Editorials- Tightening Noose

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Tightening Noose (October 22)

The pressure the press in Manipur is under at the moment is palpable already, but it is going to be much worse after the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, POTO, comes into force, for very obvious reasons. It has been a tight ropewalk all the while, but henceforth the rope is going to be much thinner and tighter.

For none of its fault, the media today will be made more vulnerable, all for doing its perfectly legitimate job of newsgathering. It is a sad reflection of the general faith in truth and reality, that colors are now prone to be daubed on even the plain business of information gathering and dissemination. And so the days ahead don't spell healthy times for the media.

Publish underground organizations' news and pressmen are liable to be hauled up and forced to part with more information than publication worthy and in the process lose valuation sources and perhaps more. Refuse to publish these and the consequences can be equally dire. Staying out of the line of fire for the press here may actually come to mean pretending not to see or hear many things that happen right before the eyes. On thing is certain, with the press thus silenced, or controlled, the next obvious casualty in this ongoing war of insurrection, we are certain, will be the status of human rights.

In these times when putting the controls on the press, direct or indirect, seems to be a universal obsession, with even the media in the US, (the country once considered by many as the Mecca of journalism), cozying up with its government and voluntarily renouncing publishing or broadcasting information that may put the country's war against terrorism in bad light.

Some extremely liberal outlooks of some other media organizations stand out, and tall too. The BBC has been one of these, small wonder that it is considered today by many as the truly global broadcaster. Portraying the reality has been its uncompromising motto and it has not even allowed patriotism to interfere.

Even where it fails, the effort to stick by this motto is always conspicuously present.
It may have sounded very unpatriotic at the time, but during the Falklands war between Argentina and Britain, the BBC earned the displeasure of Britain's prime minister then, Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher for sending a camera crew to cover the Argentina side of the war. With the objectivity of hindsight of course we know now, there was nothing unpatriotic about portraying reality as best as possible, and instead in the process it has done world journalism proud.

But what else can you expect of an organization, which has had a line-up of journalists like India correspondent Mark Tully working for it. It may be recalled Tully resigned from the BBC after making public his mind on the self-overhaul of the organization in the early 90s. He had berated the BBC for allowing a takeover by "accountants and business consultants who know nothing about journalism."

The BBC's India staff that worked under Tully says they stood by Tully and had also offered to resign with him, but Tully dissuaded them from doing so because in such an event there would be no journalists left in the organization and the takeover by "accountants" would become complete. The relevant question is, will Manipur's journalism remain in the hands of journalists?

(Courtesy: The Imphal Free Press)

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