Media ethics and the SIT report on Gujarat
*Reporters should be careful about claiming to have “access” to explosive
confidential documents when all they might have are a few paragraphs
selectively planted on them by vested interests.* SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
wonders why three weeks down the line the TOI reporter has not done more
exclusives if indeed he had access to the report. Pix: Teesta Setalvad.
Posted Tuesday, May 12 18:45:27, 2009
In the face of the Gujarat government’s persistent refusal to investigate
and prosecute the most heinous crimes committed during the 2002 anti-Muslim
riots in the state, the Supreme Court last year set up a Special
Investigating Team to inquire into 14 specific incidents of mass violence.
The decision followed a petition by the National Human Rights Commission,
which had wanted the Central Bureau of Investigation to be given charge
since the Gujarat police was clearly unable and unwilling to conduct an
honest probe. Later, the Citizens for Justice Peace, an NGO led by Teesta
Setalvad, also joined the case.
The SIT, headed by the respected former CBI director, R.K. Raghavan, but
staffed by police officers drawn from the state force, submitted its report
to the SC on March 2, 2009. The court treated the report as confidential
since it was akin to a chargesheet. However, a copy was provided to the
“accused”, i.e. the Gujarat government, as well as to Harish Salve, *amicus
curiae* in the case. Gujarat was asked to submit its reply to the SIT’s
findings on April 13. Meanwhile, based on its own investigations, the SIT
began proceeding against functionaries of the Gujarat government and sangh
parivar for their involvement in the riots such as Mayaben Kodnani, Jaideep
Patel and senior police officers.
On April 13, Gujarat counsel Mukul Rohtagi provided the state government’s
response to the SIT report before the court. Neither the SIT nor Mr.
Raghavan made fresh submissions that day. As expected, the
Gujaratgovernment highlighted those aspects of the SIT’s findings
which, it felt,
showed the authorities in a relatively good light. Since the BJP state
government had argued from day one that its handling of the violence was
exemplary and that allegations of official complicity were the product of
NGO bias, its counsel sought to portray the SIT report as an indictment not
of the administration but of Ms. Setalvad and other activists. There was
nothing unusual about this strategy. Petitioners and respondents often
interpret or distort official documents to bolster their own case. But what
was unusual was the manner in which a major newspaper, The Times of India,
chose to report the day’s proceedings.
On April 14, its court reporter, Dhananjay Mohapatra, ran a sensational
story quoting the SIT and Raghavan as accusing Ms. Setalvad and her NGO of
“spicing up” the Gujarat riot incidents. The TOI also reported the SIT as
saying she had “cooked up macabre tales of wanton killings”.
Mohapatra writes: “In a significant development, the SIT led by former CBI
director R K Raghavan told the Supreme Court on Monday that the celebrated
rights activist cooked up macabre tales of wanton killings. Many incidents
of killings and violence were cooked up… and false witnesses were tutored to
give evidence about imaginary incidents, the SIT said in a report submitted
before [the court] ... Rohtagi also said that 22 witnesses, who had
submitted identical affidavits before various courts relating to riot
incidents, were questioned by the SIT which found that they had been tutored
and handed over the affidavits by Setalvad and that they had not actually
witnessed the riot incidents”. The TOI also said the SIT had found “no
truth” in certain incidents “widely publicized by the NGOs” such as the
gouging out of the foetus of a pregnant Muslim woman, Kausar Bano, and the
dumping of bodies into a well by rioters at Naroda Patiya.
Let us be clear about what this report tells us. First, a series of claims
is made about the purported contents of the SIT report. In this narrative,
the SIT, far from indicting the rioters and their instigators as the Supreme
Court had mandated them to do, is arguing that many incidents never happened
and that the witnesses providing evidence are all unreliable. Second, a
distinct but false impression is created that the source of these
astonishing claims is the SIT head, Raghavan, who, the reporter asserts,
“told the Supreme Court on Monday” all of the things that he then goes on to
state as fact.
The reality is that neither the SIT nor Mr. Raghavan made any submission on
April 13. That the Gujarat counsel is likely the source for the purported
contents of the SIT report is made clear by the fact that the only
attributed quotations in the story belong to Mr. Rohtagi. But since the
respondent could hardly be considered an objective, the reporter chose to
slur over this fact.
As expected, within hours of the story appearing, the blogosphere was agog
with comments about the duplicity of NGOs and about how the
Gujaratgovernment had been unfairly maligned all these years. Even a
liberal
columnist like Pratap Bhanu Mehta jumped the gun with an instant op-ed
attacking not just Ms. Setalvad but all “secular interlocutors”. In a flash,
a report that actually formed the basis for the indictment of a sitting
minister in the Modi government got converted into an indictment of
“secularists” and NGOs in general!
Though Mr. Rohtagi cannot be faulted for spinning the story on behalf of his
clients, the episode underlines the need for reporters and editors to be
careful about the use of selective leaks from a motivated source. When Ms.
Setalvad noted that the SIT had made no fresh submission on April 13 and
that the paper had gone by what the Gujarat government argued in court, the
TOI editors were gracious enough to publish her rebuttal. However, the
waters were further muddied by the reporter’s counter-claim that his
original story was based on the findings of the SIT and that even though the
report was confidential, “the TOI has access to the report”.
In order to prove this “access”, the reporter quoted sentences from four
pages. The essence of these quotes were (1) that some witnesses had brought
written statements which turned out to be at variance with what they
subsequently deposed before the investigating officer, and (2) that a
particular police officer had not been derelict in his duty during the riots
as the activists had alleged. But the evidence offered only amounted to a
watered down version of two of the less significant claims he had originally
made. And he offered no quotations from the SIT report to buttress his more
sensational allegations.
I have no way of knowing whether Mohapatra’s claims in these two instances
are accurate or not. But what is strange is that a reporter who has access
to a document that is brimming with information about the Gujarat riots and
its executioners found nothing newsworthy other than the purported
allegations about Ms. Setalvad. Even assuming those allegations are an
accurate summary of what the SIT has written – and there are reasons to
doubt this is the case – it speaks volumes for the reporter’s news sense
that this is all he bothered to report. It is as if a defence correspondent
“has access” to the still classified Henderson-Brooke report on the 1962 war
and does an exclusive story not on its contents and main findings about who
was responsible for India’s defeat but on the role of a minor ‘villain’.
Even if the reporter made a judgment call and chose to highlight the
Setalvad matter on day one, surely, he would have come across other material
worth reporting on subsequent days? It is rumoured, for example, that the
SIT report takes a contrary view to the Banerjee committee’s finding on the
Godhra incident of February 27, 2002 that the train fire was the result of
an accident and not a fire. But despite having “access”, even this crucial
angle was not explored. Three weeks on, the fact that the reporter has not
provided further details of the contents suggests either that he no longer
“has access” to the full report, or, more likely, never had access to the
full report in the first place other than the bits and pieces conveniently
made available by interested parties.
The authors of this selective leaking thought a planted story would destroy
the credibility of the Gujarat government’s critics but the strategy has not
worked. The Supreme Court has criticized the motivated, distorted leak of a
confidential document and said it will not allow anyone to derail its
investigation. The fact that the court has now asked the SIT to probe
serious charges against Mr. Modi and more than 60 influential Sangh Parivar
leaders and state officials and given the Team a supervisory role in the
riot case prosecutions is a timely reminder of the fact that it is the
administration of Gujarat that is in the dock and not those who are
insisting that justice be done.
http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?sectionId=5&mod=1&pg=1&valid=true&storyid=3834
**<http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=3834&pg=1&mod=1§ionId=5>
