By Ranjona Banerji
The Indian TV media has outdone itself. Without wasting any time, star TV anchors have changed their wardrobe to camouflage vests and rushed to Israel. Now they “report” bravely as Israeli hammers Palestine into dust. We all know why these anchors are in Israel. Because after screaming against Indian Muslims on their hate-filled channels night after night, they are thrilled that Israelis are killing Palestinians, most of whom are Muslims.
The attacks by Hamas on Israeli have triggered a massive response by the Israel Defence Forces. The Israel government has called Palestinians “human animals”, and sworn to stop water, electricity, food to all Palestinian areas. What a dream situation for India’s star TV anchors.
They don’t even have the basic journalistic decency to send their reporters to cover this war or assault or revenge or whatever you want to call it. No, these studio-sitters are out there rushing about displaying their importance and building up their personal viewership of bigots. They are not bothered about covering the victims of Israeli violence, obviously. Because what is there for them in Palestine?
You may well ask, if you’re really excited about covering violence, why did none of these star TV anchors visit Manipur. It’s quite close to Delhi, within India in fact. And a civil war has been on for months now. Forget the star anchors, most TV houses have not even bothered to send regular reporters to cover Manipur. Rather, they haven’t tried to cover Manipur at all.
The reasons are easy to seek: they have no skin in the Manipur game. It is a BJP-ruled state. And instructions may well have come that Manipur is a no-go zone. Besides, if the battle is between Meiteis and Kukis, there is no anti-Muslim hysteria to create.
Israel however has everything that rightwing India loves. Starting with Pegasus spyware to infiltrate electronic devices of evil Indian journalists and activists who refuse to toe the TV line of obeisance to the BJP and RSS. Israel attacks Palestinian Muslims ruthlessly. It is a tiny state which stands up to its Muslim neighbours. It uses religion as its national identity? What’s not to like?
Since Indian television media does not really hold much by journalism, facts and so on, we will have to ignore the irony of genuflecting before both the RSS and Israeli, given how the founders of the RSS really loved Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany and the extermination of Jews. In fact, as an aside, it is truly worth listening to this talk by R Rajagopal, former editor of The Telegraph, Kolkata and current editor-at-large. Rajagopal’s bravery and his basic stance that the time for journalistic neutrality in the face of fascism has long gone in India are well-known within the fraternity. His parallels with the media in India now and in Nazi Germany are spine-chilling.
These words of Rajagopal should sink deep into the minds of journalists. Is it too late for Indian television? Probably. Ownership is clearly tilted towards the BJP government and there is no space for showing truth to power.
And lest it be forgotten, the massive assault on journalism by the Central government on the newsite Newsclick is still new. There have been and still are protests by journalists all over the country in support of Newsclick. But not by any star anchors. Who are now in Israel anyway, playing pretending reportage.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.