Disinformation and fake news are major issues that humankind grapples with today. Jammu and Kashmir is no exception. Rather, a deliberate creation of an ecosystem of surveillance and suppression has pushed all independent voices and journalism into a blackhole.
When independent media houses are invalidated, pushed to the margins, or forced to shut down, and professional journalists have no platforms to report from, while fresh interns have no channels to gain experience, the field is left free for opportunists to exploit. Using the vast digital expanse for self-projection, petty pecuniary benefits, and even resorting to blackmail and extortion becomes easier. This is a bigger challenge for journalism professionals than it is for the administration that created this ecosystem by deliberate design by throttling journalism and filling the vacuum with untamable chaos.
The ‘Mohalla journalism’ and its toxicity of defaming people, spreading panic and falsehoods, besides encouraging a culture of blackmail, that this chaos has spawned, has thrown up the biggest challenges for journalists, that of increasing trust deficit between the storyteller and the audience/reader. The issue requires a cure.
However, the recent directive of the Information Directorate in Jammu and Kashmir for reining in 'fake journalism,' triggering the release of an appalling and invasive checklist requiring journalists to part with their personal information, including biometrics and bank statements, is a prescription worse than the ailment. It’s like a surgeon amputating a patient’s left leg when the right leg is suffering irreparable damage.
Even more appalling is that senior journalists are putting their weight behind this directive in the fervent hope that the government would wave its magic wand and sift the ‘genuine’ from the ‘imposter’. It is laughable to believe that the very government that constantly cracks down on journalists with a Media Policy 2020 and harassing actions like arrests, slapping criminal cases, raids, intimidation, and regular summoning to police stations, and arm-twisting media houses with the bait of advertisements would genuinely want to promote professional journalism.
The Jury is Biased
Can we forget that there is enough evidence in the public domain about how the BJP government and its patronised elements are creating the world’s largest fake news industry in India and how those trying to debunk fake news are getting in the crosshairs of the government? If you need a reminder, these links may just be a small sample. (here here here here) It is wishful to expect that the government would want to tame the fake news industry in Jammu and Kashmir where the crackdown on journalism assumes a higher level than rest of the country.
If the government has its way, district information officers will now have the power to decide who a ‘bona fide’ journalist is. This will be decided on the basis of a ten-point checklist that includes personal details, including biometric and bank statements. How do these sets of information differentiate between a journalist and a non-journalist? Would a pauper or a more prosperous person be deemed a journalist? The checklist includes authorisation from organisations. While this might be challenging for freelancers, volunteer contributors, stringers, and citizen journalists, who decides who is a bona fide organisation that can vouch for a ‘bona fide’ journalist?
The government officials will not only decide who a bona fide journalist is and who’s an imposter, they will also recommend to news organisations (and it is presumed that this will have some kind of binding implication) to socially and publicly dissociate from them, rendering them ‘outcaste’ without a layer of scrutiny or accountability. The government officials will decide who they give information to and who they hide it from, turning both Right to Information and Freedom of the Press on their heads, and in turn subverting democracy itself.
A government that has virtually captured the media industry through a system of offering advertisements only to those who amplify government propaganda, it is not difficult to imagine how this new directive would be further weaponised against the journalists who criticise the government through rigorous fact-checking and investigation while those amplifying the stink of fake news will be rewarded.
No Government can Provide Solutions
While the present government has created one of the most pernicious trends of unannounced censorship in which journalism is criminalized and silenced, it is a truism that the tendency to control the media in far smaller measures has existed since times immemorial under successive governments and has been exerted through ruthless bans, vilification campaigns, blocking advertisements, and information flows, and sometimes pressing criminal charges.
In the last 35 years of my career, I have never had a government accreditation. There have been plenty of occasions when officials and elected representatives refused to respond to my queries or even meet with me. Our newspaper, Kashmir Times, was often deprived of advertisements, as a punishment for fairly criticising the government. At one time, the Information Director made sure that important official releases were not sent to our desk, and a certain Chief Minister made it a point to publicly announce that he never reads the Kashmir Times.
This pattern reveals a calculated strategy of state control of independent journalism not through overt censorship, but by systematically denying access, withholding information, and de-legitimising critical voices. This multi-pronged approach of exclusion, economic pressure, information asymmetry, and reputational assault is far more exacerbated today.
The Fuzzy Zone of Journalism
On what basis do the senior journalists believe that instead of taking on the imposter journalists, thriving on an ecosystem of fake news and gossip, the government would fairly decide who a genuine journalist is, based on a one-size-fits-all, senseless and standardised 10-point checklist.
Who is a bona fide journalist? It’s always been a tricky terrain. Unlike qualified doctors, even though there are specific trainings for journalists, anybody with some brains, knowledge about its basic needs and ethics, and a passion to investigate truth can become a journalist with some due diligence. Not all journalists are university-trained and some of the most brilliant journalists never quite had a degree.
There has always been volunteer journalism and part-time journalism and citizen journalism and community journalism have come of age too. In an ever-evolving digital world, journalism has become a fuzzier zone with social media influencers like Dhruv Rathe or Akash Banerjee producing content that resembles journalism in-depth and research. How are all these categories to be judged as part of the J&K Information directive? Would they be clubbed with the irresponsible social media influencers churning out fake news and gibberish?
That brings us back to the challenge we began with – fake news and fake journalists. How does one deal with it? Who judges and what actions should be taken? This requires a larger debate, but to begin with, an independent ombudsman comprising mostly senior media professionals can take a call on who a genuine journalist is. To place the levers in the hands of the government that wants to obliterate the difference between propaganda and truth, stenography and journalism is atrocious.
The senior journalists ought to know better. Instead of patting the very government that wants to pin down their colleagues, they can do better by building stronger solidarity spaces and guiding rudderless youngsters joining the profession. No one but the journalism professionals themselves can clean the rot.
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