|
[home]>[programmes]>[media]>1st
workshop
Sensitizing Media Covering Internal and
Inter-State conflicts: Focus India and Pakistan, Kathmandu,
Nov 24-26, 2000.
The three day interactive exercise brought together a mix of mid
career journalists and radical media commentators/analysts from India
and Pakistan to frankly brainstorm on types and hierarchies of conflict.
Media coverage of Indo-Pakistan wars, the Kargil war and communal
conflicts drew us into exploring war as spectacle and discussing
professional canons of 'objective', 'neutral' and 'fair' coverage of
conflicts and the tension between propaganda and ‘truth’. Analysing
media reportage of the 1971 war, Afsan Chowdhury remarked that the media
in one full state ( India), one a state in collapse (Pakistan) and the
third in the making (Bangladesh) were all involved in the process of
state building by not reporting facts. “The entire South Asian media was
part of conflict management on behalf of special interest groups”,
Chowdhury of PANOS argued.
In examining the structure of social communication, media
practitioners addressed the issue of 'power' and 'interests' in the
shaping of news coverage, and the 'biases' in routines of
newsgathering. The dialogic framework for the workshop was the
political economy of news, the democratic space for a journalism of
value and dissent and the public and social responsibility of the media
and media practitioners. The discussions are reflected in the workshop
report titled, 'Reporting Conflicts' SAFHR Paper no 9 (May 2001). The
first Kathmandu workshop revealed the possibility of Indians and
Pakistanis being able to go beyond their competitive and hostile
nationalist identities and bond as a professional community committed to
a journalism of value. The presence of journalists from Jammu and
Kashmir provided an insightful counterpoint to journalists not only from
Pakistan but India as well. Also, journalists from the alternate media
opened up the possibility of pursuing an independent media agenda as
opposed to guerrilla tactics form within the mainstream.
|
