A MEDIA-INSTIGATED RIOT?

A MEDIA-INSTIGATED RIOT?

The Hoot extracts two articles from Himal

·         The Paradox of the Nepali Mindset

·         The Press and Mr. Roshan¿s Non-Remark

The Press and Mr. Roshan¿s Non-R

 by Shanuj VC

There are no gatekeepers anymore... Things are no longer vetted by the press. They¿re vetted by the public.

...........................- Tom Rosenstiel, director, Project for Excellence in Journalism, 1998

There is presumably a distinction between spreading a rumour and reporting a rumour that is being spread. Presumably, also, it is not the kind of idle distinction that can be dispensed with, in the interest of meeting newsroom deadlines. But there was little in the conduct of the daily press during the two days of mid-winter rioting in Kathmandu to differentiate between news reporting and rumour-mongering. Is it that the competitive environment of breaking news makes the media just an accessory to the mass circulation of hearsay in a time of trouble?

This was certainly the impression conveyed by many of the Nepali papers which started the whole drama, as well as the Indian dailies which were not to be found wanting in the ensuing turmoil. While most of the Nepali publications made haste to publicise an unverified statement attributed to a rising Bollywood star whose views ought to have little bearing on the relations
between nations, many Indian dailies, especially those based in Delhi, were not slow in fabricating their own version of the unfolding events in Nepal.

Nationalist Xenophobes

It all began on 15 December with the Chitwan Post, a small-town Nepali language newspaper published from Narayanghat, south west of Kathmandu Valley. The paper reported that a section of Chitwan youth had burnt the effigy of the actor, believing that he had expressed dislike towards "Nepal and Nepalis". In retrospect, it does not look at all bad that the capital¿s media exhibited its habitual lethargy in picking up news that originates anywhere outside the Valley rim. The national dailies played the news all of 10 days later, on 25 December, but the, superior status of reporting or editing a daily from the capital does not always translate into
professionalism. So, the first reports from Kathmandu all assumed that Hrithik Roshan did express hatred towards Nepal and Nepalis in a STAR Plus interview of 14 December (some also reported that it was Zee that aired the programme, presuming that the channel which was notorious for unsubstantiated ¿anti-Nepal¿ coverage a year earlier during the Indian Airlines hijack, must have been the culprit). It was obvious that no one had fact-checked or crosschecked.

Even by the critical secon