Running for coverage

As the war clouds loom in the sky, it will be interesting to see how the media reacts to this situation. I can picture reporters, anchors, correspondents vying to get to the war zones. After all it was Kargil that made Barkha Dutt a heroine and it was Gujarat that gave Rajdeep Sardesai his angry image.

It is with admiration and envy that we watched our brave correspondents reporting from the war zone, with shells and bullets whizzing past in the background. It will be especially interesting to watch how the Indian media reports the action now. For all of us who thought the American media stood for democracy, freedom and unbiased reporting, the coverage of the American media post 9/11, left a lot to be desired.

It mostly reported what the US government and the US army wanted them to report. Not many deemed it important to analyse why it happened, debate the double standards of the US government, or the prejudice and injustices it perpetrated by bombing innocent civilians. Some who held contrary viewpoints were either blanked out or termed as unpatriotic. The American president, who was earlier the butt of all jokes, was now treated with new respect. USA continued to remain ‘‘under attack’’ for months, for networks like the CNN. This was how the world’s most powerful country and the world’s supposedly freest media reported their war.

Compare that to how a developing country like India reported Kargil. Our coverage was not punctuated with grand shows of equipment, of MiGs taking off, of a Christiane Amanpour reporting from the theatre of war or of a head of state saying again and again ‘‘we will smoke them out’’. But we had our share of heroes and our own star reporters. Most of all, our Indian media was as fair as it could be in its reporting.

We gave equal coverage to those who opposed the war and criticised the government as we did those who supported it. The India media was fair. It tried to be as objective as it could be. Above all, it didn’t decide for all of us what constituted patriotism.

Today, as we stand on the threshold of a limited war again, the media has to engage in a debate on how it should report news under such unnatural circumstances. Should reporters be selective in their accounts and not report anything that could harm the security and morale of the troops? Should it criticise the government and write about its blunders? Should it indulge in self censorship? Does responsible reporting mean self-censorship? Indian media will have to decide what price the country will be willing to pay to protect the freedom and the objectivity of the press.

Today, unlike in the past, wars are conducted less on the battlefield and more in the mind. It is the media that will create opinions, change the mindsets of governments, and bring the international community together. And it is the media that will ultimately decide who won the war.

The writer is a Mumbai-based journalist and documentary filmmaker