space in India is directly dependent on the size o the democratic space within the vernacular

language media ound many supporters. In Sri Lanka, there is a clear polarisation, between the Sinhala and Tamil press in their reporting

o human rights violations o Tamils, with the ormer maintaining a silence on the issue. In Nepal, the local language media is weak, while

it plays an important role in shaping popular opinion. However one participant noted that a language may sometimes lack in appropriate

words; or instance, there are no Nepali words or populism, demagogue or exhumation.

10. Finally, there is a growing tendency driven largely by competition and the need to be dierent or the major m mrm r rr r cm r r : whether it is in terms o events being enacted or media

visibility or whether it is in terms o proactive involvement through campaigns, polls, help-lines. While this may seem like a welcome

development, especially when it is avour o a beleaguered civil society, it is oten a double edged sword to have the media playing the

role o precipitating events. The media as an interested play raises the spectre o altering news itsel. It may result in worse, however.

In Pakistan, or instance, the televised broadcast o atwascalling or death to Ahmedis was ollowed by the murder o two prominent

Ahmedis. The role o the media as interested player raises serious issues o media ethics and accountability, which will be taken up in

Section 5. An interesting observation made was that the representation o journalists in popular lms has also changed, as in the popular

Bollywood lm Peepli Live, which satirises the role o journalism in the context o armer suicides in India.

*1 For instance in Bangladesh wherein the media is also largely divided along party lines


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bx 2. th Ch nr nhr

pm ph

Given the medias unique and decisive power o interpreting contemporary reality or readers/viewers, it was always argued that the

authenticity o their newsgathering and content hinged crucially on their independence rom non-editorial infuences. But the I-word

has been rendered increasingly irrelevant over the last ew decades, thanks to some signicant developments in the media universe that

have, in turn, crucially impinged on the nature o newsgathering.

The rst can be fagged as partisanship and speaking or power rather than the old maxim o speaking truth to power. Some attribute

this model to media baron Rupert Murdoch, who demonstrated how successul or revenue generation the compact between the elite,the market and the media was. Others point to the Pentagons innumerable attempts to shape the media in its image. In 2000, even beore

9/11, a handul o military personnel based in the psychological operations unit at Fort Bragg, were working as regular employees

or CNN, and helped with the production o news. Ater 9/11, the control regime that had worked towards closing the gap between

the media and the military became even more vocal. This convergence o military operations and media coverage, threw up the new

model o embedded journalism in the Iraq War o 2003. Reporters were allowed to cover the war rom the very scene o the ghting

subject to two conditions never to jeopardize troops or the mission. What then US Deence Secretary Donald Rumseld had desired

was total immersion on the part o the reporters. Total immersion, incidentally, is not just what the Pentagon desired, it became the

central objective o corporate lobbyists o very stripe. It is a category that has prolierated and grown more sophisticated in recent times,

with Niira Radia only the new kid on the block. Lobbyists use inormation in creative ways to urther the interests they represent, either

through making it available by well-timed plants and guarantees o exclusive access, or by ensuring that it is suppressed or modied.

O course they can do all this only i can infuence journalistic newsgathering in proound ways.

Another phenomenon that became more pronounced as the noughties unwound, was the phenomenon o Breaking News, which in

turn pointed to heightened, even aggravated, competition between large media conglomerates, more so in the age o 24X7 television.

Since the need to be the rst with news became the central preoccupation, the due diligence that went into the newsgathering o

an earlier era the careul checking and re-checking o acts, the insistence on the counter-view, the prompt issuing o errors and

rejoinders, careul ollow up, and so on was observed more in the breach.

As eminent French sociologist, the late Pierre Bourdieu observed in a lecture on television, competition has only homogenized content

across the various media. He talks about the phenomenon o circular inormation and asks, I you wonder how the people in charge o

giving us inormation get their own inormation, it appears that, in general, they get it rom other inormers.* 1 Newsgathering then gets

reduced to ollowing up on particular stories that are already creating a storm on some other channel or newspaper, and doing this by

using almost identical sources.

This phenomenon can play itsel out in piquant ways. The day ater the serial blasts o October 30, 2008, which struck Guwahati,

Barpeta, Kokraghar and Bongaigaon, The Economic Times in its news coverage played up the threat to Indias security caused by

Islamic militants elements rom across the Bangladesh border. It cited an interview given by A.K. Mitra, the earlier chie o the Border

Security Force (BSF), on the eve o his retirement, and went on to say: Throughout last year the BSF had intercepted 807 Bangladeshis

trying to illegally cross over to India the actual inltration is roughly estimated to be double the number intercepted the BSF said the

gure was almost 10,000 to 12,000 till a ew years back. In other words, at least 24,000 Bangladeshis have been inltrating every year.

Notice how the gure 807 becomes 24,000 in the course o a single sentence with no evidence to back the nal gure. Interestingly,

the report goes on to cite Mr Mitras answer to a question whether investigative agencies eed the BSF with credible inormation on

Bangladeshi inltration. Mr Mitra is quoted as having said, We do not get authentic inormation rom investigating agencies on time.

Whatever action we have taken so ar against militant outts like HuJi and LeT along the border were based on media reports. As or

the media, it then uses the data the BSF projects, in the next cycle o circular inormation!

Setting up systems or independent newsgathering rom independent and variegated sources is clearly the only way the media can

claim credibility or themselves. The question is, are they even inclined to do this?

*1 On Television and Journalism, Translated rom the French by Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Pluto Press, 1998.


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A key message emerging rom interactions at theRoundtable is that the relationship between media and civilsociety especially human rights advocates in South Asia isa very complicated one. At one level, it seems to be airlystrongly infuenced by the relationship between civil societyand state-especially in less democratic contexts whereinthe state tends to dictate all relationships.

There also arose the question o competencies, both withinthe media, to comprehend the messages and arguments putorward by human rights advocates, and within civil society,to be able to communicate more eectively. Fundamentally,the dominant medias appeal to popular opinion andcommon sense politics may put it at odds with the morecritical approaches advocated by human rights activists.The stereotyped images and even demonisation o humanrights activists or those who challenge the legitimacy odominant notions o state- as anti-national, traitors, etc,common across South Asia, presents urther obstacles.

Human rights advocates need to insist on proessionalstandards rather than seek privileged access while

desisting rom instrumentalising the media, overlookingincompetency or just rely on cultivating journalists.

On the other hand, the tendency o many civil societyactors to expect a privileged relationship with the media,especially on grounds that the media has a larger socialmission was also questioned. Human rights advocatesneed to review their own approach to the media to insiston proessional standards rather than privileged access.Moreover, given that the social mission o the media is open

to diverse interpretations, being also an argument otenharnessed by the state or dominant interests to advancetheir own views on wider issues o public interest, allingback on good media and journalistic practice appearsmore eective and strategic. This is also critical in terms onurturing stronger and more independent media henceinstrumentalising the media and overlooking incompetencyor relying on cultivating individual journalists may not bean eective strategy in the long-run. At the same time,this is rendered very dicult given the lack o a consistentinterest in and transparent engagement with civil societywithin most media institutions and their vulnerability tolarger and more powerul political and business interests.A sustained and broader dialogue and engagement rather

than just an issue based approach with media institutionsas well as associations o media persons was underlinedas important.

3. RelationsHip between tHe Media and HuMan RigHts/Civil soCiety aCtivists


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The issue o censorship came up repeatedly acrossvarious sessions and country presentations. In each o thecountries o the subcontinent, the state exercises dierentlevels o control, both ormal and less ormal, over variousmedia, ranging rom direct pre-censorship (as is the caseor cinema in India) to banning and blocking access ( ashas happened with some internet sites rom time to time)

to licensing control (e.g. radio) to subtle and indirect wayso control (advertising revenue). In addition to these directways o domesticating the media, the state also uses law(e.g. laws regarding sedition or maintenance o publicorder) and the law and order machinery in order to maintaincontrol. The eects o these acts o censorship are stronglyexperienced in the silences and erasures within the mediawhen reporting on zones o militarisation and confict.

Censorship appears to be an ubiquitous and integraleature o the South Asian nation state, appearingin various orms and in varying degrees, depending onthe issue and the zone o conict in question.

In the case o Kashmir, or instance, the state operatesusing orce and ear and the mainstream media colludeswith it, using the three Ds mentioned earlier: Disinormation,Denial and Delegitimation. For instance, violence bythe state is reported as rivalry between groups, news otorture and disappearances is blanked out, and the Islamicbogey is used to delegitimise the demands o Kashmiris. InKashmir, human rights issues emanate rom the denial opolitical rights. The law as it is ramed supports the policyo disciplining Kashmiris and the non-negotiability o therelationship o Kashmir with the Indian state. The ArmedForces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, passedin 1990 gives the army immense power and is against any

democratic norms; the mainstream media operates withinthis ramework, both accepting the censorship o the stateand exercising sel censorship in its representation o theKashmir question.

In Manipur, again the existence o a militarised state andall its attendant human rights abuses leads to a heighteneddegree o censorship Manipur has been under the shadowo The Armed Forces Special Powers Act since 1958. Themedia state nexus works in various ways: through theproximity o media to security and intelligence agenciesand through the media tacitly accepting the agenda setby the state. The media plays an important role in deninggood and bad citizenship and selling and marketing a

sanitised version o culture.

Sri Lanka has witnessed the emergence o a Sinhala-Buddhistnationalist discourse that has dealt with contentious issues oplurality through militarisation and repression o critics andlarge sections o the Tamil population. The current politicalculture short-changes any debate on issues o publicconcern, seeing this as irrelevant at the best and subversiveat the worst. As many participants noted, this is refectedin the way the state deals with the media. Repression,disappearances and killings o journalists, denial o accessto the militarised zones, surveillance, harassment o mediaorganisations that do not toe the line and a media blackouton the confict and associated human rights violations in

the North are disturbing eatures o the many ways in whichthe state censorship operates. This has its implications instructuring public discourse in avour o a particular ideologyand ruling amily. The English and Sinhala media have, by

and large, become a party to this paradigm o majoritarianismand the media blackout has not been contested by themedia institutions. The media, through acceptance o thisstate censorship and the exercise o sel censorship, tendsto uncritically project the image o a strong President whohas united the country, deeating the LTTE, and is at the helmo the economic miracle.

State censorship also takes the orm o laws that directlycontrol media expression, as in the case o the IndianCinematograph Act o 1952o 19523 which involves pre-censorshipo all publicly exhibited lms. The denition o public in theAct is very loose, making it possible or the state to clampdown on the screening o material that it sees as subversive.While documentary lm makers have or long been opposingthis Act, there needs to be more public pressure to changethis colonial piece o legislation. Interestingly, the mainstreamlm industry itsel has not come out against censorshipand large sections would support the existence o statecensorship and regulation o cinema.

Given the existence o retrograde colonial laws, the processo contesting censorship maybe a tedious business andoten doomed to ailure- and even courts may adoptdierent standards based on dominant interpretations onational interest, as demonstrated by Indian SupremeCourt cases.

The censorship o the street (enorced by powerulnon-state actors)and the censorship o themarket (oten connected to corporate ownership andcontrol) also shape the nature o media discourse incontemporary South Asia.

The important role that media institutions play in ostering

and sustaining a democratic public sphere in the region isoten echoed in public discourse and the need or a ourthestate that is independent o state control oten emphasized.The issue o corporate ownership and control and the waysin which the market shapes and limits media discourse isoten not given as much importance. This censorship othe market is an insidious orm o censorship that otenpasses unnoticed. In the last two decades, liberalisation,privatisation and globalisation have had their infuence onpatterns o media ownership, control and access. Overall,across South Asia, along with a declining the role o thestate in national development, there has been a shrinking ospace or public community media and a movement awayrom diversity and multiplicity through (unequal) global

fows o inormation and media content. The shit rom therhetoric o public service to the realpolitiko prots has hadsignicant implications or the representation o confictand or spaces or dialogue. Today, the market plays anincreasingly important role in dening issues o publicconcern and in determining how the media, includingthe news media, are packaged or popular consumption;the ocus has shited rom looking at viewers as citizensto looking at them as consumers. The very denition owhat constitutes news has undergone considerablemetamorphosis. As already discussed in earlier sections,the intense competition or eyeballs between news channelsmakes or a ocus on breaking news that sensationalisesevents, trivialises issues, is ethically dubious and avoids in-

3 A Drat Cinematograph Bill o 2010 is in the pipeline, which doeslittle to remedy the lacunae in the original Act. For a critique o theproposed bill, see Monteiro and Jayasankar, A New Pair o Scissors:the Drat Cinematograph Bill 2010, Economic and Political Weekly,Vol. 45, No. 29, July 1723, 2010.

4. CensoRsHip and ContRol v. aCCountability


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depth engagement with serious matters o public concern,including how the state and other actors negotiate zones oconfict within and between countries in South Asia.

Participants noted that across the South Asian region,in addition to the censorship o the state and market, acensorship o the street has also emerged, where non-stateactors oten political parties but also other groups respondwith vandalism, intimidation and threats when the mediapresents issues in a manner that they consider undesirable

or oensive. The tacit support o this expression o hurteelings oten shown by the state by its reusal to takeaction against those who resort to these tactics leads to anenvironment where the media organisations and journalistsare under constant threat when covering certain issues.This tends to lead to the exercise o sel censorship by themedia, in order to avoid controversy.

There are also contentious issues when dealing the questiono censorship. One needs to make a distinction betweenreedom o expression and reedom o the media. Giventhat media is generally believed to have a social unctionand responsibility how does this impinge on the questiono reedom o its expression? Are there any limits and who

sets them? How does one or instance look at the issueo hate speech? What would be reasonable restrictions onthis? What is the relevance o international human rightsstandards in this context? How does one work towardspublic accountability o the media?

The reedom o media and the reedom o expressionare distinct and it is important to guard against theirconation and especially the instrumentalisation oeither.

While censorship is inimical to protection o human rights, theneed or voluntary standards and codes that are monitored byregulatory bodies within the media was highlighted and theexperience o the limitations o existing mechanisms such as

the Press Council o India, was underlined in the discussions.

While the overall picture regarding the various modes ocensorship appears bleak, it is also important to rememberthat hope exists, oten in places outside the mainstreammedia. For instance, in the case o the very repressive statein Burma, there has been a mammoth and oten hiddenand silent attempt on the part o individuals and groupsto collect and transmit tangible and intangible evidence,which suraces rom time to time. Such attempts contest thelanguage and methodology o orgetting perpetuated bythe censorious state and the acquiescent dominant media.The vocabulary o remembering exists in a ourth space,sometimes even outside the alternative media. At certain

junctures, it comes into its own and even the mainstreammedia begins to recognise it.


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The institutional structure o the media and its dynamics inthe region are shaped by our signicant dimensions:

ownership and control dimensions, whether it is staterun or commercial, and the institutional practices thatthese give rise to;

representational dimensions, which means understandingwho has a right to speak; how and when the media employexperts and opinion makers to stand in or citizens;

general social structural dimensions, which alludes tothe multiple public spheres that exist in everyday lie,within which the media is located; and

regulatory ramework dimensions, which relates to thelegal and policy rameworks within which the mediaoperates.

Traditionally media in South Asia has been seen as aninstitution that is either marshalled in to serve the state, andin recent decades the market-state. Added to this, is theact that globalisation has changed the terrain o traditionalmedia in South Asia. Where the availability o newsprint wasonce controlled by national governments, there is a greaterderegulation in this regard. In countries like Nepal, even theright to broadcast over the radio have been deregulated;though in most other South Asian countries, governmentsstill retain the nal broadcasting rights.

The media, especially public or state-owned as anally o the government has a colonial history in SouthAsia. Present day Ministries o Inormation and publicbroadcasters are yet to shed their character o beingpropaganda machineries o the state.

The structure o the media domain and its institutionalcharacteristics in South Asia have been heavily infuencedby state and public policy. On the one hand is the tendencyto view the media as an ally o the state, which in acthas a colonial history. For example, as pointed out duringdiscussions at the Roundtable, most present-day Ministrieso Inormation and Broadcasting in the region actuallyemerged rom the publicity or propaganda establishments othe colonial power. The development o state owned mediaalso bears a signicant imprint o state dominance. Across

the region, public broadcasting corporations have largelytended to lack sucient autonomy, with unding and controlor at least infuence going hand in hand, rom appointmentsto content management, these bodies unction at thebehest o the state. This remains true notwithstandingdevelopments such as moves towards greater autonomyor state owned media such as in India in the late 1990s.There are also signicant questions in terms o investmentin technology, sustainability and proessionalism o publicbroadcasting, given that over a period o time, the publicsector channels, despite their immense reach, have lostout in popularity to private players and have oten ended upchasing revenue through adopting similar models, but lesssuccessully, instead o trying to ull the responsibilities

and role o a public broadcaster.

Indeed, more oten than not public service broadcastingin South Asia has tended to be viewed as broadcasting in

i)

ii)

iii)

iv)

the service o the state and particularly showcasing andcarrying messages o the government o the day rather thanencompassing a more critical view o the public sphere.Wholesale intererence by the state in the media domain hasoten been justied in the name o national interest, such asin the case o the nationalisation o media in Sri Lanka in thedecade ater independence, which was ostensibly driven

by the need to render the media more representative andinclusive but with results to the contrary.

Control over newsprint once ormed the core o a signicantpolicy instrument mediating the dynamics between thestate and the print media in South Asia with its deregulationacross most o the region in the early 1990s marking a newphase in the nature and development o print media (ormore on this, see Box 3). In the Indian context, the statehas been chary o letting go o control over the airwaveswhere radio is concerned. While it has auctioned FMbandwidths to private commercial players or entertainmentprogramming, news remains the prerogative o the state. It isonly ater long and sustained pressure rom the community

radio movement that there have been some initiativestowards permitting community radio stations. In the case oNepal, on the other hand, the reeing o airwaves rom statecontrol, including with respect to news, has given rise to avery vibrant community radio scene that, despite concernsover quality (in particular the ethnicised nature o somestations) and sustainability, heralds signicant promise incontributing to the creation o a vibrant public discourse onvital issues o public interest.

The post-liberalisation competitive media spacehas created new spaces and possibilities but alsospawned the rise o television news as commodity andpolitical theatre, engendering competitive dramatisation

that trivialises or marginalises human rights messages.

The end o state monopoly over television and the advent ocable television in the 1990s, a direct result o liberalisation,has given rise to an explosion in news and entertainmenttelevision across the region. The sheer number and diversityo private television channels has no doubt contributed toan expansion o the media domain and, in some cases,as or instance in the case o Pakistan, contributed to awidening o the public sphere and resisting undue statepower and infuence. Yet, at the same time, participantsat the Roundtable echoed many o the wider concernsaround growth o the electronic media, with the aulty

mechanism o television rating points (TRPs) becomingan important actor in the generation o news, views andopinions. This in turn has resulted in the emergence o themedia audience, or consumers o news, rather than asa public citizenry who needs to be inormed. Televisionas a site o political theatre, especially in the orm o talkshows, that is compelled to not only generate 24 hour newsbut also its competitive dramatisation, to attract eyeballs,has oten meant the triumph o simplistic and sensationaljournalism.

The impact o neo-liberal economic reorms and the waveo deregulation that swept across South Asia beginningthe late 1980s have had a signicant impact on the media

landscape in diverse ways. Participants suggested that thequantitative expansion o the media- print and electronic-has to be located within the context o broader actors. Inthe case o India, the employment o journalists on contractand weaknesses in the legal ramework concerning

5. institutional stRuCtuRe, state and Media in soutH asia


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employment in the media, such as the Working JournalistsAct, has contributed to undermining both autonomy andproessionalism within the media.

While the signicant growth o the media landscape andthe rapid evolution o inormation and communicationstechnologies also attracted large corporate investments, itbrought with it the dangers o a convergence o corporateinterests and political infuence within the media. It waspointed out that in the case o India, or example, eventhe Securities and Exchange Board o India had maderecommendations with respect to disclosure o mediagroups cross-holdings (stock interests in other business)etc. but these are not adequately enorced. In real terms, thishas meant that the nexus between media owners and thoseinvested in corporate power does not have enough checksand balances, and can actually infuence, manipulate anddistort matters relating to the public interest.

Across the region fnancial stakes and corporatecross-holdings within the media have paved theway or the creation o powerul oligarchies within theregion without adequate checks and balances, with

troubling consequences or public interest.

Even though the media has expanded in contemporarySouth Asia, it has paradoxically been responsible orthe localisation o the public sphere within the region.For instance, there are larger, nancially stronger mediahouses in dierent parts o the region than beore, but thisdoes not necessarily imply a wider network o journalistsand reporters. Instead, they rely on agencies or news romoutside, while relying on localised events and news orcontent. As some participants pointed out, the growth odistrict and city editions o newspapers across India or theincreasing number o radio and television channels in Nepalthat cater to specic ethnic groups or regions, or example,

risk narrowing the public sphere by ampliying the localdisproportionately and restricting the entry o the globalexcept in its most sensational orms. Such localisation omedia discourse may also explain why the phenomenon opaid news is becoming an increasing concern, especiallyas political infuence and corporate interests oten coalescein diverse and very specic ways across the region.

The signicant corporate power and economic cloutwielded by media owners has led to the perception thatthe media is a orce vying or power outside the politicalprocess. The recent disclosures in India about mediapersons being used by powerul corporate lobbyists toinfuence political processes and public policy in avour o

certain commercial interests is a case that lends signicantsubstance to such perceptions. In act, in most South Asiancountries, the media has increasingly positioned itselas the adjudicator o public opinion more recently anddramatically witnessed in the meteoric rise o televisionnews personalities and their transormation into opinionmakers. However, this role is also a selective one; as incountries like Pakistan, the dominant media shied away romtaking on the powerul military establishment until it becameclear that elite and popular opinion had shited decisively.Similarly, in Sri Lanka the media played an important role increating a highly parochial and militaristic public discourseduring the nal stages o the civil war. While this ailure tochallenge dominant ideas and prejudices, as an institution,

is true o the media in most parts o the world, its impactin South Asia can prove to be even more detrimental. Thisis perhaps the reason why there is a urgent need to lookbeyond the current market/state driven dispositions in order

to look or alternatives that refect the polyphonic, layeredand complex public spheres in the region.

At the heart o these debates is the question o enhancingproessional standards while ensuring media reedoms.The latter is a signicant question across the region, withsome countries such as Sri Lanka ranking as amongstthe most dangerous in the world or journalists, while thetreatment o questions and subjects considered sensitivemay expose journalists to sot and hard controls across allcountries in the region. The challenges across the region tomedia autonomy rom state and non-state actors are alsosignicant. From a human rights point o view, however, thestate has an obligation to ensure reedom o expression andan independent media. It is in this context that the ollowingsuggestions rom participants, widely echoed externally,assume critical importance:

Truly independent and autonomous public broadcasters;

Legislative rameworks that protect and enhancereedom o expression and inormation as well as therights o journalists and their associations;

Media regulatory authorities that conorm to constitutionaland internationally recognised standards that guaranteereedom o expression;

Codes and standards o proessional conductcommensurate with the best national and internationalpractise developed and owned by associations omedia persons; and

Enorcing transparency and accountability in corporategovernance o media institutions.

a)

b)

c)

d)

e)


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bx 3. R r Mr: M s dmc p lr i

smr Mrhr

Among the grounds on which exceptions could be made to the ree speech right in India, are the security o the state, the territorial

integrity o the nation, public order and decency, contempt o court and rather implausibly, riendly relations with a oreign state. Many

o these provisions have been imported into the basic law in several neighbouring South Asian states, with the additional provisions

in some cases, such as, or example, restrictions on speech i ound inconsistent with the tenets o Islam.

i m sh a hh, c h mr mr r hr r ch, rhr h s c

r h rc. th h r, ccr h jc frm, r c r hc r rrc r ch.

In discussing media reedom rom a human rights perspective, processes o exclusion are not all that merit attention. Inclusion is

crucial, perhaps key. How does the widest possible range o concerns in society gain traction through the media? How could sections

that tend to be in a zone o neglect, attain the means to state their case and gain a degree o representation in the media? How could

they ensure being a part o the national dialogue?

An example o an active interventionist mode o ensuring this manner o socially desirable outcome would be the airness doctrine

which was applicable in U.S. broadcasting till its repeal in 1987. Fairness in the use o a public resource such as the broadcast

spectrum, required under this doctrine, that adequate time be given to issues o urgent public importance and diverse points o view

to be heard. The airness doctrine has since been portrayed as an intrusion into media reedom, and caricatured as a bureaucratic

pursuit involving stopwatch measurement o time allocated to various points o view in the media. Its validity in the context o the

broadcasting industry has been upheld in the highest judicial orum. But signicantly, in the U.S. newspaper industry, where there is

neither a process o licensing nor the allocation to a private entity o a resource deemed to be scarce such as the radio requency

spectrum public oversight o media content has been held contrary to the ree speech right. The assumption is that a competitivemedia environment is sucient to ensure that all voices are heard.

The regulatory philosophy in India, in its early phase, made little concession to the theology o competition. Rather, it ocused on

providing an enabling environment in which a diversity o voices could claim space within the media. The airwaves remained a

State monopoly or long and early legislative eorts ocused on the print media since the State worked on the conceit that it had an

irreutable claim to representing all the people.

News media is unique in invariably selling its product at a price well below cost o production. For this reason, early attention ocused

on the need to restrain the possibility o predatory pricing by the larger enterprises. This involved the rationing o ocial advertising

and an interventionist stance to ensure that media enjoying the benet o large private advertising did not leverage that into a price

advantage to drive smaller players out.

Indias Supreme Court however, held this regulatory measure unconstitutional since it could potentially have damaged newspaper

protability by restricting circulation growth. There was no warrant to circumscribe the right to commerce enjoyed by one group o

citizens (i.e., the larger media companies) in order to better protect the right to ree speech o another group (the smaller media

companies). An analogous judicial philosophy underpinned the Courts ruling striking down the rationing o newsprint in a situationo acute scarcity o the commodity.

In other contexts, the Indian Supreme Court has held that the state-owned broadcaster cannot abuse its monopoly over the air-waves

to deny the telecast o a lm that has been judged worthy o high honours by an accredited process o peer review. Similarly, a state-

owned corporation engaged in a service industry has to ensure that the public has access to media owned by it, even to articulate a

viewpoint critical o its services. These rulings upholding the right o public access, are applicable to state-controlled entities and do

not stipulate a similar right where the media is privately owned.

u h , h rrc h m r, h rc crm, r r r

r cr crc, r r hr r c r c r.

Ocial advertising allocations have ceased to be a serious saeguard or media quality and diversity, being used in most instances to

ensure conormity with the State diktat. This unction o the State agencies is something that the media in the more troubled regions, such as

Kashmir and Indias north-eastern states, have experienced at close quarters. It has also been a constant source o pressure or the media

in Pakistan, especially the print media in the context o the countrys recent orced-draught incorporation into the global war on terror.

The larger media groups though, seem to have successully weaned themselves o any orm o serious dependence on ocialadvertising. This has been especially true o India, more so in the context o the spurt in advertising spending that accompanied the

surge in economic growth rom about 2003.

Most countries have done away with any orm o prior restraint on news media. Yet the regulation o the lm medium is still active and

vigorous.

The state o the Indian media today, especially its untrammelled commercialism and its conspicuous lack o sensitivity towards those

at the lower end o the scale o income and wealth, is known to induce a sense o nostalgia in certain circles. More realistic observers

discount any notion o a golden age when the media actually lived up to its mission o speaking or all. But they nevertheless identiy

a clear shit in 1991, when India ushered in a policy o economic liberalisation and integration with the global economy, unleashing

a new dynamic in the media industry.

Todays media crisis compels a review o some o the strategic choices made over the last two decades. It should be asked, or

instance, i the industry did the right thing by itsel and its customers rom about the mid-1990s, by tying its commercial success to

advertising rather than content. In the process, the journalism unction was devalued and its essential tenets and processes orgotten,

because advertising always the greater contributor to revenue needed not just to be accommodated, but actively pampered.Formal mechanisms o censorship may be absent, but the competitive pressure or prots, or winning the avour o advertisers by

providing an editorial context that privileges celebrities, liestyles and other matters that contribute little to the quality o the public

discourse, remain a powerul source o sel-censorship.


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6. new Media and eMeRging spaCes4

In dierent corners o South Asia, more so in the urbancentres, the Internet is emerging as a source o alternateviews and opinions that attempts to escape the censorshipo the state and the market and also as a platorm oradvocacy and mobilisation. Here, the Internet has becomehome to several domains o the public sphere, sometimes(or, oten, as some would argue) bypassing classical modes

o journalism to generate inormation to a world that is wired.This phenomenon includes individuals and collectivescoming together as bloggers or Internet diarists whomaintain log entries and as commentators, who generatea considerable amount o opinion on everyday matters.Some o the blogs and commentaries are popular andrequently accessed amongst a generation o web-users.Blogs, e-groups, social networking sites, e-campaigns andother modes o mobilisation on the Internet have been insome cases, instrumental in widespread disseminationo inormation, popularisation o protests and short-termpolitical mobilisation. For instance, young protestors in theKashmir valley, who had agitated against military excessand occupation through the year (in 2010), oten used

social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in orderto update their peers about events in the valley. This, andthe events o 2007 in Burma that showed the positive waysin which new technology can be used to express dissentunder trying conditions.

It is important to recognise that new technologicalplatorms oer new ways o mobilisation as also oarchiving: a language o remembrance, against rameso erasure embedded in the dominant methodology omuch o mainstream media.

There is no question that the Internet has infuenced theway activism and human rights work is perormed. Withthe Internet, word about human rights abuses gets outmuch aster than ever beore, and with the rise o socialnetworking on the Internet, that speed continues to increaseexponentially. Where beore appeals made via email didthe rounds airly quickly, they now become viral in minutesonce they become available on Facebook or Twitter.

Depending on how they are used and by whom, socialnetworks indeed have their trivial side. For each post oinormation about entertainment or where a user engagedin a social event, there are others who use these tools toraise awareness about human rights violations or disasterrelie. These tools, or example, were essential in gettingword out about the recent fooding in Pakistan.

Social networking will never replace on-the-ground activism,but in todays digital world, it can certainly be a trigger toampliy that activism.

Politicians and government unctionaries on Twitter aremore accessible and accountable. Punjab GovernorSalmaan Taseer was a wonderul presence on Twitter,with an abundance o wit and political insights. His Twitteraccount is kept alive, as is the issue o his murder, to a arwider global community than i the issues were restricted tolocal news channels.

While new media has indeed amplied the voices ootherwise marginal voices, sometimes in ways thattraditional media has been unable to, it has also been

4 This section draws on contributions rom Beena Sarwar. She tweets@beenasarwar.

driven by anonymity that can, i pushed, be divisive andragmented. There is also legitimate concern that bloggingand the Internet are useul only inasmuch as they promotesectoral interest and that they are, in some instances,symptomatic o cocooned cacophony. Adaptations to thecyber-environment are dependent upon various materialactors that need to come together and as such, this is an

environment that is unamiliar or most citizens o South Asia.The digital divide between cyber haves and have-nots, iscreated by a range o actors, rom access to technologyto literacy. While a number o organisations are working onprojects that extend the access to and use o the internetby marginalised groups, there is a long way to go beoreaccess is made more equal. Certain technologies, suchas cell phones, are more widely accessible than, saycomputers and applications using these or social justiceand sharing inormation are emerging.5

That said, developments in inormation and communicationstechnology (ICT) have led to the expansion o modeso communication in ways that would not have been

imaginable even a decade ago. There is, thereore, theneed or advocacy groups and rights activists to recognisethe reach o the Internet and work around the establishedwisdom about the class/regional-bias o the digital divide.This is even more pertinent in the ace o such technologyoering platorms or conservative opinion to be aired. MostSouth Asian countries have a lively, oten disturbing clutcho provocative, minority-baiting blogs and portals. Whileit is easy to dismiss them as the antasies o an extremistringe, their use o audio-visual support in relaying opinionis an aspect that needs to be emphasised.

New media has also oered a window to humanrights activists and advocacy groups in South Asia,to be prepared or what is coming next in the realmo technological transormation o mediated publicspheres.

Even i the space created or exchange o democraticideas about similarities and dierences, amongst thepeoples o South Asia have been small, it is neverthelessimportant. There are notable alliances within the media,such as Aman-ki-Asha (Hope-or-Peace), initiated bythe Jang Group in Pakistan and Times o India, in India.This joint Pakistan-India initiative has positioned itsel asan important contribution by the mainstream media in amuch-needed people-driven peace process in the twocountries. Besides such alliances, there have also beenseveral innovations in policy regarding broadcasting andinormation dissemination in South Asia, much o which hasbeen achieved ater years o struggle by media practitionersand advocacy groups. For instance, in Nepal, the relaxationo laws on radio broadcasting have seen the prolierationo more than a hundred low-powered FM stations acrossthe country. While some have closed down, many are stilloperating in areas outside the Kathmandu valley and havebeen sustained by local communities. Similar changes arebeing sought in India, with the Ministry or Inormation andBroadcasting (MIB) now oering licences or communityradio all over the country.

The rise o new media technologies has also had a

signicant impact on the question o the visual image and

5 See, or example, CG Swara, a citizen journalism platorm in Gondiand Hindi, or the Central Gondwana region in India, which usesvoice xml technology linking a website to many phone lines.
http://www.amankiasha.com/http://www.amankiasha.com/


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its politics. Today with the emergence o digital media andnew technologies which have democratised the technologyo production and distribution, it is dicult to predict theproduction and circulation o the image which was hithertounder the control o the mainstream media. For instance, inthe past, the image o the stone pelters, was oten usuallytaken rom a sae place, such as behind the military ranksand, hence, representing the stone pelters as aggressors.Today, there is a change in the images produced, we haveimages being produced by the stone pelters themselves,we have ootage o army atrocities in Kashmir and o womenprotesting naked in ront o an army base in Manipur: aprolieration o images that become iconic and embedded

within narratives o resistance. In a sense, one needs to lookat the camera today as a pen that can be used in strugglesor human rights.

On the fip side, there are attempts to muzzle voices odissent on the internet, given the challenges they poseto law and order. For instance, in India, the InormationTechnology Act o 2000 and the Inormation TechnologyAmendment Act, 2008 have provisions which permit thestate to block, censor, prosecute and in various ways seekto control ree speech on the internet.6

In addition to such innovations and spaces, there is a eltneed or creating media monitoring networks that are

capable o tracking news, political leanings and opinionsexpressed in the public domain and presenting alternativeperspectives. While there are a ew digital resources that do

6 See or instance www.cis-india.org/news/muzzling-internet on recentstate legal initiatives to muzzle the internet.

such monitoring and critical commentary, most notably CaPyala, Groundviews, The Hoot, and Kala, there is a greaterneed or sharing o such resources within the region.

There is, thereore, a need to establish, or at least build aconsensus towards a trans-regional body that sets someproessional standards or media practitioners and alsochecks the growth o oligarchies within mainstream media.Technological innovations, as stated earlier, are but onesuch way o doing so. It is in the creative tension betweennew media advocates and proponents o an ethics-driventraditional media that South Asians can hope or a plurality opublic spheres, where their complex, confict ridden struggles

against state power and excess can be best realised.
http://www.cis-india.org/news/muzzling-internethttp://cafepyala.blogspot.com/http://cafepyala.blogspot.com/http://groundviews.org/http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/index.phphttp://kafila.org/http://kafila.org/http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/index.phphttp://groundviews.org/http://cafepyala.blogspot.com/http://cafepyala.blogspot.com/http://www.cis-india.org/news/muzzling-internet


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nr kr (Bangladesh) Editor, The Age

shh l (Bangladesh) Senior Journalist, The Daily Star

nh Mhr (India) Editor, Outlook (Hindi)

nj Mr (India) Assistant Editor, Economic Times

pm ph (India) Director, Womens Features Services

J d (India) Journalist/ Pak-India Peoples Forum

d k (India) Human rights and confict Researcher

t b (India) South Asians for Human Rights

amr kr (India) Independent Film-maker and Artist

shm vj (India) Journalist / Kala.org

smr Mrhr (India) International Federation o Journalists - South Asia

k dx (Nepal) Editor, Himal South Asian

prh Jh (Nepal) Journalist

bh Rj ur (Nepal) SARCO-NCCR South

shrr Rhm (Pakistan) Political activist and ormer I&B Minister

b srr (Pakistan) Editor, Special Projects/Aman ki Aasha, Jang Group

ghz sh (Pakistan) The News/Geo TV

H J (Pakistan) Human rights lawyer and Chair, ICHRP

nm r (Sri Lanka) Chair, IMADR and human rights activist

p. srm (Sri Lanka) Director, Center or Policy Alternatives

Xz brr Panos South Asia

aj Mr Proessor and Chair, Centre or Media and Cultural Studies, TISS

kp Jr Proessor, Centre or Media and Cultural Studies, TISS

vj k nrj International Council on Human Rights Policy.

appendiX a. list o paRtiCipants


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Phone: +41 (0) 22 775 33 00Fax: +41 (0) 22 775 33 03

Email: [email protected]@ichrp.org

All our publications can also be ordered through our website at .chr.r where they can be accessed in PDFormat. For more inormation about the International Council and its work, please contact us at @chr.r.


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conflict, media and human rights in south asia

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