Indo-Pakistan crisis: How not to report a war

One Indian TV channel reported the Indian army fighting inside Pakistan. On the other side of the divide, Pakistani commentators played old footage of an Israeli attack on  Hamas, masquerading itas a Pakistani airstrike on an Indian air base. Another Indian anchor claimed, on air, that he wished Pakistan would attack, so that India could finish off terrorism. Another called upon the Indian Air Force to attack the Karachi port.

Last week, when the nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan went to war, their TV anchors, especially those on the right-wing television channels in India, scored the biggest kill. From their sleek news studios, they single-handedly bombed each other’s military installations and crafted their imaginary narratives. Probably, at no time in the past had established media been so economical with truth, prejudicial and hate bombing that they put to shame Elon Musk’s X, which is considered a cesspool of disinformation and race-baiting.

Their coverage was overwhelmingly Jingoistic and war-mongering, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They put the governments into a bind. They set expectations on governments and the military that could not be achieved without a major escalation in the conflict, a dangerous gamble for two countries with a matching number of nuclear warheads. 

By the time the two sides agreed to a ceasefire, the jingoistic media coverage had become the primary catalyst of escalation. 

The TV anchors fought the war on television screens, flooding the audience with disinformation and race-baiting rhetoric. In the fog of war, they filled airwaves with disinformation. Social media is prone to disinformation and manipulation. However, instead of countering it, the established news channels became the multipliers of disinformation, concocting their own. 

One Indian TV channel reported the Indian army fighting inside Pakistan. On the other side of the divide, Pakistani commentators played old footage of an Israeli attack on  Hamas, masquerading itas a Pakistani airstrike on an Indian air base. Another Indian anchor claimed, on air, that he wished Pakistan would attack, so that India could finish off terrorism. Another called upon the Indian Air Force to attack the Karachi port.

So much so, a cynic summed up in the social media channel X: “Aaj Tahak has destroyed Karachi Port. Zee Media destroyed Islamabad. Republic TV has arrested Asim Munir ( Pakistani army chief). Sudharshan has destroyed Pakistan. Unreal clownery.”

The dehumanisation of the perceived enemy, along with the race-baiting of Muslims or Hindus, depending on which side you live on, predated the Pahalgam attack. But the Pahalgam massacre saw it hitting a fever pitch, and was backed by rhetoric of war mongering. The media set a countdown for military retaliation and picked the targets on behalf of the military planners.   India launched Operation Sindoor, named after the reddish powder Vermillion, which Hindu women place on their foreheads as a symbol of marriage. The name denotes a strong symbolism for terrorists who massacred tourists in Pahalgam, singled out men, killing them in front of their young wives. 

The Indian missiles struck nine targets, reportedly including offices and madrasas of militant groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Laskar-e-Taiba. Pakistan retaliated with cross-border shelling and drone attacks. 

TV anchors lost any pretence of professional courtesy for truth.

As the old adage goes, truth is the first casualty of war. But, in countries with a strong media tradition -- such as  India and Pakistan -- journalists do not easily part ways with the truth of their own volition. That makes the recent media spectacle of the Indo-Pakistan war an outlier and disappointment.

More so, as in the not-so-distant past, venerated Indian newspapers such as the Hindu in India or the Dawn in Pakistan were considered as standard bearers of journalism in Asia and beyond.  

These are different times -- The Hindu itself came under social media attacks, with one online hack, alluding to a Pakistani outpost in Chennai for the Indian air force to attack. Some outspoken online outlets, such as the Wire, alleged they had been blocked, and the site was reportedly unblocked later. 

Dwaipayan Bose, an Indian journalist, in a paper published in 2011 on similarly jingoistic media coverage of previous Indo-Pak tensions, argued that “the media of both nations have been fighting a proxy war that is blurring out factual and unbiased coverage.”

He identified several factors which lie behind this phenomenon: the fixed mindsets of journalists who follow the narrow teachings prevalent in each country about the other; the lack of access to journalists from the other country – it is remarkable that only two journalists from each country are allowed to work in the other’s country; and the restrictions on reporting anything which could be seen to be running against national security and territorial integrity.

However, enthusiastic war mongering and wearing it as a badge of honour showcases a much deeper decay, which one would call the bastardisation of media. It also reveals a social shift and a shift of prestige from the traditional liberal elites represented by those of the ilk of ‘the Hindu’ to a new generation, who are still in search of identity and may be more amenable to hyper- nationalism. 

A ceasefire ostensibly mediated by America ended the fighting, and both sides claimed victory.   India had claimed the truce was reached through bilateral talks, denying the American role. New Delhi has historically deemed the Kashmir issue an internal matter and opposed any third-party mediation.

The war, among other things,  tested the battlefield performances of Chinese weapon platforms, which western observers had earlier discounted as knock-offs of Russian and foreign systems. However, with the reports of Indian losses of Rafale fighter jets to China’s J-10, China had scored an unexpected scoop.(India had not commented on the loss of aircraft; Pakistan claimed it had shot down three, and a French intelligence source was quoted by CNN claiming the loss of at least one Rafale).

Also, Pakistan has proved to the US, with whom it had fallen out in recent times,that it could be a spoiler in the region. Given the military sophistication displayed in the brief war, the US might seek to repair ties, rather than lose them to China altogether. 

India had long tried to de-hyphenate itself from Pakistan and seek greatness as a great power. It has now found itselfyet again being dragged back into the South Asian straitjacket, a strategy that pleases both Pakistan and China. 

 A week of confrontation involving state-of-the-art aircraft, missiles and drones has brought the conflict to a new trajectory of escalation. Both sides attacked each other’s territory, without deploying armies and resorting to land warfare. Thus, a new, dangerous, slippery status quo has been established in the conflict between two nuclear-armed rivals. 

If that is not disturbing enough, the war coverage has revealed the paucity of media. The media has proved to be less of a de-escalating factor but has revealed itself to be a  war-mongering escalator. As the two sides spar on  thin ice, short of nuclear threshold, a war-mongering jingoistic media is the last thing both Indians, Pakistanis and South Asians need. 

Follow @ Ranga Jayasuriya