Dr Media, Mr Hyde

The common man often pays a high price for inaccurate and irresponsible media reports

Nishi Malhotra Delhi

In a country where people have long since lost faith in their leaders, the police and even the judiciary to some extent, the media still enjoys a good measure of credibility. For the most part, rightly so, because there are many dedicated journalists in our midst. However, it is also true that inaccurate and negligent reporting, dramatically spiced news and an insensitive attitude towards the people who are integral to the ‘human-interest’ stories reported, characterise several of today’s TV ‘news shows’ and print articles.

This writer was recently able to observe the reporting of an event from the perspective of a family that suffered a major tragedy. The reports are cause for both outrage and introspection.

In the afternoon (4 pm) of Friday, March 2, Star News went live with breaking news about a double murder in New Delhi’s Vasant Kunj neighbourhood. The channel reported that a teenage girl and her grandmother had been murdered by a household servant. The news anchor also said the servant had misbehaved with the girl prior to the murder. No source of information was cited and no one was quoted as saying so.

Soon, the anchor repeated his statement and further reported that the girl had complained about the servant’s misbehaviour to her grandmother and other ‘members of the family’ in the past. Since the girl and grandmother were presumably dead, who was providing the channel with this information? Was the report conjecture or hearsay?

A few minutes later the nameplate outside the family’s home was shown on television. The tragedy was further sensationalised without a shred of corroborating proof, the anchor saying it was possible the servant raped the young girl before killing her. Star News and another channel, Rashtriya Sahara, also reported that the servant was not verified by the police.

The reports were untrue in many respects. The grandmother and her 11-year-old grandson were allegedly murdered by a servant who had been with the family for six years and had been verified by the police on November 22, 2006 at the Vasant Kunj police station. The family has the papers to prove this. The servant later tried to kill the teenage girl as well but she escaped. He had never misbehaved with her and he did not attempt rape before trying to kill her.

The murders were committed in the morning and the servant caught and handed over to the police by 1.30 pm. Perhaps Star News has an explanation for not getting its facts right before going to ‘breaking news’ at 4 pm, but speculation by the anchor about the teenage girl being raped is unforgivable as far as the family is concerned. Is the media not aware what a few casually spoken words suggesting rape can do to a young woman’s future in a country like India?

In addition, a grieving family that had done no wrong — had the servant verified by the police like responsible citizens and trusted him for his years of faithful service —was made to sound like it had invited the tragedy on itself with the channels making statements like "the girl had complained about the servant’s misbehaviour to members of the family in the past" and "the servant was not police-verified".

Unfortunately, negligent and defamatory reports find easy refuge in the fact that the common man in India often finds it difficult to summon the will or the resources to pursue protracted legal battles against powerful organisations. This family is praying that by sentencing the killer swiftly, the courts will do justice to its dead. For those that are alive, however, the least the concerned media houses can do is to issue a public apology for murdering their good name and reputation.

Island on fire

Sri Lanka is likely to remain mired in endless war if consensus is not reached on a power-sharing formula to end the ethnic conflict

M R Narayan Swamy Delhi

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama flew into India in the third week of March for two days of meetings with government and opposition leaders. It was his second visit to India since January. He was accompanied by his

no-nonsense Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona.

They came from the US, where Bogollagama made it clear that the international players overseeing his country’s barely alive peace process will have to change the way they looked at the Sri Lankan conflict. Addressing the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he accused sections of the global community — no names were taken although he clearly had facilitator Norway in mind — of "debating semantics and ignoring the reality" since the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Colombo signed a path-breaking ceasefire agreement in 2002. This folly, the minister underlined, must not be repeated. It was a tough message that reflected the ground realities in Sri Lanka, where a determined military has put the LTTE on the run in the island nation’s east.

That Bogollagama and Kohona were men handpicked by President Mahinda Rajapakse was not lost on anyone. In New Delhi, Bogollagama was more suave, telling his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee that his country was determined to find a negotiated end to the

ethnic conflict by devolving powers to the minorities. In between meetings with Indian leaders, the minister answered searching questions from 14 European Union ambassadors accredited to Colombo but based in New Delhi about rights abuses, particularly in the troubled northeast. It is an issue India has raised repeatedly at the highest levels, at times to the irritation of Sri Lanka. Bogollagama made one admission to Mukherjee: whatever military victories Colombo may score against the LTTE,

the Sinhalese-majority country would

ultimately have to unveil a credible

power sharing formula to end 25 years

of bloodshed.

Despite territorial losses the LTTE has suffered for the first time in years, Tamil activists, including those who have no love for the Tigers, insist this does not necessarily mean that peace is round the corner. The Sri Lankan military establishment has no doubt found an uncompromising leader in Rajapakse, now idolised as the modern day Dutugemunu, a Sinhalese ruler whose war against Tamil king Ellanan in the 2nd century led to thousands of deaths.

The Sri Lankan problem has today become almost as intractable as the Middle East crisis. The LTTE remains the best-knit and well-armed insurgent group in the world, notwithstanding the unprecedented reverses it has suffered. Sri Lanka has turned into a militarised state. This has led to misery as far as the Tamil and Muslim civilians are concerned, more than anyone else. Most of the over 3,500 people killed since January 2006 have been ordinary Tamils, some of whom

suffered violent deaths on suspicion of being linked to LTTE. Kidnappings of Tamils, the rich and the not so rich, have become epidemic.

Blamed for the state of affairs are the Tigers, the military and the breakaway LTTE group led by Karuna. At one stage, the Indian High Commission in Colombo, deluged by complaints from traders belonging to the "Indian Tamil" community (those who migrated from India during the British rule), took up the matter with the Sri Lankan leadership. This eased off pressure on the "Indian Tamils", who still identify closely with India. But it proved, if proof was needed, that the state did have a hand, however remote, in the kidnapping industry.

Several thousands of Tamils have also been forced to flee their homes in Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts in the east following relentless military and air force bombings of LTTE targets, both real and perceived. They live in pathetic conditions, and international aid agencies complain they are running short of welfare money. Muslims have also lost their homes but they are relatively better off when it comes to rehabilitation.

Nearly 18,000 men, women and children have made it to Tamil Nadu, crossing the sea dividing India and Sri Lanka in fishing vessels and often in dangerous weather, much like the Vietnamese boat people of a different era. The widespread civilian suffering, which Sri Lanka says it is addressing, has in turn led to enormous diplomatic pressure on Colombo from an international community that is bitter because years of diplomacy has failed to bring about peace.

The LTTE retains much of its military clout but there are definite indications that it is feeling the pinch on the battlefield. When its former regional commander Karuna split in March-April 2004, the Tigers had dismissed it as a "one-man problem". Karuna has now neatly joined hands with the Sri Lankan establishment to take on his former boss, Velupillai Prabhakaran, triggering an internecine war that is proving costly to both sides.

The military has been able to sink several LTTE vessels believed to be ferrying arms and ammunition to the Tigers. A major LTTE attempt to buy sophisticated weapons to bring down Sri Lankan air force jets was thwarted in the US, leading to the arrest of those involved in the operation. The setback came at a time when the LTTE was appealing to the West that the terrorist tag attached to it was wrong and needed to be taken off.

The LTTE is both hurt and unhappy over its diplomatic isolation. It is now outlawed in India, the US, Canada and in all 25 countries of the European Union. It believes that the Sri Lankan game plan is to keep isolating it (Colombo is pressing Australia to ban the LTTE) while relentlessly continuing with its military campaign. The Tigers also feel that the international community is not too bothered about Tamil suffering until the deaths are too numerous, and thus, embarrassing. Eventually, a devolution package of sorts will be thrust on the Tamils with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude.

If the past is anything to go by, the Tigers — who today fully control Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi districts and partly control Vavuniya and Mannar — are most unlikely to talk to Colombo from a position of weakness. However, it is also evident that the Sri Lankan government may not be keen to talk to the Tigers when it feels that the military is giving its diehard foe a tough time. Hardcore Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists outside the government, too, want it that way. So the undeclared war in Sri Lanka is likely to continue.

Whatever the intentions of the LTTE and Colombo, the international community’s attention is now focused on Sri Lankan minister for Science and Technology, Tissa Vitarana, a respected Left politician who is engaged in the unenviable task of bringing about a consensus among all major political parties on a power-sharing formula to end the ethnic conflict. With the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the main opposition United National Party locked in a bitter war, and the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), the third largest political party in parliament, bitterly opposing any concessions to the LTTE, Vitaran has his fingers tightly crossed.

His formula would not only have to enjoy the support of Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese community but also be widely and genuinely liked by at least Tamil moderates. If that happens, there may be hope. If it does not happen, Sri Lanka will return to what it has got used to since 1983, amid brief periods of peace and negotiations: war. That is one thing India simply does not want.