What should have been a day of careful, sensitive dissemination of information about the killings of Adivasi villagers by the Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland became a day of noise and chaos in Assam. Television news anchors screamed headlines and flashed grisly images of bodies, adding to the confusion of the occasion, as a scuffle broke out on air at one station. It finally needed the Assam chief minister to appeal to the state media to be sensitive in its reporting – something that the local news channels ignore even on a typical day.
With the numbers of the deceased and injured trickling in sporadically, the national news channels reported on Wednesday morning that “at least 50 people had been killed”. But at least two Assamese news channels put the toll to 61. “Flashing” was the preferred adjective of the moment across channels like DY 365, NE Focus and Prag News. News anchors rapidly shouted headlines in Assamese, from which facts had to be sieved with great difficulty.
Several headlines flashed on the screen simultaneously: DY 365 had seven spaces (three on top of the screen and four on the bottom) for fast-changing headlines, while Prag News had five. Barely a few seconds passed before the headlines were replaced.
Journalistic ethics ignored
Disregarding the long-standing debate in electronic media worldwide on the use of gory visuals, the Assamese news media had a field day showing corpses and victims’ grievous injuries. Some channels blurred some stills, but the ooze of blood in them left little ambiguity. There were graphic images of burnt houses, bodies wrapped in sheets of bamboo and lined up along the floor, besides rows of crying children. By late Wednesday, the images of wailing women and nervous men burst across the screen, with a melodramatic voice-over and equally melodramatic music. The same shots looped endlessly.
In all this, questions of journalistic ethics went unheeded.
Also overlooked in the coverage were delicate interviewing skills. Instead, intimidation became the tool for interviewing a vulnerable population: an anxious man, perhaps an eyewitness to the shooting or who had lost family members in the killings, was cornered with a larger-than-fist mike poking his face and asked questions without an iota of empathy or gentleness. When the man began narrating a part of the larger episode, the mike was pulled away and the interviewer launched into an analysis.
This knee-jerk end of bytes carried on during conversations with officials. Their explanations were abruptly cut off by news anchors, without as much as a summary, to introduce visuals of not even “breaking news” variety. The interviewees were often not identified.
Fracas on live television
Scuffles, which have become the staple of news channels in Assam, reached their zenith at this time of bloodshed. On one channel, a man shrieked accusations against the local MLA of not visiting the site of the killings, and then the camera panned to show the MLA charging at the man. A battle of words escalated into a scuffle as the camera rolled.
Finally, there was little nuanced analysis on why did the NDFB-S attacked villages of former teagarden workers from the advasi community. This was an unprecedented act by a group that has been declared a terrorist organisation by the government of India.
While one channel tried to compare the NDFB-S to Boko Haram, Taliban, jihadis and even, ignorantly, India's Maoists, there was nothing beyond repeated demands for the Assam and Central governments to go tough on NDFB-S. DY 365 managed to secure a telephone conversation with United Liberation Front of Assam chief Paresh Barua. But during the conversation and later, the news anchor’s emphasis remained on how Barua would not specifically condemn the attack whose victims were mostly women and children. Before going to a commercial break, the anchor repeated Barua’s old statement that “an enemy’s enemy is a friend”.
At this crucial time, the Assamese news media was needed as a careful and objective observer to help connect the rest of the world to the people in Sonitpur and Kokrajhar. It failed miserably in its duty.
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With the numbers of the deceased and injured trickling in sporadically, the national news channels reported on Wednesday morning that “at least 50 people had been killed”. But at least two Assamese news channels put the toll to 61. “Flashing” was the preferred adjective of the moment across channels like DY 365, NE Focus and Prag News. News anchors rapidly shouted headlines in Assamese, from which facts had to be sieved with great difficulty.
Several headlines flashed on the screen simultaneously: DY 365 had seven spaces (three on top of the screen and four on the bottom) for fast-changing headlines, while Prag News had five. Barely a few seconds passed before the headlines were replaced.
Journalistic ethics ignored
Disregarding the long-standing debate in electronic media worldwide on the use of gory visuals, the Assamese news media had a field day showing corpses and victims’ grievous injuries. Some channels blurred some stills, but the ooze of blood in them left little ambiguity. There were graphic images of burnt houses, bodies wrapped in sheets of bamboo and lined up along the floor, besides rows of crying children. By late Wednesday, the images of wailing women and nervous men burst across the screen, with a melodramatic voice-over and equally melodramatic music. The same shots looped endlessly.
In all this, questions of journalistic ethics went unheeded.
Also overlooked in the coverage were delicate interviewing skills. Instead, intimidation became the tool for interviewing a vulnerable population: an anxious man, perhaps an eyewitness to the shooting or who had lost family members in the killings, was cornered with a larger-than-fist mike poking his face and asked questions without an iota of empathy or gentleness. When the man began narrating a part of the larger episode, the mike was pulled away and the interviewer launched into an analysis.
This knee-jerk end of bytes carried on during conversations with officials. Their explanations were abruptly cut off by news anchors, without as much as a summary, to introduce visuals of not even “breaking news” variety. The interviewees were often not identified.
Fracas on live television
Scuffles, which have become the staple of news channels in Assam, reached their zenith at this time of bloodshed. On one channel, a man shrieked accusations against the local MLA of not visiting the site of the killings, and then the camera panned to show the MLA charging at the man. A battle of words escalated into a scuffle as the camera rolled.
Finally, there was little nuanced analysis on why did the NDFB-S attacked villages of former teagarden workers from the advasi community. This was an unprecedented act by a group that has been declared a terrorist organisation by the government of India.
While one channel tried to compare the NDFB-S to Boko Haram, Taliban, jihadis and even, ignorantly, India's Maoists, there was nothing beyond repeated demands for the Assam and Central governments to go tough on NDFB-S. DY 365 managed to secure a telephone conversation with United Liberation Front of Assam chief Paresh Barua. But during the conversation and later, the news anchor’s emphasis remained on how Barua would not specifically condemn the attack whose victims were mostly women and children. Before going to a commercial break, the anchor repeated Barua’s old statement that “an enemy’s enemy is a friend”.
At this crucial time, the Assamese news media was needed as a careful and objective observer to help connect the rest of the world to the people in Sonitpur and Kokrajhar. It failed miserably in its duty.
