Source: IMPHAL FREE PRESS
Posted: 2009-11-19

The question has hit those of us reporting in a conflict situation time and again. How objective are journalists in Manipur in the discharge of their duties of news dissemination? More pointedly are journalists here guilty of being influenced by common sentiments and emotions of the prolonged and bitter conflict they report? The rhetorical elements in these questions imply an obvious inference. The questioners believe journalists here at not altogether innocent of not nurturing the sentiments on the ground themselves thereby jaundicing their writings. Perhaps it is not an altogether inaccurate observation, but the question remains, is there anything terribly wrong in the media deciding to allow its own judgements and sensitivities to filter into what it reports? Is the media supposed to be a mirror of society, reporting faithfully only what it sees and hears, or is it obliged to put all these into definite perspectives before presenting them to the readers or audience, as the case may be? Traditionally media was expected to be as close to a faithful mirror as possible. Not anymore. Although in a qualified way, the reporter is allowed to add a little bit of his own perspective to the story.
An example will illustrate this point. If 10 ordinary, innocent villagers are gunned down by armed men, be it government forces or insurgents, a reporter is allowed to, if not expected to, reflect his indignation at the terrible news event. Hence, it would not be just a noncommittal “10 villagers killed by gunmen in a raid in the wee hours� but more like “10 ordinary villagers massacred brutally by gunmen in the wee hours�. The latter reportage is not exactly the job of a faithful mirror, for the few adjectives and adverbs thrown in betray a certain bias of the reporter. But this bias, a lot many will agree today, should be treated as a moral obligation on any human being reporting a pathetic human predicament. Any notion of objectivity which denies this and insists on plain and absolutely detached reportage of these events as they happen, would be nothing less than robotic. In any case, objectivity in journalism is also often reduced to a matter of packaging attributed opinions. The reporter who often is an eye witness is not supposed to express any opinion, but is to have police officers, unnamed official sources, and other “relevant� people like relatives of the victims, or friends of the perpetrators etc comment, and then glue these opinions together to make for what is generally considered “objective� reportage. “Objectivity� thus becomes a matter of “objectivism�, a mechanical ritual rather than a commitment to truth and justice.
Judgement of the media, and in this case the Manipur media, must be against such a backdrop. Merely the unwillingness to be nothing more than a mirror of events, such as when covering a political speech, cannot be a serious fault. This is especially pertinent in covering conflict and the resultant tales of human sufferings, struggles, defeats, triumphs, joys, sorrows, hopes, despairs etc. How is the media in the state expected to report the Sharmila story? How is it expected to report on the ceaseless cases of fake encounter custodial killings, kidnapping for ransom, destructive and coercive strikes etc? Shouldn’t the media be expected to show moral indignation at the mayhem all around, especially when it is created by those precisely meant to prevent it, or sense a human bondage in covering Sharmila’s struggle? The traditional definition of objectivity may not be wrong, but in such circumstances, it is often grossly inadequate in depicting the truth. For the truth discernable as objective and empirical may be only skin deep, leaving much more hidden below the surface to be uncovered. Moreover, as Tony Harcup pointed out, the objectivity ritual that we are familiar with in journalism in which the reporter is strictly only a detached observer, often end up drawing a moral equivalence between victim and perpetrator, a relativism in which everybody is right in doing what they did from their own perspectives. The reporter from this outlook, is expected to depict these perspectives with equal focus and importance without trying to be judgemental. In other words, to keep up the objectivity standards of journalism, even Hitler must be given an equal opportunity to justify why he had to murder six million Jews. Surely there is something seriously missing in this brand of journalistic objectivity.  

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