Have you ever wondered why the police never seem to be able to apprehend Maoist leader Kishanji?
I know he’s supposed to be in hiding, etc., but the media have no difficulty in getting hold of him. It would be a gross exaggeration to say that Kishanji stops
passing strangers and offers to give them interviews but on the other hand, he is always on TV, ready to pick up his phone whenever a news channel calls for a sound-bite.
The real question, however, is whether the media should be telecasting these interviews and conversations with the leader of a group that murders so many people and who himself boasts about the beheading of a police officer.
In the 1980s, when IRA violence was at its height, the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher demanded that journalists refuse to interview members of the IRA. One way of stopping terrorism, she said, was to deny its perpetrators ‘the oxygen of publicity’.
When the media seemed disinclined to oblige her, Mrs Thatcher turned to the law. She made it illegal for TV channels to use the voices of IRA leaders on air. I never saw the point of this injunction because it led to the absurd situation where the channels would interview an IRA leader and then, for telecast purposes, dub his voice with somebody else’s. The IRA got publicity anyway and Britain was shown up as a foolishly hypocritical state.
A similar debate revolves around fascists and extremists. When I was at university in England in the mid-70s, the National Union of Students had passed a resolution to the effect that no platform would be offered to ‘fascists’.
Who was a fascist depended largely on your own definition of the term. The NUS used the term to refer to people who were on the right wing of the Conservative Party but this was a controversial usage.
Nevertheless, the basis of the ban was not unreasonable: why should the liberal society provide a platform to those who would seek to destroy society itself.
That argument remains as valid today. Why should we offer platforms to terrorists? Why should we give publicity to racists and Nazis? Etc.
I was reminded of this debate by the row that greeted the appearance of Nick Griffin of the quasi-fascist BNP on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Question Time. Critics argued that the invitation gave the BNP a spurious legitimacy and made it seem on par with other mainstream parties.
The BBC responded that the BNP had won around a million votes in various elections and that, therefore, it had earned the right to be heard.
Speaking for myself, I would make a distinction between terrorists and so-called fascists. If Nick Griffin is willing to stand for election then he is not seeking to destroy the system from the outside. He is offering himself up for election and it is up to the voters to listen to him and decide whether or not they want to elect him.
| "How much publicity do you give your enemy? And when can you stop without being accused of censorship?" |
The Nick Griffin parallel is important for India because our TV channels have a tendency to invite extremists to studios only because they say outrageous things and this makes for shock-TV. For instance, Pravin Togadia’s political clout never justified the kind of coverage he received. But Togadia was able to use the media to turn himself into a national figure.
Many people argued that channels should ban Togadia. While I found his views utterly repulsive and loathsome, I did not support this stand. My own view was that Togadia did not deserve the publicity and so I refused to invite him on my shows. But I thought that a ban would be dangerous. Once you start telling TV stations who they can interview and who they cannot, you enter into very dangerous territory. It is better to let a few nutcases get publicity than to impose censorship.
On the subject of terrorists, however, I am not sure what my stand is. If Osama Bin Laden gave an interview, wouldn’t you want to see it? How would you feel if that interview was then banned?
Or, let’s take an example from nearer home. The Sri Lankan government always described Tamil leader V. Pirabhakaran in terms that echoed that US’s denunciation of Bin Laden. So, should we have refused to telecast any interview with Pirabhakaran?
The actual decisions are not that easy to make. When the terrorists who were holed up in Nariman House during the 26/11 attacks phoned India TV, should the anchors have spoken to them? Or should they have hung up immediately on the grounds that terrorists deserved no publicity? There are strong arguments to be made for both positions.
On the other hand, some things are clear. When terrorists want to use the media to incite violence or to make inflammatory speeches, TV stations should refuse to cooperate. Equally, no TV station should telecast an Al-Qaeda style video of a beheading.
But once you get past these clear-cut distinctions, the situation becomes murkier and murkier. Maoists, Islamists, and fascists have no problem with censorship because they don’t believe in free speech.
But for those of us who value the liberal society, the decisions are tough ones. How much publicity do you give your enemy? And when can you stop without being accused of censorship?
In Britain, the BBC’s invitation to Nick Griffin has re-started the debate. But sadly, we in India seem to have little interest in such issues of principle.
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