OBJECTIVITY FAVORS IDEOLOGIES NOT TRUTH

Following is the text of the paper Riyaz Masroor presented in the GK Foundation’s daylong seminar on The Role of Intelligentsia vis-à-vis Kashmir on September 9
Objectivity is conventionally understood as the art of writing balanced news. That plainly means balancing truth with untruth. Yet there is a tiny but vibrant minority of intellectuals who describe the objectivity as a ‘colonial discourse’ through which the ruling elites spread lies and some truths that favor their interests.
Let’s believe for a moment that the media is a democratic institution. That way it is located between the spheres of the state and the civil society. Generally the media adopts a demeanor that makes it appear on the side of civil society. This impression has been so much hammered into public opinion that the readers, viewers or listeners largely believe that the media supports the civil society and serves its interests.
The question whether the media serves the interests of the civil society or the state or both or neither is a tricky one. To reach to some reasonable conclusion let’s have a recap of the media scene here.
We have close to twenty offset English as well as Urdu newspapers hitting the stands daily and some of them weekly. There is a sound if not strong presence of international media through its correspondents here. We have New Delhi controlled electronic media such as Radio Kashmir and Door Darshan Kendra. Of late we see several cable services venturing into news coverage. There are half a dozen news agencies, which circulate news events through email and SMS.
Barring a few exceptions none of the newspapers have their correspondents stationed in peripheries. It might be partly because the independent news media is yet to grow as an industry and partly because the Police and armed forces still remain the primary source of news and information.
The media access to interiors remains confined within the Barahmullah-Srinagar-Khanabal axis while the incidents are happening hundreds of miles away in Gurez, Karnah, wadwan Doda, interiors of Poonch, Rajouri and Ladakh.
Thanks to belated advent of cellular services in Kashmir, the reporters who are willing to bring facts and deliver truth find it easier to have an objective account rather than buying the state version.
If objectivity means being honest while disseminating the facts, many if not all, Kashmiri journalists have done that even at the risk of their lives. The state has ways to coerce but most of our honest reporters had been struggling to find their way. There have all along been the exceptions yet there are people who have suffered lot of pain while being objective.
Generally conflict reporting is more than a challenge. But I feel unable to explain how difficult it is to report your own conflict in which your own commitments and prejudices are rooted.
My senior colleague in BBC Altaf Hussain says, “One Hundred percent objectivity is impossible but that doesn’t mean we shun it. A Journalist willing to be objective while reporting his own conflict must have three traits: correct perspective, skill and character. Not necessarily that he always gets the other side but he should be honest to the dissemination of facts.”
While calibrating pressures the media has tried to strike the middle ground. It might also have tried to keep its pro-civil society image intact and that is where objectivity comes handy.
In places such as Kashmir, state always lacks legitimacy. It wants to be seen as an entity besides the advocates of resistance. So while we try to play objective without a proper perspective we end up accommodating the anti-civil society discourse next to the civil society demands, making it a heady mix of ideologies rather than an account of truth.
State has its own ideology about Kashmir. According to this ideology it is fighting a war against “terrorism” and wants public as well as intellectuals support it in restoring normalcy. There are non state forces who also espouse an ideology. Their ideology is fighting against the “Indian occupation” and seeking public as well as intellectual support to restore the “freedom of the people.”
There are many exceptions yet the Kashmiri journalists have dared to steer clear of this ideological clash. It is we who told the real story to the world when the latest phase of the turmoil broke out.
Religion has been a biggest challenger for a Muslim Kashmiri reporter while placing himself on an objective point in these clashing ideologies. While the separatist forces expect him to be on their side because of his faith, the state forces want him to prove his credentials by promoting the state ideology.
Robert Fisk is one of the few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden - three times (all published by The Independent: December 6, 1993 July 10, 1996, and March 22, 1997).
During one of Fisk's interviews with Bin Laden, Fisk noted an attempt by Bin Laden to possibly recruit him. Bin Laden said, "Mr. Robert, one of our brothers had a dream. He dreamed ... that you were a spiritual person ... this means you are a true Muslim." Fisk replied, "Sheikh Osama, I am not a Muslim ... I am a journalist".

So, the objective journalist requires to side with truth rather than ideology. How far it is possible in the given situation remains debatable.
A little thinking over the local media scenario would explain why the death of a beast in Tral consumes prime time of Indian TV Channels and Khundroo incident doesn’t get even a scroll space? We can easily understand why a small religious festival grabs headlines and the death of 33 children in Wular tragedy gets confused. No surprises, therefore, why the crime of sexual exploitation becomes a media movement and vanishes within seven weeks.
I would not sweepingly term the objectivity a myth. But in the prevalent practices of controlling dissent it is a fragmented rather than a whole entity. When we believe that we cannot be absolutely objective in reporting conflict the challenge to paint the real picture is not as much on a reporter’s shoulder as it is upon the intellectuals.
It is they who have to decide their political and moral location. Here we often witness the opposite of it. We see reporters straying to the commentator’s domain and intellectuals overlooking the ground reality and hiding behind their own personal narratives and travelogues.
The last century’s Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci tells us how the intellectuals, social groups and other institutions end up serving the cause of the state. He defined the State as coercion combined with hegemony and according to Gramsci hegemony is political power that flows from intellectual and moral leadership, authority or consensus as distinguished from armed force.
According to Gramsci a ruling class forms and maintains its hegemony in civil society, i.e. by creating cultural and political consensus through unions, political parties, schools, media, the church, and other voluntary associations where hegemony is exercised by a ruling class over allied classes and social groups.
The Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh said during Ram Nath Goinka award function in 2006: "I also believe that the journalism of courage is not just about giving voice to those who are willing to shout , but it is about giving voice to the voiceless and to those who choose to be silent. Objectivity does not imply neutrality. It implies respect for truth and facts, and a willingness to take positions, howsoever contrarian or contentious.”
When the Prime Minister of India insists on taking sides for truth you need not to be Einstein to deduce the message. When the PM wants to take sides, it certainly implies that he seeks intellectual support in fighting terror and restoring normalcy. Similar pointed sermons have been coming from the non state camp as well.
Can we expect ‘objectivity’ in newspaper columns when the state or non state forces acknowledge the ‘contribution’ of our writers by way of conferring awards?
Noted writer, theorist and political commentator Eqbal Ahmad says that Creativity suffers when intellectuals and artists seek proximity to power. He reminds us of Medieval Muslim civil society, which was unequivocally classified.
Wrote Eqbal Ahamad: “Muslims in that era saw poets as belonging to two categories: The Sha'ir-ul-Khilafa, poet of power, lived in the capital - darul-khilafa, enjoyed the Caliph's favors or those of his courtiers and viziers, and basked self-importantly in the privileges of patronage. Artistically he tended to slide backwards becoming adept only in the passing skills of hijv and qasida.
The shai'r-ul-imamah, poet who led, lived in the provinces often in modest circumstances, close to the heartbeat of society, and spoke truth to power. They are the ones we know still.
The contrast was drawn again in the previous century by Gramsci.
He distinguished the state and civil society as distinct entities. He draws three fundamental conclusions:
i) When civil society (which includes professional, literary and artistic institutions and associations) conforms uncritically or is coerced by the state into silence, totalitarianism prevails.
ii) When civil society enjoys a lively network of institutions and associations, and these maintain critical links with state institutions, then democracy prevails.
iii) When state and society are structurally and culturally antagonistic to each other, then conditions of civil war and anarchy obtain, and the society evades either fate only when its intelligentsia forges and popularizes a program for reform or revolution.
In all three situations the choices artists and intellectuals make affect not only their own but their society's destiny.
Author is a Srinagar-based BBC journalist . He can be reached at rmasroor@gmail.com