A first information report IFIR) was lodged against eight Twitter handles for “allegedly propagating fake news in connection with the death of two girls in Unnao last week,” news portal Rediff report quoted the area police said on Monday. 

The Twitter handles include news portal ‘Mojo Story’, founded by senior journalist Barkha Dutt, Janjagran Live, Aazad Samaj Party spokesperson Suraj Kumar Boudh, Nilim Dutta, Vijay Ambedkar, Abhay Kumar Azad, Rahul Diwakar, Nawab Satpal Tanwar. The case was registered at the Sadar Kotwali police station area in Unnao on Sunday, and came to light soon enough. According to news reports, the FIR has been lodged for propagating ‘fake and misleading news’ regarding the incident, reported Rediff, quoting Assistant Superintendent of Police Vinod Kumar Pandey.

Barkha Dutt issued a public statement on Monday in reaction to the FIRs against her team for reporting Unnao murders: “We’ve followed journalistic principles by reporting all sides of an evolving story. To use IPC sections that are punishable with prison is pure intimidation. I am very ready to fight it and face it in court.” She updated this to add: “just when you thought it couldn’t get any more shocking the Unnao Police has refused to even give us a copy of the FIR in total violation of my legal rights, and without which we cannot appeal for judicial intervention. Brazen Harassment and bullying…” Dutt has said she found it “even more suspicious is how Unnao Police has clubbed us with a bunch of politicians. The police claim the FIR against us (upto 1 year in prison) is for mentioning sexual assault, which we NEVER did. Before fact checking @themojostory the UP Police needs to fact check its FIR”

On FIR against us for reporting Unnao murders- We’ve followed journalistic principles by reporting all sides of an evolving story. To use IPC sections that are punishable with prison is pure intimidation. I am very ready to fight it and face it in court. Statement @themojostory

— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) February 21, 2021

On February 17, late evening, news came in from Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, that three Dalit girls were found with their hands and legs tied in the field. While two of them were found dead, the third one was taken to the District hospital and is undergoing treatment. The incident occurred in Babura village, Asoha police station area. The family members said that the girls had gone to the fields in the afternoon to fetch fodder for the cattle and did not return until late evening. Then they went looking for them in the fields and found them tied up. The doctor went on record to say that the one girl who was brought to the hospital was gasping for breath and there were indications that she was poisoned.  The District Magistrate reached the hospital to assess the situation and senior cops including IG and DIG Lucknow range reached the spot after being alerted. “The three girls were found in an unconscious state in their own field. Of them, two have died while one has been referred to the district hospital for treatment. Initial investigations suggest it is a case of poisoning. Statements of people are being recorded and the case is being investigated,” Superintendent of Police Unnao had said.

The last rites of the deceased girls were performed on Friday morning amid tight security arrangements. According to later news reports Unnao Police arrestedtwo people in this connection, “accusing them of murder over one-sided love”.

However, according to Rediff, on Saturday, Congress leader Udit Raj was booked for allegedly “propagating fake news in a tweet that the teenagers were raped and their bodies cremated against the will of their family.”

The Uttar Pradesh Police has claimed that Barkha Dutt’s newspotral Mojo Story had ‘wrongly reported that the police had rushed to perform the last rites of the two deceased girls despite objections from the girls’ families’. However, Mojo Story has denied this allegation and maintains that their report was based on the girls’ families’ statements. The NewsMinute reported that FIR that was registered under Section 153 of the IPC (Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot) and Section 66 of the Information and Technology Act, and claimed that false information was spread by the named journalists. 

DigiPub, a collective of digital media organisations, has condemned the FIR filed against journalist Barkha Dutt amongst others for their coverage of the alleged poisoning for three Dalit teenage girls. 

The DIGIPUB statement reads as follows:

“What is most outrageous is that the FIR by Unnao police is a clear and deliberate attempt at muzzling journalists and keeping them from doing their jobs. Not only this, Unnao SP Anand Kulkarni also threatened further action. Mojo Story in their tweet, denied these claims and cleared their stand on the news saying that inputs were given by a local reporter followed by a report by a Delhi correspondent. To challenge the claims, they asked for a copy of FIR which was refused by Unnao Police without which Mojo Story cannot appeal for a legal intervention.

Mojo Story has been penalised for reporting what the families of the Dalit girls told their reporter, that the police had been in favour of an early cremation but the families insisted otherwise. The police denial on this was also reported. The platform has also called out the police for clubbing them with politicians who had suggested falsely that the girls had been raped. The news platform has said it has not reported anything of the kind.

This is not the first time such attempts have been made to stop journalists from reporting, but it has become a pattern which needs to be addressed immediately by the government of Uttar Pradesh and the center needs to take a note. In this case, the sections used by the UP police allow for jail upto a year. Recently, UP police arrested Siddiqui Kappan for reporting on Hathras gangrape under Section 17 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. This is no way for a responsible and a mature democracy to function. Intimidating the press using enforcement agencies and lodging FIRs, often in ways that push the boundaries of legality needs to stop.             

The news media that DigiPub represents will not be intimidated and prevented from reporting the truth, however inconvenient it may be for anyone. We take our accountability as the fourth pillar of democracy very seriously and conduct ourselves in the most responsible fashion. We hope the governments around the country and in this case especially Uttar Pradesh, can do the same. DigiPub stands by the journalists named in the FIR and intend to challenge this bullying without compromise.”

Related: 

Uttar Pradesh: Where women live in fear

Unnao: Dalit girls found tied up in fields; 2 dead, 1 critical

113 hours raiding multiple locations, it is still not clear why the ED is investigations Newsclick

SC grants 5 days interim bail for Siddique Kappan to meet his ailing mother

The post Unnao reports: Twitter handles of Barkha Dutt’s portal, 7 others booked  appeared first on SabrangIndia.

When I read her appeal ​for a need to attend to​ context and historicity wh​ile framing the current crisis in Kashmir, I was for a moment pleased and lo​o​ked forward to an informed ​writeup that would bring in hitherto unexamined facets from Kashmir’s history and provide a comprehensive context to the current goings-on. However, I was met with only disappointment on this count. For​,​ Barkha does not reach back into some decades-​old (or even centuries old)​ history of Kashmir to situate the current state of affairs, but only as far back as 2016, during and after the death of Burhan Wani. Barkha informs us​ that even following that event, , there was a telecommunications blackout in the valley​ – ​for nearly a 100 days, according to her.

Strangely enough, what seems to irk Barkha in the inaccurate reporting she takes issue with​,​ is the fact that each report by foreign journalists (and a few left-leaning Indian journalists, she slips in) ​on the ​current affairs characterizes the Kashmir situation as “unprecedented.” That fills Barkha with horror – for she claims she knows that the current state in Kashmir is not unprecedented and therefore not something that a) we, the audience should ​not be taken in by and be appaled; rather we should see them as something that has precedent (and so assuage our outrage​), or 2) merits a doomsday like, alarmist coverage.

The context that she puts forward that would make for a more accurate reporting is not entirely an unfamiliar one – but a little unexpected from a so-called leading journalist, who also has long experience in Kashmir to boot. She adduces the specter of terrorists, who, she claims, view Kashmir as a religious issue and who also recruit children into their ranks and encourage them to pelt stones at the the Indian army and police. Then there is the Pakistani-sponsored cross-border terrorism that she adds to the context she finds missing.

The obvious problem here is the easy acceptance of categories like terrorist, separatist, militancy etc.  Barkha conveniently plays into the nationalist narrative, which is a little surprising again given that she is often taunted by the nationalists.

To provide proper context, as Barkha urges, one would need a much deeper engagement with Kashmir’s history of conflict, political manipulation, oppression, human rights abuses and resistance – and not just from the time of Burhan Wani. And that is what, Barkha ironically, fails to do.

Israel, and many Israeli citizens think of all Palestinians as terrorists and suicide bombers. Even though many Palestinians have distanced themselves from outfits like Hamas and Hezbollah, yet they are all in for collective punishment. For many Indians, Bhagat Singh, Khudiram Bose, Madan Lal Dhingra et al were freedom fighters but for the British they were terrorists. Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 27 years for conspiring to overthrow the state. Which is not to condone acts of terror and those considered inimical by states, but all activities, including those marked as “terror” have contexts. Besides, while the involvement of youth and children is to be righly protested, children as protestors form a significant part of the Palestinian resistance – and the Israeli specifically target children, incarcerating them in droves. And if one has to dig a little deeper, children were recruited into resistance groups in the fight against the Nazis during World War II by many of the Allies. Nothing makes it right, but it certainly is good to have context and historicity.

Barka seems to trust the official line from a government official in Kashmir who basically tells her that the current complete lockdown has been implemented incorporating lessons from the 2016 incidents following Burhan Wani’s death, and that they “…decided to protect lives, [even if] some liberties may have to be compromised.” Significanly, missing in her piece are Kashmiri voices of the people – and what they think about all the context and historicity she notes.

Significantly, it is not just Barkha who comments on the divergence in the two narratives between that of the local press and that of the foreign press. Krishna Prasad, former Editor-in-Chief, ‘Outlook’ magazine, writing in The Hindu, also comments on the same issue, but he is more concerned with the capitulation of the Indian media to state narrative: “In the ‘Brave New World’ of Kashmir, the Indian state has worked out the Huxleyan circuitry of how to make the media relay a unitary message without explicitly making it appear so. Therefore, a scarcity of dissent in spite of a plethora of evidence.”

​More than context and historicity, what Barkha herself misses ​is an understanding and all-round analysis of the current situation – how the  constitutional agreements (e.g. Article 370) was abrogated in secrecy without taking the people of Kashmir into confidence, how immediately after the abrogation the state imposed its totalitarian clampdown without bothering to provide any proper explanation to the people. If, as Barkha (believingly) quotes the state official, the action was done to save lives, and in effect for the “good of the people,” do they not deserve to be told this and have their doubts quelled? None of such steps were taken. The Kashmiris have been treated as “hostiles,” to use an Americanism and unworthy of being consulted with. At least there was a overt reason for the clampdown in 2016 – the visible unrest that was claiming lives. But what was the rationale in 2019 – even though none was publicly provided? Maybe nothing with Kashmir is unprecedented: they’ve probably seen it all. Yet, each event wherein the basic rights of Kashmiris are trampled upon without as much as a by your leave has to be reported taking into account all dimensions: of injustice, of hardship and suffering, of anger, of humiliation, of confusion – and certainly with as much context and historicity as possible. This would make for better reporting.

Ananda Maitreya is a Delhi-based writer and a student of social movements. He has been involved in various struggles of the marginalized people, including Dalit and Adivasi movements and the Palestinian struggle.

Courtesy: Counter Current

The post The luxury of lazy thinking: Why Barkha Dutt is off the mark on Kashmir reporting appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Writing for Washington Post, Barkha argued that in a country where 90% of the transactions were made in cash, the announcement of invalidation of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes was meant to shut down the parallel economy run by tax evaders but due to bad planning people ended up being harassed.

Drawing a parallel with former prime minister Indira Gandhi’s speech in early seventies, Barkha wrote, “The audacity of Modi’s demonetization decision and the centralization of power it represents has drawn many parallels with Indira’s actions in the 1970s. His notes ban has especially drawn comparisons with Gandhi’s move to nationalize India’s banks in 1969.”

“Modi’s blend of disruptive individualism, strongman politics and old-style welfare economics falls back on more government, rather than less, as the primary vehicle of change. The ’70s deja vu has confirmed one thing — “Modinomics” is not quite the right-of-center Thatcherite model that many of his supporters may have expected. Indeed, in India, we are back to the future,” Barkha added.

Quoting PM Modi speech from recent rally, where he said “They say- remove Modi, I say, remove corruption” Barkha Dutt wrote that it was a replica of Indira Gandhi’s in 1971, “They say – remove Indira, I say, remove poverty.”
She argued that while PM Modi had asked only for 50 days, but two months have passed and the question to be asked now is what exactly did the decision of demonetisation achieve.

Writing about the lack of public outrage despite their continuous sufferings, Barkha Dutt said that it was because of ‘Modi’s masterful management of the political messaging.’

She writes, “By branding his decision as a ‘fight against corruption, black money, fake notes and terrorism,’ Modi has converted demonetization into a test of courageous patriotism. Playing on Gandhi’s mantra of being a messiah for the poor, Modi astutely positioned the notes ban as a modern day morality play where ‘sacrifice’ is key to being a good citizen… In an age of strident hyper-nationalism, the BJP has craftily encouraged the narrative that those opposing demonetization are fat-cat traitors who are too indolent to be part of a great national movement.

Courtesy: Janta Ka Reporter
 

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