Goddamned shame on these two channels, there are those who get cheap thrills in creating tensions between two communities and there are those who work on building bridges.  This article has clearly spelled out how they do that. 

http://www.thehoot.org/media-watch/media-practice/how-zee-and-abp-news-sowed-communal-poison-10564

How Zee and ABP News sowed communal poison

BY JYOTI PUNWANI| IN MEDIA PRACTICE | 20/03/2018

Their coverage of Ankit Saxena’s murder was a master class in hate-mongering. Reporting Communal Issues - Part I

JYOTI PUNWANI on how low they stooped

How many dimensions can there be to the Ankit Saxena story? The young photographer was brutally killed on February 1 by his Muslim girlfriend’s family. His throat was slit as her parents and brother attacked him in the middle of a crowded Delhi street outside his home. His mother, who came to rescue him, was also attacked. All the while, the girl, Shehzadi, was waiting for him at a metro station.

The English press fleshed out the context in which the horrific killing took place. We got a comprehensive picture that told us that the lower middle class, mostly Hindi-speaking neighbourhood where Ankit and his girlfriend fell in love, had enough young Hindu-Muslim couples for this couple not to stand out.

Ankit’s father’s plea not to communalise the killing was given wide publicity. He did not hate Muslims because members of that community had killed his only child, he said. He knew the family; they had been neighbours earlier.

The girl’s family had earlier thrashed a Muslim boy who they suspected of dating their daughter.  So obviously, this incident wasn’t merely a Hindu-Muslim issue, though that angle could not be ignored.

The killing could have been discussed on TV from many perspectives: the problems that hound Hindu-Muslim liaisons, feudal attitudes to daughters, the fact that an ``honour killing’’, hitherto not a widespread urban phenomenon, had taken place in the capital, the way murder was seen as the solution, etc.

Stoking hatred of Muslims

Instead, two of the most popular Hindi channels,  Zee News and ABP News, used the photographer’s killing to create an atmosphere of fear and hatred among their Hindu viewers vis-à-vis Muslims and to target Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the ``secular gang’’, both of whom they accused of remaining silent about the killing only because the victim was a Hindu.

Were these angles backed up by reporting from the ground? Did they reflect the concerns of the parties involved? No.

What these channels used were two tweets, both by Kejriwal’s opponents: Manjinder Singh Sirsa, a SAD MLA from Delhi, and former AAP MLA Kapil Mishra, who was expelled from the party after he made unsubstantiated allegations of corruption against Kejriwal.

Sirsa’s first tweet mentioned that Saxena had been killed ``in our own Delhi by so-called `minority and oppressed’ religion.’’ His second tweet requested Kejriwal to announce compensation of Rs 1 crore for Saxena’s family ``like he did for MM Khan.’’ Kapil Mishra tweeted: ``Had Ankit been Akhlaq, my city’s ruler wouldn’t have slept all night.’’

Was it necessary to take note of these tweets while covering the Ankit Saxena story? This is not what the family was talking about. Indeed, when the ABP News reporter went to their house, Ankit’s father told her he was sad at the way news channels were saying ``false things’’ about his son’s death.

"Two of the most popular Hindi channels, Zee News and ABP News, used the photographer’s killing to create an atmosphere of fear and hatred among their Hindu viewers vis-à-vis Muslims and to target Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal"

But that seems to have hardly mattered to the channel.

Surprisingly, even Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari stated that the murder must not be communalized. So why did Zee News and ABP News pay so much attention to the tweets of two lightweight MLAs, both of whom were bent upon communalizing the murder and using it to targeting Kejriwal?

In fact, on both channels, panelists plainly told anchors that their channels were making the murder into a Hindu-Muslim issue for their TRPs.

When anchors turn as hatemongers 

For these two channels, Arvind Kejriwal became the story. ABP News actually opened a show saying the ``badikhabar’’ was that Arvind Kejriwal wouldn’t go to Saxena’s house, but had sent his MP and MLA instead (February 4).The next day, the same channel announced: ``Bada sawaal-4 din baad kyon jaage Kejriwal?’’

Kejriwal became for these channels, a symbol of the ``Muslim appeasement’’ practised by the ``gharwapasi gang’’.  In fact, at the end of a debate that lasted an hour and 20 minutes, ABP News anchor Romana Khan actually blamed ``secular politics’’ for Saxena’s killing, saying this kind of politics had ``sown the seed of hatred and now here was the harvest.’’

In the way they handled the killing, these channels committed offences under Section 153 A by promoting communal enmity and under Section 295 A by outraging religious feelings by insulting religion.

Sample these headlines and statements by anchors on both channels:

``Ankit ko pyar ki saza ya Hindu hone ki saza?’’

``Ankit ke murder par chuppi se Kejriwal banengey Muslimon ke masiha’’

``Kya mazhab dekhkar jagti hai secular gang?’’

``Kya hindu hatyaaon par secular gang ki chuppi ek saazish hai?’’

``Hindu hone ki vajah se ankit ki hatya?’’

``Sare aam beech sadak par gala kaatkar sazaye maut’’

In an ABP News discussion, senior journalist Abhay Kumar Dubey said that the direction of the discussion should be changed, and they should heed Saxena’s  father’s statement not to communalise the murder. At one point, he refused to answer anchor Romana Khan’s question, saying ``I’m not getting into this argument.’’

"In the way they handled the killing, these channels committed offences under Section 153 A by promoting communal enmity and under Section 295 A by outraging religious feelings by insulting religion"

But Khan continued in the style she shares with Zee News anchor Mimansa Malik: viz, ask provocative questions, get the Hindu and Muslim panelists angry with each other, and when the fight becomes too intense, admonish them.

In the ABP News discussion referred to above, titled: ``Badi Behes: Ankit ko Salima ke parivar ne kyonmara?”  

``Hindu activist’’ Jitender Khurana repeatedly ascribed the murder to the mentality bred by the Koran. Khurana’s FB page says he is the founder of the Hindu JagranAbhiyan. Among his latest posts are ``Hail Muthalik’’, a reaction to the acquittal of Pramod Muthalik, Hindu Sene founder, in the Mangalore Pub attack case.

So ABP News knew whom it was inviting for a debate on the sensitive subject of the killing of a Hindu photographer by a Muslim family.  Little wonder that the anchor did not stop him from describing the Koran as a text that preaches violence against other faiths, or asserting that while Hinduism was a religion, Islam could not be called one.

At one point, one of the two Muslim panelists was provoked enough to say that he did not want to mention the stuff written in Hindu scriptures, and indeed he didn’t. But this was the atmosphere of the debate. It finally forced panelist Rifat Javaid (founder of the website Jantaka Reporter) to say that it was debates such as this that led to enmity between Hindus and Muslims.

Indeed, the questions put to the Muslim panelists by Romana Khan made one’s jaw drop: ``Do you follow the Constitution or the Koran? If he’s a kafir, kill him –this is what your religion teaches?’’

In this discussion, Delhi BJP vice-president Rajeev Babbar was sanity personified, maintaining, despite the anchor’s provocative questions, that no one but the girl’s family was to blame for Ankit Saxena’s killing. At one point even he asked why the debate was being taken in a particular direction where entire communities were being blamed. Unable to get any rabid responses from Babbar, Romana Khan would turn to Jitender Khurana and the VHP’s Vinod Bansal.

Interestingly, ABP News Executive editor Vijay Vidrohi (seated at the back, where he could hardly be seen) asked Bansal the tough questions the anchor should have.

On Zee News,  murder was portrayed as representative of the condition of Hindus in the country. In a 40-minute discussion titled ``Muslim vote ke liye Ankit ki hatya par siyasi maun’’, which had two Muslims supporting the BJP line (one was a party member), anchor Mimansa Malik brought in the murder of Chandan in Kasganj, saying he had been killed for raising the national flag (a misleading description - the killing was a fallout of a Hindu-Muslim riot on Republic Day).

She read out a list of Hindus killed by Muslims in the last few months. ``Aur aap kehtein hain Hindustan secular desh hai aur musalman safe nahin?’’ she asked the two non-BJP Muslim panelists indignantly, following it up with: ``Kya hinduo ki jaan ki keemat nahin?’’

"A Google search showed that religion had played no role in what was called the ``serial killing of Hindus’’ by Muslims"

The VHP’s Vijay Shankar Tiwari went so far as to say that if ``Ankit, Santosh, Chandan had not been Hindus, they wouldn’t have been killed.’’

The mischief in this depiction was obvious. First, though one Salim was arrested for Chandan’s murder, an officer had posted on Facebook that it was ``Bhagwa that killed Chandan’’. 

In fact, Malik had no answer to Maulana Sajid Rashidi’s question about what made her so sure that Salim had killed Chandan. He also beseeched her not to compare Saxena’s murder to the Kasganj riot.

Second, a Google search showed that religion had played no role in what was called the ``serial killing of Hindus’’ by Muslims. One had been assaulted by his landlord over rent issues; another was killed by a Hindu with the help of a Muslim; while a third’s killing was the fall-out of Congress- BJP rivalry.

Targeting Kejriwal as an ‘appeaser’

Similar half-truths were telecast about Kejriwal’s reaction to Saxena’s killing. The premise on which both channels attacked Kejriwal was simple, and articulated by his arch-enemy Kapil Mishra: ``Had Ankit been Akhlaq, Kejriwal would have visited him immediately, and given him a compensation of Rs one crore.’’

The channels showed their malafides by refusing to telecast the entire story, reported in the press, that the delay in the CM’s visit to Saxena’s home was because the father was about to leave for Hardwar when Kejriwal wanted to visit him.

Both channels did long programmes on Saxena’s condolence prayer meet, using a video tweeted by Kapil Mishra. 

It showed Kejriwal abruptly getting up and leaving after someone there asked him about compensation, and he replied that this was not the occasion to argue about compensation.As he left, one could hear a male voice saying ``Mr Kejriwal…’’ but the CM paid no heed.

Initially, it seemed as if the person asking for compensation was the father. But the latter clarified on the debate that he was sitting at the back and couldn’t understand why the CM was suddenly leaving.

Zee anchor Aman Chopra tried very hard to goad the bereaved father into saying that he had been wronged and humiliated by Kejriwal, with no success. On the contrary, the father kept praising Kejriwal for the respectful manner in which the CM had met him in his office. All that the anchor could get out of the father was his plea, left unsaid after Kejriwal’s abrupt exit: ``Mr Kejriwal, don’t play games with poor people like me.’’

Here again, the channels’ malafides were exposed by the website Jantaka  Reporter which posted the entire video. 

The video showed the person demanding compensation introducing himself as a member of a Hindutva organisation and Kejriwal replying that he was in touch with the family, and had told them he would  meet their demands more than halfway. 

Three days after this prayer meet, the Delhi CM’s office wrote two letters to the India Today group and to ABP News, asking them to apologise. 

``The pattern of coverage of the condolence meet clearly shows that your channel tried to give the story of compensation  a communal colour with the intention of disturbing the social fabric of Delhi,’’ said the letter to ABP News.

The letter to the India Today group mentioned its news channel Aaj Tak as well as Mail Today managing editor Abhijit Majumder, and described their ``deliberate and malicious attempt to distort and communalise facts’’. It also asked that Majumder be sacked for tweeting that Kejriwal had left the condolence meet midway after the family asked for the same compensation that ``he paid to Muslim victims.’’

``How is it possible for a newspaper editor to spread blatant falsehood with a clear communal intent without even checking basic facts?’’ asked the letter, which then went on to clarify that Rs 1 crore compensation had been paid to personnel in uniform who died while performing dangerous duties and of the seven recipients of this compensation, five had been Hindus.

One wonders why the CM’s office didn’t write a similar letter to Zee News too.

Both Zee News and ABP News used similar tactics in their debates: out-shouting AAP panelists (the ABP anchor even shut off the AAP panelist’s mike); allowing their Muslim guests to be insulted; and agreeing with the most extreme Hindutva panelists.

Non-Muslim viewers of these channels must have been left with a simmering rage against a community which could ``cut a Hindu boy like a goat’’ and a contempt for Kejriwal’s pseudo-secularism. What of Muslim viewers? They too must have been left with rage, but against the channels.

Kejriwal dashed off a letter - which will probably be ignored. What can an ordinary offended viewer do?

Jyoti Punwani is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.

Kosovo - Problems for US

Kosovo Independence Equals Problems for U.S.

THE EVIL MEDIA

While driving today, I have listened to every news media today. Our Embassy was torched in Kosovo today by the radicals, not one media said the name of the faith of the people who did the wrong, and indeed, that is truly the right thing to do. (http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2007/05/laser-barking-at-terrorists.html )

If those radicals were Muslims, imagine the feasting that would have gone on by the vultures like O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Savage. This is the ultimate in evilness of our media. Shame on them. I hope the people of conscience open a blog of their own, each individual and put this out as many times as they can. Media is blatantly evil. I hope each one of you can call on their talk show tomorrow, and encourage them to do the right thing for every incident, bad guys are bad guys, do not stamp them with a religion.

http://www.newsmax.com/alden/kosovo/2008/02/21/74508.html Thursday, February 21, 2008 3:27 PM

By: Diane Alden Article Font Size

The current disaster in Serbia, including the attack on the U.S. embassy in Belgrade was predictable. That is, if you know the history of the region, our involvement under Bill Clinton and now George W. Bush, and the U.S. State Department’s craziness about how to create "democracy" and markets in the 21st century.

The Gerard Intelligence Report indicated Monday that Serbia was about to blowup in our faces. You didn’t hear a word about it in the mainstream media. It was barely mentioned as Bush stood signing the paper that gave our stamp of approval to Kosovo "independence."


The rush to do this may have a lot to do with resource issues as much as encouraging democracy to take root — which hasn’t been happening under Clinton or Bush.

Gerard Report advises its clients:

Muslims who represent 90 percent of Kosovo's two million people, have stated their claim on the new state. According to our source, a systematic ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's remaining Christian inhabitants has been going on for several years and will now likely escalate.

Since we have been supporting democracy in Kosovo, and have ignored the strong Albanian Islamic influence in political affairs there, we have opened the gates to a new Islamic state, complete with terrorist training camps on the ground and a global network through which to funnel their graduates.

This begins a trail that leads to (but does not end in) New York City, where the Albanian Mafia has taken over much of the drug and organized crime trade. The combination of the legitimization of their terrorist activities in Kosovo, their links to the U.S., and the fall of Serbia (partly self-inflicted) may spell a new era of unrest and confusion that will mean danger for U.S. interests everywhere.



The breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the late '80s and '90s took place partially because the only thing holding it together was dictator Tito and Russian troops. Part of the reason for the breakup was economic. Insane actions of U.S. and international monetary experts as well as financial gurus at the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization facilitated the collapse of the former Yugoslavia into tiny sectors of ethnic and religious bickering and hatreds that are now causing U.S. problems.

Following World War II, industrial development took place in northern Yugoslavia, while the southern half of country produced raw materials. As the price of raw materials fell, serious economic inequalities between the various states grew. This in turn led to discontent and a desire for independence in the industrial north.

The International Monetary Fund then took over economic policy, implementing a number of all too familiar shock therapies; devaluation, a wage freeze, and price decontrol, designed on the Harvard/MIT economic textbook principles meant to drive the wage rate down to a level where it would be internationally economically competitive."

But the interference of the IMF caused revenues to the central government to shrink and that in turn forced the IMF to insist on raising taxes in Yugoslavia in order to balance the budget.

As the Cold War was ending in the late '80s, the Federal Republic began to splinter. At the same time, servicing the national debt became hopeless.

As a result, the attempt to comply with IMF demands made a shaky economic situation even worse.

Between 1979 and 1985 a quarter of the national income was taken up with debt service. As a result, the economy began to implode and ethnic conflicts erupted. Thus, the current conflict in the Balkans may be partly explained by economic factors as much as by ethnic hatreds and rivalries.


All this should be some indication our experts do not know what they are doing. Neither do our political leaders, it appears, in the modern world of splintering into religious, tribal, and ethnic groupings.

In the '90s, the breakup of the various ethnic and religious provinces accelerated when Europeans, the international press, and State Department whiz kids saw ethnic cleansing only on one side blaming Christian Serbs and ignoring atrocities by the other side. Some believe interference by the Clinton administration was just an attempt to get his troubles off the front page. That intervention for whatever reason had unintended consequences and now America is seeing some of the blowback.

During Bill Clinton's era of screwing things up in the Balkans, his end runaround congress on the conduct of that war is something I vividly remember. The Clinton administration had a contract with U.S. mercenaries to go to Bosnia. At an estimated $50 million the objective was to integrate and build up the Bosnia army of Muslims and Croats against the Serbs. The U.S. State Department’s incompetence and flaky policies in the region gave the go ahead for religious cleansing of Christian Serbs to accommodate Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.


Along with the DoD under Richard Cohen and the U.S. State Department, our leaders hired a firm of American mercenaries allowing the Muslim Croats to create a national army which successfully ejected 150,000 Croatian Serb civilians from the country. This success brought lucrative financial contracts from Islamic countries elsewhere. It was with the help of certain Islamic states that funding for participation by the American firm was concluded.

George W. Bush signing the acknowledgement that Kosovo was an independent nation is one more finger in the eye of the Orthodox people of Central Europe.

It fails miserably to recognize the extent of Islamic Wahabbi Saudi funded mosques in the region and what that portends for the rest of Europe. Recognition of Kosovo independence will do nothing to promote democracy in that part of the world.

More likely it will mean more problems for the United States and Europe in the region. We now have another nation in the heart of Central Europe that is a home to drug cartels, mafia, and frankly, many potential Muslim terrorists.


Recognition of Kosovo’s independence also drives another stake into what is left of our shaky relationship with Russia. Our policies since the end of the Cold War towards that nation may just doom us to relive another Cold War of sorts. Isn’t it odd that former atheistic Soviet Union is supporting a Christian society of Orthodox believers while the last two American administrations enable a growing arc of Islamic power and Arab militarism to form in the suburbs of Europe.