When the media loses its ethics and its primary focus is fixated on TRP or on grinding political axes, it creates many ‘Others’. ‘Racist attack’ news is one of them
Judging from global media reports, particularly from Europe, India — originator of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The world is one family)— has become a “racist” country. No matter how incredible the stories are, one thing is universally true in this era of profit-oriented journalism business: What sells is news.
However, it does not mean that India should not take notice of the recent spate of attacks on African nationals in the country. As most of the victims have been here for study, it is natural that the African community and most of Indians are filled with an overwhelming sense of outrage. In the past one month, after Congolese teacher Masonda Ketanda Olivier was smashed to death by three people, including two history-sheeters, over a fight over auto-rickshaw in Delhi on May 20, the national electronic and print media have been engrossed in a raging debate on Indians’ behaviour towards African community in the country. Such attacks also happened in Goa, Bengaluru, or Hyderabad.
Adding fuel to news of racist attacks, ten days later, an Indian cabbie was assaulted by “Africans” for refusing to accommodate more than four passengers in his taxi in Delhi. This gave the much needed fodder for news business. But the moot point is what would have been the headings if the assaulters were not people from Africa. Would it even have made a news itemIJ Such altercations happen every day in Delhi’s streets, but a news person does rightly avoid referring to perpetrators as Delhiites, Punjabis or Gujaratis in reports.
In fact, why the term “Africans” necessary to make it newsIJ Africa is not a homogenous region with a single religion or single colour. There are not only Blacks, but Whites also. The skin colour of people in northern African countries, like Egypt, libya, Tunisia, Morocco, etc, is not black. But the term “Africans” sells because it is set in the colonial mindset. This is called stereotyping. However, all the stereotypes are not bad. It can be positive or negative. For example, “every thing a White does is good” is a positive stereotype and it does not hurt the subject of news.
For media persons, indeed it is difficult not to fall into the trap of stereotyping, which simplifies the understanding of a mass of people, description of whose identity is complex or incomprehensible for the readers or viewers of news. Writer-journalist Walter lippmann, who coined “stereotyping”, believed that negative stereotyping is the result of the otherisation, in which one group is core and others are seen in reference to it. Therefore, the elite White and the West have become the yardstick of goodness! It is visible in the world systems, particularly in economic system.
Therefore, the term “Africans” is an easy stereotype to be used by media organisations, most of which didn’t even bother to verify whether the attacks were racist in nature or a road rage or a clash of urban and rural cultures.
The media is required to play a critical role as a major institution of society. Within a national boundary, the media is the “fourth estate” in the restricted sense that it is supposed to raise issues concerning citizens, irrespective of their caste, race and religion. The neutrality, objectivity and balance of the media are at the core of its ethics. For the uninitiated mass, it perpetuates a particular perception about the world and people within in, but this unintentionally promotes dichotomous consensus: one core and “the Other”.
When the media loses its ethics and its primary focus is fixated on TRP or on grinding political axes, many “Others” are created. It can be the “divided majority” or the “united minority”, depending on what constitutes an interest group for a partisan media organisation.
However, this is not the case always. Sometimes, prejudice crops in because of the bias ingrained in society. Reporters, particularly the novice, use the same stock of knowledge available in the common pool in society to shape up their stories. The colonial legacy has percolated in the media in its various manifestations such as journals, novels and diaries. In the news media, the bias is seen in conspicuous omission and commission of words. Thus problems in society are attributed to people of particular castes, religions or colour.
Therefore, a crime by a person gets coloured in terms like “Africans”, “North-easterners”, “Muslims” and “Dalits” in India, and “illegal immigrants” and “bogus refugees” in Europe and the US. Moreover, to create the intended opinion covertly, the media, particularly the print, resorts to the technique of juxtaposing different stories dealing with a particular group on the same page.
However, the feedback to a news report depends on the social conscience of that particular society. For example, US Democratic presumptive Presidential Candidate Donald Trump has achieved media fame or rather “notoriety” thanks to his hate speech against Muslims as the US society, which is gripped by the moral panic of Islamophobia, are paranoid about losing their values.
Similar are the cases in Europe, where India has been stereotyped as a “rape nation”. However, a peek into a UN statistical report compiled from Government sources is an eye-opener even for many of Indian journalists. From 2005 to 2010, the average number of rapes per capita population in India is much lower than those of the US, the UK, France, Germany. South Africa tops the list with 1,320 rapes per million population, the US stands at 300/mn, UK 170/mn, Germany 100/mn, and France at 160/mn. While in India, it is 4 rape cases per million population. (Source: Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems). However, there is nothing to be complacent; India can become a great nation only when no rape cases occur, and Indians invoke the age-old tradition to embrace the “colourful” world as its family.
India stands apart from the rest of the world because of its pluralism. And, therefore, though cases of attacks on persons of African origin in India were written in racist ink by the global media and a section of the national media, the feedback it received was feeble because Indians by tradition are not racist.
(The writer is Associate Editor & News Editor, The Pioneer)