As the waters of the Jhelum River swelled and crossed danger marks in many parts of Kashmir Valley last September, the federal government in New Delhi mounted a massive relief and rescue operation. Relief materials were airlifted to the valley in the shortest possible time. The men of the Indian armed forces and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) risked their lives to evacuate people marooned in isolated pockets. But one of the most enduring images of the Indian media's coverage of the Kashmir floods is a cartoon printed by a Srinagar-based paper depicting a TV news reporter with a camera poking out of the pocket of an Indian soldier's uniform. The message was that members of India's electronic media were turning its flood coverage into a public relations exercise for the Indian Army whose presence is resented by Kashmiris. If Nepal media resurrected this cartoon and used it again and again last week in their tirade against the Indian media, this means only one thing: Those in the Indian media, at least the electronic part of it, have not forgotten anything and have not learned anything. On May 3, which happened to be World Press Freedom Day, Twitter users in Nepal asked the Indian media to go home accusing various news networks of glaring factual errors in their coverage of the earthquake. More than 128,000 tweets that day complained about and debated the Indian press's handling of Nepal's worst quake in 80 years. Disaster reporting or coverage is one area where things can go wrong or produce results contrary to one's expectations unless one is conscious of the subtleties of human behavior. Stiff competition can make TV networks indulge in unethical practices. Lack of professionalism can make things worse. We have to go beyond the normal failings (lack of proper training or doing something in a hurry to meet a deadline) of media personnel to understand the roots of the rage in Nepal toward the Indian media. The people of Nepal found the coverage of the earthquake so insensitive and one-sided that many wondered whether the Indian media were using a devastating disaster as a public relations opportunity for the new government in Delhi. Were not they treating the agony and trauma of earthquake victims to project Prime Minister Narendra Modi with all the flair of Madison Avenue? Many said that the focus of the converge was India's magnanimity, not the devastation and suffering of Nepal's people. Even among the victims, the spotlight was on the Indians stranded in Kathmandu. This is what seems to have left a bitter aftertaste among the Nepalese. It is true that personal, national or ideological prejudices do color one's view of things. Some of the language used in reporting Darfur, Sudan was found to have racist overtones. During the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 some sections of Western media carried stories about “Islamic militant” charities supplying relief materials to the quake victims with a view to widening their support base among Kashmiris. This was part of the propaganda in favor of the war on terror. All this argues for TV channels sticking to the basic rules of journalistic ethics during disaster reporting. Overriding concern should be objectivity and a commitment to truth. It is no use blaming those on the ground when the brief they are given is in direct conflict with the very principles of ethical journalism. The first news of a calamity disseminated by the media not only stirs our conscience but propels authorities and relief organizations into immediate action. Biased or exaggerated reporting should not be allowed to detract from the value of this noble mission.
