By Ranjona Banerji
As expected, the bulk of the Indian mainstream media has ignored the disaster it has created with its extreme Islamophobia. Should I further qualify this sentence? The main culprit – television media – is largely unconcerned with the fallout of its Islamophobia in the world and especially in the Middle East and West Asia.
Since my last update on Tuesday, more nations have taken exception to former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s remarks and complained to the Modi government. The Modi government has been forced to fall over itself apologising and distancing itself from and hiding from its own fringes.
TV? Same old same old.
Rahul Shivshankar of Times Now, which has the privilege of denting India’s international image, has whinnied away on Twitter about how Hindus are still in danger and denied that his channel is Islamophobic while reiterating his Islamophobia. There is no official statement on Times Now’s role in this debacle from Bennett Coleman. As a matter of interest, this is the media organisation which started an “Aman ki Asha” campaign for more friendship between India and Pakistan. Because it “believed” that regardless of India’s foreign policy imperatives, subcontinental friendship and peace were important.
Rahul Kanwal of India Today, which perhaps felt it had been overshadowed in Muslim hatred by Times Now, promoted remarks by the controversial extreme right wing Islamophobic Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who spoke in support of Nupur Sharma.
Apparently, India Today carried some “discussion” between its top editors on whether one should invite toxic hate-spreaders on TV and if you are fooled by that, you obviously watch Indian TV news and believe everything you receive on Whatsapp.
There is clearly within TV an inability or reluctance to face its own shortcomings and frankly massive faults. For the media, which lectures everyone else on how to live life and questions the Opposition day and night (while giving free passes to the BJP) to have so little self-awareness about its own behaviour is not laughable. It is criminal. All the waves of hatred which have spread through India in the last eight years have had active media assistance.
A strong statement from the Editors Guild of India encapsulates the depths to which what passes for “journalism” in Indian TV have fallen:
“…some of these channels prompted by the desire to increase viewership and profit were seemingly inspired by the values of Radio Rwanda whose incendiary broadcast caused a genocide in the African nation.
EGI demands that these channels pause and take a critical look at what they have done by giving legitimacy to toxic and divisive voices that has made the national discourse coarse and the gap between communities unbridgeable.”
The EGI statement also refers to the Kanpur riots, caused by Sharma’s remarks on Times Now. It asks for greater vigilance by broadcaster and journalist bodies.
https://thewire.in/media/nupur-sharma-tv-debate-editors-guild
Frankly though, judging by the reaction of India’s TV media to the consequences of its Islamophobia and its hatred for Muslims, it is unlikely that self-realization will happen any time soon.
Mukesh Ambani’s channel News18 ran an “exclusive” on “anti-Hindu hate” in Pakistan. A “discussion” on freedom of expression. A section on how the Delhi police responded to Sharma’s remarks. The saviour of Hindus, Anand Narasimhan’s Right Stand seemed terribly concerned about China’s economy for some reason. And the supposed voice of reason on the channel, Zakka Jacob, was bothered by VIP culture and road rage.
If the first draft of history is journalism, you won’t get it through Indian TV.
Nor, frankly, will you get the news.
Just hatred.
Introspection in Indian television media is an impossibility without a total, what do they call it these days? System cleanse? Detox?
Ya, those.
As if.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.