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| Intrusive, abrasive and brash? Newsmen train their lenses towards the Taj Hotel during the terror attacks in Mumbai last year |
How does one define a relationship between two arms of democracy each assiduously pursuing its own interests? The police and media are both integral components of a democratic structure. Yet the two are often on a collision course. The police complain that the media, particularly the electronic version, in their haste to make breaking news in a conflict situation, are increasingly become intrusive, abrasive, brash and, at times, insensitive. The media, on the other hand, thinks the police are defensive and would prefer to give filtered version of news so that the department is inoculated from incisive public scrutiny.
Both sides could stick to their guns and the relationship could further deteriorate. Alternatively, both actors could sit together and thrash out their sore points in a non-threatening space. That space was provided by the Centre for Development and Peace Studies (CDPS), Guwahati, at a daylong seminar which had mediapersons and senior police officials meeting eye-ball to eye-ball to discuss their bones of contention in the most candid manner one ever witnessed in a career spanning over two decades.
The purpose of the seminar, if one understood it correctly, was not that the parties should attempt to acquit themselves as flawless choirboys. One saw it as a sincere effort to iron out the rough edges that push the media and the police to a sort of adversarial posturing when, in fact, both are actually performing their public duties, each with its own perceived sense of responsibility.
Chief minister Tarun Gogoi, who inaugurated the seminar, was very upfront when he pointed out that there were shades and shades of mediapersons just as there were people of dubious reputation “in the police also, in politics also and among the militants also”.
The inimitable Gogoi has in one swipe managed to include all of us and himself among the errant flock. In other words, he politely suggested that we should all search our souls instead of pointing fingers at each other.
Gogoi is not a seasoned politician for nothing. Amid smiles he endorsed the important image-building role of the media when he said, “Nowadays everybody wants to own a TV channel or media house.” But Gogoi was also scathing in his remarks about the extreme views between one newspaper and another and questioned if that was good media practice.
Offence is the best form of defence is what Gogoi believes in. So the chief minister was not apologetic in admitting that if terror was stalking every part of the world, then it was but natural that in Assam every district should have one or more militant groups.
According to this politician, it was a good sign that people were aware about the development packages and were, therefore, raising their voices to claim their rights. Slipping into the cosy rhetoric of a ruling party politician, Gogoi pointed out to the audience that the World Bank in its latest report had named Guwahati as an investment hub, listing it as the eighth in the country.
What Gogoi failed to mention, and with obvious reasons, is that the bulk of the investments in Guwahati were not real, clean corporate capital investment, but money siphoned off from development projects. The more projects come in, the more the corruption. In fact, nearly all the swanky malls are owned by surrendered militants. So is this good investment? The venerable World Bank should inform us. The ruling elite has creamed off what belongs to the people.
This is precisely why deprived communities in Assam are today rising up in arms. It is a different matter that the leaders of each of these armed groups finally fall into the greed trap.
Nevertheless, Gogoi’s statement calls for extensive debates across universities, management institutes and economists in Assam. And indeed, it merits another well-researched article. Just as there are shades of mediapersons, policemen and politicians, there are also multi-layered and multi-hued investors.
We need to know the source of investment in Guwahati. We also need to know why the trickle-down effect of this investment is not felt barely 20km away from the hub.
While there is a general agreement that media and police have to abide by their codes of conduct, the images of the Mumbai terror attacks were relived wherein the electronic media unwittingly played into the hands of terror strategists who used the detailed narratives and visuals to guide their “fidayeens”.
The Aarushi murder case was also brought up as an example of an insensitive cop looking for his two minutes of fame even while he constructed a cock and bull story of the murder episode. There are some that accuse the media of colluding with the police when it uncritically reports everything that the police give out.
Sometimes police float their own theories of how a crime happened without the benefit of detail or evidence. In Meghalaya recently, the police claimed to have killed a hardened criminal who escaped from jail in an encounter. But there were several witnesses who claimed they saw the escapee, who was unarmed, being gunned down at point blank range.
Till date, the post mortem report has not been made public. But the inspector-general (law & order) in his press briefing shortly after the incident, dramatised the episode to the hilt. He claimed that a bullet from the escaped convict missed the superintendent of police, Jaintia Hills, by a whisker.
Sad but true, the media lapped up this story and perhaps the SP is in preparation for a bravery award. Unfortunately for him, civil society groups are up in arms to redress this wrong. There is a strong belief that the convict was killed because it was feared that he would spill the beans. The deceased was a hired killer and he was arrested for slitting the throats of two women last year. A Congress politician from Jaintia Hills is alleged to have paid money to organise the jailbreak where the deceased and seven undertrial prisoners got away. They were, of course, immediately re-arrested, a fact that lends credence to the allegation that the jailbreak was “organised” by someone in the police department.
A judicial inquiry into the jailbreak incident has been instituted. False encounters, therefore, are short-cut measures that mar the image of the police.
Much of the trust deficit between the media and the police happens because the former has progressed by leaps and bounds technologically while the latter are still cocooned in their 1861 mould, but struggling to don a modern avatar.
The police complain that most mediapersons are uncouth, untrained and lack the basic courtesies that the profession demands. Mediapersons retort that police do not have a media policy and hence are always on the defensive, never knowing how much to give and what to give out.
It is a fact that a police officer on the ground might be too busy handling his duty and, therefore, unable to brief the media when the situation demands. Matters have become more complex with the invasion of the 24x7 electronic news channels, all chasing for TRPs.
In that case, it would be best for the police to have a full-fledged communication cell, manned by experts, up to the district level. The police and media need to understand each other’s lingo and jargon so that they do not step on each other’s toes. It was sad to hear a narrative from a cop who was in the thick of the serial blasts last October being bombarded by a news channel from Delhi. The person from the other end barked, “How many dead?” when the cop himself was badly injured. Such narratives tell us that the media have to do a lot of soul searching. But who will police the media is always the million-dollar question.
(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)