MASS MEDIA

Sudesh K. Verma on Sangh Parivar Move to Plant its Men in the Media

The "Sangh Parivar" has concluded that it must have its own men in the media to highlight issues facing the Hindu community, particularly when other communities take an anti-Hindu stance.

The RSS feels that there is a predominance of the Left ideology in the print media, and the only way to end this is to ensure that more RSS-minded people enter the profession.

In most conflict situations with strong local ramifications, the "anti-Hindu" viewpoint is often put across more forcefully, because of the dominance of leftists in the print media, an RSS pracharak said.

To consider these aspects, the RSS had a three-day national level meeting of its pradesh media and publicity in charges from June 28. The meeting was chaired by the RSS all India publicity incharge, Srikant Joshi.

The meeting concluded that the RSS must work actively to push its own men in the media, besides trying to convert journalists into RSS sympathisers if they have not been blindly opposing the organisation's philosophy, an RSS pracharak said.

The RSS has already identified and prepared a list of journalists who are Communists. It is also in the process of identifying that journalist who they feel are aligned too closely with the Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress.

The RSS pracharaks and organisational heads would be given special instructions not to open up before these journalists. In the RSS' view these journalists distort information and present a misleading picture, he said.

The meeting also decided to create a group of professional letter writers in every district. They would be writing "letters to the editor" on local issues as decided by the local RSS units.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an affiliate of the RSS, has already started working on this. It has organised a five-day camp for training young journalists where they would be taught the art of highlighting the cause of the majority community. It had organised a similar camp last year also.

This year's training camp was inaugurated by VHP general secretary, Giriraj Kishore, at Gurgaon. VHP joint general secretary Onkar Bhave is the camp's in-charge.

VHP president Vishnu Hari Dalmia is slated to deliver the valedictory address.

Prominent media personalities, particularly from the vernacular press, are likely to address the trainees. The journalists will be addressing 30 participants who have come from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

Some of the participants are junior journalists associated with various local newspapers and magazines. Most, however, are young graduates interested in making a career in journalism. All of them, however, have either the RSS background or are sympathisers of the RSS

They would be trained in the art of writing a good report and "letters to the editor".       

(Source: The Business Standard, 5 July 1997)

G.S. Bhargava on Mass Media and Communalism

In recent article celebrated columnist Praful Bidwai concluded that one of the saddest changes in the Indian media in the last fifty years is "it opening up to communal influences as never before". He is absolutely right in saying that in the wake of the partition disturbances and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the forerunners of later-day Hindutva, including the RSS, were in the doghouse in the perspective of mainstream journalism. The media support for the RSS was negligible, if at all.

The demolition of the Babari Masjid in December 1992 was another watershed. The BJP which had in the earlier two decades emerged as a cohesive political force with a fairly large spread in several parts of the country suffered an eclipse in acceptability, especially among those whom Praful contemptuously calls 'the elite'. This was reflected in the changed attitude of the media to the party and its accomplices in the outrage.

The reference is not merely to the almost universal condemnation of the vandalism in the opinion columns of newspapers and magazines but also to the attitudes of individual journalists.

Mixing up the two events and telescoping the time gap between them, Praful propounds the theory of decline in the secular character of the print medium in the last fifty years.

He builds his case on facile premises like deferential references to Atalji and Advani in the newspapers and the publicity accorded to their pronouncements, even if they are 'inane or repetitive'.

No professional journalist will bring value judgement to bear on his or her reporting of pronouncements of leaders.

In a temple in Dadar (Mumbai) a book entitled Gandhi, the Murderer of Gandhi was released on August 15, with Gopal Godse and Madanlal Pahwa - the accused in the murder conspiracy - among the participants. The theme of the litany was naturally denunciation of Gandhi and praise of Godse, whose framed photograph was garlanded. The reporters who covered the event refused to take even a glass of water from the hosts, although they did their professional duty of reporting it. It was also good that the abomination had been noted, for otherwise we would not have known it existed.                        

(Source: The Indian Currents)