The Journalism of Fatwas

It seems some journalists have been assigned the 'fatwa' beat. Whenever there is any cleric issuing a controversial fatwa that can make a 'story' it is given too much of an attention.
1. A cleric in Hyderabad issues fatwa against Vande Matram. CNN-IBN even did a story and none other than Soni Sangwan covered it. Now one expects a journalist like Soni Sangwan to be objective. She didn't go into the reason why Vande Mataram, a hymn, was opposed by a fiercely patriotic Subash Chandra Bose and a socialist like Ram Manohar Lohia who called it a blot on Indian freedom struggle(not to talk of Gandhi and others). The reason is that it comes from Anand Math that is pro-British.
2. When the militants attacked the temple in Varanasi and 100 (Hundred) Muslim clerics gathered and issued a fatwa to term militants and their deeds as un-Islamic, none of the media organisations took note.
I feelt that's not the constructive approach towards reporting on sensitive issues and try to understand the minority psyche as well rather than sermonising that singing Vande Mataram is a test for patriotism.

Two interesting posts by bloggers Dilip and Nitin's In defence of right not to sing Vande Mataram:
http://dcubed.blogspot.com/2006/06/sing-it-at-passport-office.html
http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/?p=1972
Blogosphere is turly more mature than journalism.

Are you Hindu/Christian or journalist first?

Incident: Hoodlums raped two tribal (Christian) women and the administration was not arresting the accused because the BJP was in power and the accused belonged to Bajrang Dal.

Fallout: A Minorities' Commission member, Indira Iyengar, called the press conference to bring the plight of these poor women before the media. Now the mediamen launched an attack on the organisers that why the fuss over rape...'balatkar to hote hi rahte hain', was the query by most of journos. The organisers said that women were raped because they had embraced Christianity willingly.
When a woman journalistm (she was Hindu) tried to calm down fellow scribes and reminded them that it was tribals are not necessarily Hindus as per constitution, the majority of journos got angry at her. Some of them called the Bajrang Dal activists who disrupted the press conference. (Can you imagine this?)

Moral of the story: It may be tough, you might feel prejudiced that the women were converted by Christians and tempted to feel that rape serves them right (Can you think like that?). But that's unpardonable. Not all channels showed the entire episode except Sahara, CNN-IBN and Channel 7. The rapes occurred in faraway Khargone district, the press conference in Bhopal and the bias of mediamen at district level was such that despite the fact that the case of rape was registered, the local newspapers hadn't reported it at all. Isn't it sad? What I feel is that your own biases apart, you have to report and first think in terms of everybody as human beings and think it in terms of justice and injustice. But the entire conduct of journos comes as a shock. Can journalists think like that--Rape serves them right? Mercifully national media is not that biased rather it can't afford to be so.

Page 3 culture invades electonic media: Cheap item girls entrance media

Rakhi Sawant's kisses and then singer Mika's smooch was the hottest story on Sunday in this nation of 105 crore populace. How cheap that publicity-hungry girl looked and still our media was so enchanted with her!

Till a few years back the newspapers were blamed for P 3 culture. Today when the channels were competing with each other in making a Rakhi Package with obscene catchlines (words like chummi were used), one had a fair idea where the P 3 culture of Electronic Media would take us.

Item girls like Meghna Naidu, Sambhavna, Twinkle Vajpayee, Rakhi Savant are almost becoming new age idols for the youths of this country--at least that's what Ajtak, Star and company would want us. I am not generalising, item girls have the right to earn but Rakhi Savant has been exploiting the hunger of media for stories and sensationalism.

And the channels are now caught in a self-created trap that they can't even get out of it--as if they wouldn't show it, the rival channel will showcase the entire drama-naked or semi-naked no one cares. Blur it slightly and show it to the world. And it may be one kiss, but Ajtak would show it in repeat mode so that it would look like a barrage of kisses.