Media Watch

The explosion that ripped apart a private hostel in Kanpur on August 24 killing two Sangh Parivar activists caused acute embarrassment to the media. Mediapersons were cursing the ‘fools’ within the parivar who had given away the ‘precious clue’ to the newsreading public who had so far been ‘fairly convinced’ of the serial blasts in various cities being the handiwork of several ‘SIMIm-ingly Islamic organisation’. Some of them were even reassessing their own role in teaming up with the ‘stupid guys’ who cannot even cover their track properly. Yet the red faces tried to do their bit to protect their patrons by suppressing or downplaying the incident as a totally innocuous even of no national significance.
The blast killed Piyush Mishra (25) and Bhupinder Singh (32) who were allegedly engaged in making bombs and blew away the walls and doors of the hostel. The police recovered a lot of explosive material and chemicals that were being used to caused widespread terror. However, what caused much surprise was the stunned silence of the media following the blast. While they had spared no opportunity to link a banned students organization for all the blasts and killings across the country, here was a solid instance of culprits from the other extreme being caught virtually pants down.

For the media it was a moment of trial. Nothing could they do to simply ignore the incident. The two persons were Piyush Mishra and Bhupinder Singh and the hostel was owned by one Shiv Saran Mishra. If they flashed it, it would have raised question marks about the reporting of earlier blast in which SIMI was being accused as the perpetrator. Yet it could not have been ignored altogether as it had happened in the full day light (around 4 pm). And millions of people in Kanpur had either heard or witnessed it. They would have doubted the credibility of the media that does not report the event that happened before lakhs of peering eyes while speculating on blasts in far off cities on reams of paper. Instant Police investigations had revealed both the deceased were related to the Bajrang Dal, and were trying to fashion grenades for a possible attack, said DNA an English daily.

Yet the media decided to follow the dictates of its policy of silence on the antinational activities of the saffron parivar. No channel thought it worthwhile to flash it. No English daily from the capital covered it on the front pages. Even Indian Express (which tomtoms itself as the ‘journalism of courage’) was silent and headlined ‘extension of ban on SIMI’. It even reported arrest of one Shahbaz of Lucknow. The Times of India, The Statesman, The Hindu, did not even consider it even worth reporting. The Hindustan Times half heartedly put it on inside pages. Mr. Praveen Swami, the ace commentator on terrorism from The Hindu was conspicuous by his silence on the event. Curiously, the same The Hindu had reported ‘8 injured in Kanpur Blasts’ on August 16 which were the result of, as reports mentioned, either hurling of explosives or explosion of lime mixtures used for Alpana (drawings) to paint the grounds on the eve of Independence Day. Surprisingly, Aaj and Jagran, two Hindi dailies from Kanpur and several other centres of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and considered to be fairly sympathetic towards Sangh Parivar, reported the incident in much detail.

To rub salt into the consternation felt by the media, increasingly sympathetic with the saffron forces was the unquotable quote from Mr. S. N. Singh, the Inspector general of Police from Kanpur region. He reportedly told the IANS: “The recovery of timer device and prohibited explosive raw material indicates a major terror plot and police teams have begun a probe. Bhupinder used to run a photo studio in the Sarvoday Nagar locality of Kanpur and his shop was close to the city’s popular J.K. temple. Many people visit this temple on Janmashtami and as his shop was close by, we suspect the explosives were meant to spread terror during Sunday’s celebrations”. The statement hardly left anything to imagination.

Just imagine what would have been the nature of media coverage of the same if the characters involved in the Kanpur would have been some Akhtar or Zafrullah. The channels would have cried ‘Two terrorists killed while making bombs in their own den’, ‘Kanpur terrorists were plotting explosion on the eve of Janamshatami’, and so on.

It is up to news reading public now to judge if the media is playing a fair role in combating terrorism through its news coverage or much of it is strong on speculation and weak on coverage of hard news.