Media Monsters

First Kashmir, then terror attacks and now unbridled media of both the countries are helping fuel the fire between India and Pakistan. The siege of Mumbai is over. What remains is finger pointing, happening bilaterally, by the media. Media monsters have been ruling the world since the time immemorial. Indian history witnessed the rift between the two communities after the munity of 1857, in which both the communities unitedly fought against their common enemy. Then British ruler took media their hostage and re-wrote the history, publishing only the atrocities on Hindus by the Muslim rulers. While it is true that Muslim rulers invaded Indian states, it is also true that they gradually accepted Indian traditions and mingled into India. What had happened in the past, what had held no importance, was elaborated so effectively that India suffered partition and many Hindu-Muslim riots since then. We Indians (and Pakistanis), good at carrying on the legacy, are still fighting due to the media created monsters.

Indian media, without much evidence, started making stories about Pakistan's role in current terror attacks (Somehow it has been proved true now), while Pakistani media criticized Indian media's endeavors and provided calculations to oppose such manifestations. Obviously it is surprising that just after such a huge intelligence failure we started making conclusions within hours of the attacks. While it is true that our media is mostly busy in making a potpourri of happenings, without understanding much of responsible journalism, Pakistan's involvement in maiming India cannot be denied. On the Indian side, media showed such a grim situation of the country to whole world continuously like a horror or action movie. Barkha Dutt, an eminet journalist that she is, was found asking her camera men to point on snipers. Such a despicable act of journalism was not expected from a 'Padm Shree' winner.

It is quite funny that people on both the sides of the borders are told altogether different stories about same event. India says, they used voice recognition software to dictate an e-mail in Hindi, while Pakistan says no one knows Hindi in Pakistan. India says, they said they hail from Hyderabad Deccan, while India says it is Pakistan that knows Indian Hyderabad as Hyderabad Deccan; In India we don't use this word 'Deccan'. India says, they spoke in accented Punjabi spoken in Punjab in Pakistan, while Pakistan says that they clearly spoke in north India Punjabi language. Pakistan somehow doesn't talk about boats, satellite phones, e-mail being traced to Lahore and mutilated fishermen found; perhaps they have nothing to lie about there (Jai Hind). In the end, they are making fun that it took only 10 young men (‘the dawn news, 1st Dec 2008'. They don't even call them militants or terrorists) to control Mumbai, again defaming India for their malicious satisfaction. I am surprised that in the same newspaper, on the same day, they have reported Karachi violence where gunmen (yes I too will not call them terrorists) opened fired indiscriminately on public and Pakistan police couldn't even trace the miscreants.

Media, serving the purpose of selling masala news (badly irresponsible), have poisoned the relations between the two countries, and have brought us on the verge of war. Instead, media from the both sides should have taken the responsibility of dousing the fire between us and would have turned this tragedy into an advantage, internally and internationally.