No lessons learnt by TV channels from Tablighi Jamaat fiasco and reprimand from the Supreme Court

The two months old ‘hijab’ controversy in Karnataka, which began in one women’s college in Udupi and which has now spread across the state, owes a lot to TV channels, many of them owned by politicians. Coverage on TV has been hysterical and high-pitched as channels played the role of the judge, prosecutor and the jury. There were few attempts to defuse the situation or to discourage vigilante justice.

TV crew have chased schoolgirls, asked them leading questions inside schools and intimidated Muslim teachers. Hate Speech Beda (Beda in Kannada means ‘no’) --a collective to combat hate speech--- called on TV channels to engage with editors on the coverage, without much success. They now plan to escalate the issue to the National Broadcasters’ Association. One of the channels, Public TV, in the meanwhile has been running a scroll during its news bulletins threatening criminal defamation cases against anyone who dares to defame the channel on social media. This could well be the first time that a TV channel has held out such a threat.

The Department of Minority Welfare ordered an inquiry on complaints of intrusion of privacy and issued instructions not to allow any photography of students inside schools and colleges. A preliminary report was to be submitted by February 22 but attempts to get information on the findings proved futile.

Dhanya Rajendran, Editor-in-Chief of The News Minute, says coverage by the electronic media has been outrageous. “They are not just pitting one community against the other, but pitting students of one community against another. The first few days they portrayed students with hijab as not caring for the country; later they accused the students of not following the court’s interim order and finally they whipped up a controversy over hijab vs sindhoor based on two Muslim students questioning the perceived ban on hijab but not on sindhoor’’ she recalled.

The TV channels invited Pramod Muthalik, Chief of the Rashtriya Hindu Sena, to comment and he dutifully threatened to cut off tongues of those who dared to speak ‘against the bindi’. “The channels have not realised the damage they have caused,” quips Rajendran.

At a college in Chitradurga, a group of hijab and burqa clad Muslim girls engaged in a heated argument with police women preventing them from entering the campus. Unable to cope with the verbal duel, a police woman turned to the TV crew watching the exchange and exclaimed, “Record this. Put it in all TV channels. This student should be highlighted everywhere.’’ Reporter of a Kannada TV channel chased a traumatized hijab-wearing student even as her teacher pleaded with the cameraman to let the child go, assuring him that the girl would remove the headscarf inside the class.

The News Minute this week published a report on the conduct of TV channels. Kannada TV channel Asianet Suvarna, owned by Union minister and BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, which carried out a sting operation on the petitioners in the hijab case. The Suvarna TV team went with hidden cameras under cover of representing NGOs.

The 15-minute ‘sting’ aired last Saturday showed a reporter visiting the grandmother of one of the petitioners Aliya Assadi with hidden cameras. Later, they tracked down her father Ayub, who is an autorickshaw driver, and engaged him for a ride. They struck up a conversation during which the father broke down, recalling how his friends had accused him and his daughter of ruining their children’s education and asked him to‘go back to Pakistan’. It revived the old debate on the ethics of sting operations.

N.K. Mohan Ram, Media Analyst, says Kannada TV channels projected the hijab issue as a “Dharma Yuddha’’ (holy war) with titles such as “hijab ya jawaab.’’ No channel questioned why a procession was allowed with minister K.S. Eshwarappa leading it for the burial of Bajrang Dal activist Harsha Hindu, when section 144 of CrPC had been imposed in Shivamogga. Biased reporting, he maintained, had not been reined in by regulators or the I & B ministry.

Swathi Shivanand, an independent researcher in Bengaluru with a doctorate in modern history, and Meghana Muddurangappa, a Law student, have compiled a report on the Kannada channels’ coverage. “The interim order of the HC was only for college students but TV channels by their misleading coverage effectively enforced a ban on the hijab in all educational institutions by targeting schools and teachers.

“In Srirangapatna, a TV9 reporter coerced a woman lecturer to remove her hijab by pointing the camera at her and saying “court order,’’ the report says.

The report cites instances of intimidation and aggression. Najma Nazeer, a hijab-wearing Muslim politician, was heckled by the anchor on TV9 Kannada soon after she blamed media and ruling party politicians for creating this mess.

“On the show, Muthalik made a malicious and sexualised comment: ‘She is wearing a hijab now but you open her Facebook page and you will see what all she wears.’ Not only did the anchors not pull up Muthalik, they spoke disparagingly to her and asked her not to act like a “leader” and give speeches. Shivanand recalls that the anchor commented on air that she was unlikely to get elected based on her speech in the show”.

Shivakumar Menasinakai, a senior journalist with Samyukta Karnataka, says most TV channels and the print media did not understand the high court’s interim order. “It’s no use reprimanding the media now as the damage has been done,” he feels.

The Supreme Court, he points out, did pull up the media for communalising the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in Delhi before the first wave of Covid19, when the Government was actually downplaying the threat from the virus. But the reprimand came too late and only in September 2021, he adds ruefully.

A senior TV journalist agrees on condition of anonymity. There has been a lapse on the part of some channels, who went on an overdrive, helping it spread across the state

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)