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`Why I mistrust the media`
2008-04-22 10:17:37
By Staff Writer
On April 3, 2008, the India-Africa Editors`Conference took place in New Delhi, ahead of the India-African Partnership Forum Summit which was held on April 8 and 9. Among the participants and speakers were 14 editors representing their African countries.
A renowned Indian columnist, SAEED NAQVI, one of the speakers, dwelt on the issue of spin-doctoring and how mainstream media was increasingly becoming the newsmaker and stage manager rather than the news conveyor. Here is a full transcript of Naqvi`s speech:
Friends, I have spent the best part of forty years of my journalism career travelling to not all the countries that are listed but many of them at critical moments in news terms.
I have had a theme for the last 25 years to a point of becoming a bore with my colleagues. But since I have something of a new audience I think I can repeat my song.
For instance, I find that Zimbabwe is not here. To me that is the most newsy point just now. Recently my wife and I thought of going on a holiday.
Since no harsh things can be said, so I shall speak in allegories and images. My wife and I decided for our holiday.
I said, ``So much is said about Zimbabwe. I remember Harare as a very lovely city in my earlier days, earlier incarnation.
Why don`t we go to Harare? We will be able to find out whether the media is telling us the truth or the media is telling us a lie``.
Why do I mistrust the media? This is the sad, lamentable state of my evolution that I do not believe the media, particularly the western media in various parts of the world.
So, I like to go there. So, I used this holiday to go to Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe we went to Victoria Falls. At Victoria Falls someone pointing his finger said, “That statue there is of David Livingstone.
You know he discovered the Victoria Falls``. Our Guide spun around very angrily and said, ``No, David Livingstone did not discover the Victoria Falls.
These falls have been known to the people of this region for times immemorial, for millennia. Yes, David Livingstone happened to be the first white man to have spotted the Falls.``
Many people have seen the Niagara Falls but these are truly awesome. They are divided between two countries but you can find an angle from where you can see the most magnificent falls.
That the white man had spotted them had certain consequences. One immediate consequence was that it acquired a name: it became Victoria Falls. Queen Victoria ruled every part of the world in those days. So, it was named Victoria Falls.
Once it was on this global vehicle as it was, more and more people in the world learnt about Victoria Falls.
So, there is a certain relationship between the white man having discovered the Victoria Falls and the Victoria Falls having become popularly known globally as a destination.
Now, I have not for a moment said that colonialism is the only way things can be recognized but that was the order of the day then.
In fact, I believe that the compact between Cecil Rhodes and Baron Rothschild determined much of what happened subsequently in Africa to this day, the compact which continues in the southern parts of the United States of America.
Long years ago, a Foreign Minister of India called Atal Bihari Vajpayee embarked on an epoch-making visit. Relations with China were bad but in 1978 he said he must repair them.
It was called beneficial bilateralism in those days. Some of us journalists were also put on his bandwagon and we went along with him. Among the various tasks that Vajpayee had given himself was one that he will persuade the Chinese not to teach the Vietnamese a lesson, because the Chinese and Vietnamese were angling for a fight.
When we were in Hangchow, the Chinese without informing the visiting Foreign Minister went in and invaded Vietnam.
Next morning one of our correspondent colleagues Subhash Chakraborty rang up his Editor and said, ``How are things happening?`` And Girilal Jain said, ``Well! Everything is going very well.
But there seems to have been an invasion. China has invaded Vietnam.`` So, he went to Vajpayee; Vajpayee went to then (Indian) Foreign Secretary, Jagat Mehta; everyone was woken up; that visit was cancelled and we came away.
Now some of us journalists were given the chance by the Chinese to go and cover the war.
I expressed my desire to go to the front. They said - Sorry, we cannot take you to the front. So, I went around and went to Vietnam.
In Vietnam I saw the Battle of Lang Son. Battle of Lang Son was the decisive battle. Now, I did not know the equipment, what were those guns, what make were they. I did not know what an Ack-Ack gun was.
But there was a general atmosphere of celebration among the Vietnamese in Lang Son. I thought, ``Look! It seems the Vietnamese have won this war!`` I came back to Hanoi where the badminton court of the Indonesian Ambassador was the information hub for all those who did not know.
All the Ambassadors would collect there. When I gave them my little bit it was realized that, ``Yes. My God! The Chinese instead of teaching Vietnamese a lesson have been taught a lesson``.
So, I turned out my first scoop as it were for my paper, which in those days was the Indian Express. It was a banner headline that the Vietnamese had won the war. It was an absolute scoop.
When I came back, I was expecting to be celebrated by my colleagues. I went to the Press Club, got drunk but I found myself alone. There was no one to greet me or to treat me or to say, ``Look, congratulations``.
Instead, my senior colleagues said ``Saeed, what the hell have you gone and done?`` I said, ``Why?`` They asked, ``Have you seen the New York Times?” I said, ``No. But I promise you the New York Times was not there.``
``Okay, have you seen the Times of London?`` I said, ``I swear upon anything that you want me to swear, they were there neither at the Chinese end nor at the Vietnamese end``.
``Oh! You can`t say that you are the only one who saw the truth.`` I said, ``It seems that I was``. I could even have lost my job.
What had happened was this. Henry Kissinger had been facilitated by Z.A. Bhutto to go to Beijing. This great triangle - Beijing, Washington, Moscow – had then just been created.
In the Cold War context the Chinese were the new allies as it were. These new allies as it were could not go, could not be clobbered by that small country called Vietnam.
So, there was western media without having been to this front or that - and I can promise that one - had conceded victory to the Chinese because that was the global order at that moment.
It took precisely a year for conventional wisdom to change that actually in the 1978 engagement between Vietnam and China.
Vietnam had become the only country in the world which had defeated three permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in the battlefield - France, United States of America-clambering on to their helicopters-and the Chinese.
What have I told you? I have told an ancient story, and that is what parables are all about.
That conventional wisdom had to be created in days when you had New York Times and Washington Post, and Associated Press and AFP. Today, cut the scene and I go to the First Gulf War.
Myself and Yasser Arafat made the same mistake. I was in Baghdad. First we went to the Saudis. They gave us the visa to cover the war.
I used to run around myself without any support from anybody, and then used to distribute the stories to all the newspapers.
No proprietor in this country ever had the gumption to set up an international affairs channel - except at some level my friend Tarun Basu has been doing it at a level. No one did. Why, is a mystery, and not such a mystery if you want I can dilate on that also. It is a subject of a book.
(Saeed Naqvi is interrupted by Seema Guha who said that Times of India sent a correspondent to cover the first Gulf War.
Then he continues giving his speech.)
…First Gulf War? I am not very sure. I will tell you who were there because I was there. I will tell you who all were there. Nihal Singh had materialized somewhere in Baghdad.
Now, let me tell you who could have been where. If you went to the Saudis for your visa; they said the Americans are prosecuting the war you go and ask them for the visa.
You go to the Americans and they said it is on Saudi soil, you go to the Saudis for the visa. So, you never got any visa.
Ultimately you ended up in Baghdad where I did. Now, if Chandran got the visa to go to Saudi Arabia I know how he got it. So, I am just telling you the story.
Now what is going on? There were two schools of thought that this war will not take place.
One of the reasons was that the Americans do not want body bags. This is an open country and there will be body bags. Arafat was also in Baghdad at that moment. Many of us were there.
I also thought there would not be any war. But they had worked it out very neatly. There were two briefings for the First Gulf War, one was an American briefing and a second was a British briefing. The great European Mr. Sarkozy’s country was not even allowed there. In those briefings no one was allowed.
Neither the French, nor the Europeans nor anybody was allowed in those briefing. So, they had learned very early that now management of the media is the winning of the war.
It so happened that it inaugurated an era in our lives, ladies and gentlemen, which changed all our lives as newsmen.
For the first time a man called Peter Arnott from the terrace of the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad inaugurated the era of live coverage of wars in our drawing rooms.
It showed western triumphalism. It demonstrated American triumphalism of course. Soviet Union had been defeated.
The markets were going primed open. And globalization had become the buzzword immediately then. But for the first time, you see the technology has certain unintended consequences.
The unintended consequence was that the Muslim world and the world at large saw for the first time a Muslim country brutalized and defeated.
So, the technology invented for one person for one reason came in handy for the other.
Then you have the first Intifada live on television. For five years the world at large watched the brutalization of Muslims of Bosnia day in and day out on television in their drawing rooms.
Then the occupation of Iraq. Then the attack in Afghanistan in retaliation to the horrible act of 9/11 in New York. And now they have learnt that look it takes them a while.
So, today there is no footage of what is happening in Swat and South Waziristan which is in our neighbourhood.
We do not know what is going on there. And the great burgeoning Indian newspapers and television stations will, when it is decided that the CNN will give the one clip, use it. So, friends, we are living in a very unequal world. People don`t know.
No one knows about Darfur. Present company of course knows it. The present company knows that Dar is name for Gate, Fur is the tribe.
That it was a Sultanate created in 1505, there are three tribes there, the Maseelat, and the Zaghawa and the Fur tribes - the President of Chad happens to be from the Zaghawa tribe. They all know this.
And it is floating on oil. And now my friend Nick Robertson the other day says, ``Now the battle here is between Arabs and Africans``.
How do I extract the white element, DNA, from a Mulatho? How do I do it? This is roughly the game.
You cannot create a Christian Muslim divide there, so some division has to be created. So, the division now is Arabs and Africans.
I can carry on and on but we will not be told that Mark Thatcher, Mrs. Thatcher`s son, was arrested in South Africa, carrying guns through Harare, was caught with his pants down, was wanting to seize and change the Government in Guinea again because it is oil rich. That story was snuffed out like that.
So, ladies and gentlemen, we are in an era of free press.
Thank you.
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