[Reader-list] "Before asking Muslims to introspect, shouldn't the media do so?"

[Shivam Vij शिवम् विज्]

Pawan,

Just because the "Indian Mujahideen" plagiarise from an article from a
website, how does that website become 'suspect'? How does every
article, every author on that site become an accused in the blasts?
Only in your world can this happen. You are being even more ludicrous
than even the utterly unintelligent intelligence bureau which doesn't
even seem know that a Google search can and does take you to various
article on TheHoot. So it is comical for IB "sources" to say:

> since the website is usually only accessed by media professionals and not the laymen

Thehoot is read more by journalism students and aspiring journalists
than regular hacks. So maybe the IB should ask Delhi police to start
communal profiling of journalism students - or better still, like the
IB itself, let's purge the media of all Muslims. Make Modi the I&B
minister.

Your posts on this list are available on Google. So if "Indian
Mujahideen" plagiarise from a post made here by Pawan Durani, god
forbid, we'll all be in trouble! "Since the list has a lot of members
who are active with Roots in Kashmir," IB sources told the Lie
Detector Times, "we are looking into the possibility..." Lord!

Your responding to the article by doubting the credentials of TheHoot
is a brilliant way of shifting attention from the merits of the
article - from what it says, the points it makes, the facts it states.
I presume that you are doing so because you don't have substantial,
thought-provoking things about the points Jyoti Punwani makes.

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

shivam


On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Shivam,
> Previosuly you referred countercurrents and now thehoot. You seem to be
> taking refrences with those mediums who , as suggested,are suspected to have
> some connections with the blasts.
> What are you trying to prove Shivam ?
> http://in.news.yahoo.com/32/20080917/1053/tnl-terror-e-mails.html
>
> Indian Mujahideen's suspected mastermind Abdus Subhan Qureshi, who is
> believed to have authored the five terror e-mails sent to media before/after
> five terror attacks in the past ten months, might have earned a grudging
> acknowledgement as an effective prose communicator but he is apparently not
> shy of plagiarising either. Senior Intelligence Bureau officers involved in
> the task of analysing the IM's Saturday e-mail have stumbled upon a
> surprising fact: Qureshi, the suspected author of the e-mail, had used
> paragraphs that were plagiarised, at times word-by-word, from an article
> published a over a week ago on a popular website, www.
>
> thehoot.org , which reviews media across the subcontinent.
>
> It has led the IB to suspect that "Qureshi might have 'friends/contacts' in
> the media who have been helping him to compose his terror rhetoric as
> contained in the e-mails since the website is usually only accessed by media
> professionals and not the laymen. Such a man could have told him about this
> website's article for use," said an IB officer.
>
> Several state anti-terror agencies, on cue from the IB, are currently
> involved in attempting to zero in on the suspected 'media contacts' of
> Qureshi, if any. They already have a few suspects in the scanner, including
> a man working in the electronic media.
>
> Investigators also suspect that Qureshi might be taking help from others to
> compose e-mails that have increasingly been using impeccable English with
> few or no grammatical, punctuation errors. The 'plagiarised' article had
> appeared titled 'Bombs defused in newsrooms' on September 5 on the website.
>
> HT tried to speak to Sevanti Ninan, who runs the website, but she was not in
> the city and her cellphone was not reachable.
>
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 10:59 PM, Shivam Vij शिवम् विज् <mail at shivamvij.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> The trouble with relying on police sources
>>
>> These days, two kinds of sensational events dominate our media: bomb
>> blasts and large scale mob violence. But the difference in the way the
>> media has handled them is glaring.  Laziness and deadline pressure are
>> at least partly responsible for the communal stereotypes perpetrated
>> by the press says JYOTI PUNWANI.
>>
>> Posted Wednesday, Sep 24 13:03:08, 2008
>>
>> http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=3338&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=19&valid=true
>>
>>
>>
>> What if Abdus Subhan Qureishi, now known as `Tauqeer', turns out to be
>> not India's `Osama', as he is being labeled, but just another young
>> fanatic who left home and job to pursue religion, and is now too
>> scared to come back?
>>
>> Does this possibility sound bizarre? Why? Because the ATS can't be
>> wrong? After the July 11, 06 blasts, three of the many `masterminds'
>> and `key links' arrested by the ATS soon after the blasts – Mumtaz
>> Choudhury from Navi Mumbai, Khalid Ahmed from Madhubani and Akhmal
>> Hashmi from Srinagar -  were discharged by it within three months for
>> lack of evidence.  Their arrests had been announced by the ATS as
>> `major breakthroughs'. The media had gone ballistic  the same way they
>> are doing now over the `techie bombers' allegedly responsible for all
>> the recent blasts.
>>
>> Like we've forgotten these and other  `desh drohis' who had dominated
>> the media just two years back,  `Tauqeer' and the other `new faces of
>> jehad'  may also be forgotten by us as some other sensational event
>> takes over.  Maybe their families should just have patience and bear
>> with the blinding  spotlight till then. (A mail from Azamgarh informs
>> us that Atif Ameen's father died three days after his son was killed
>> in the Delhi `encounter' that is still creating headlines.)  After
>> all, sensationalism is an intrinsic part of the media. And Muslims
>> aren't its only targets. Celebrities and crime, for example, make for
>> fantastic copy and visuals.  Salman Khan, Maria Susairaj, Manu Sharma,
>> Sanjeev Nanda –the list of those who complain of being  `targeted'  is
>> endless.
>>
>> Old-timers will remember the sensational incident in which theatre
>> giant B V Karanth allegedly set on fire actress Vibha Mishra in
>> Bhopal. The police allowed a few reporters into the room where Karanth
>> was about to confess – of course without his knowledge. His confession
>> was then flashed in the newspapers. The entire theatre world accused
>> the press of "trial by media', of being used by the police, of
>> insensitivity… More recently, the Shivani Bhatnagar killing made
>> headlines, with the wife of the accused police officer R K Sharma
>> calling a media   conference to refute the `confession' the police
>> claimed he had made,  and daring  the media to question BJP leader
>> Pramod Mahajan on his role in the murder. As she lashed out,
>> flashbulbs focused on  Sharma's two teenaged daughters, waiting to
>> meet their father in custody.
>>
>> Sensationalism –not animus against Muslim Personal Law, as Urdu
>> journalists allege - also dictated the continuous coverage received by
>> the Imrana case. Rape within the family, an outrageous fatwa by
>> mullahs (who are, let's admit, the media's favourite whipping boys), a
>> woman who fights back – what more do you need for a Page One story? It
>> may be recalled that the Roop KAnwar sati episode also dominated the
>> front pages for weeks, with editorials and feature pages condemning
>> the Hindu leaders who defended the burning alive of an 18-year-old
>> bride, as shrilly as they had the maulvis who declared Imrana haraam
>> for her husband after her father-in-law raped her.
>>
>> These days, two kinds of sensational events  dominate our media: bomb
>> blasts  and large scale mob violence. But the difference in the way
>> the media has handled them is glaring. While the media relays the
>> smallest detail about the lives of India's alleged `new  terror
>> techies'- down to their Orkut posts, it is deafeningly silent about
>> details of those who have been continuously burning churches and
>> attacking Christians in Orissa, Karnataka and Kerala. The irony is
>> that the church-burners revel in brandishing their weapons in front of
>> the camera, while the alleged Muslim bombers operate in secrecy.
>>
>> The media has chosen instead to focus  on the New Life evangelists
>> –the alleged provocation for the attacks on Karnataka's churches.
>> While it is important to know what provokes violence, we don't find a
>> similar scrutiny of VHP leader Swami Laxmananand Saraswati's record,
>> that might help understand what may have led to his killing.
>>
>> One obvious reason for this skewed emphasis is that the police, who
>> tell the media everything about alleged Muslim terrorists, don't do
>> the same about violent Hindu extremists - not even about their
>> leaders.  Of course the police isn't one homogenous entity, but across
>> the country, their behavior is disturbingly similar on this count.
>>
>> Compare the manner in which the ATS in Mumbai publicly profiled the
>> Muslims picked up for the July 11, 2006 train blasts, and its silence
>> on the RSS members arrested in the Nanded blasts in 2006, who it has
>> also accused of perpetrating blasts outside mosques in Maharashtra
>> since 2003.  Again consider this:  the day after any bomb blast, the
>> police blame SIMI, LeT, HuJI… but in the charge-sheet filed in the
>> Thane blasts case this year, the ATS has not even mentioned the
>> organization to which the accused belonged, the Sanatan Sanstha, run
>> by the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti.
>>
>> If the media continues to rely primarily on the police in its bomb
>> blasts reportage, Azamgarh will gain notoriety, but Nanded, Kanpur and
>> Tenkasi will get no special attention. (Thanks to the media, what
>> Azamgarh now symbolizes needs no explanation.  Nanded, Kanpur and
>> Tenkasi are all places where RSS members were arrested for making
>> and/or planting bombs.) Time and again, the police version of communal
>> violence in Mumbai/Maliana/Bhagalpur/Punjab/ Kashmir has been proved
>> wrong. The police force of these places has been indicted by sitting
>> and retired judges  for communal conduct. Why then does the media
>> choose to treat whatever the police say as gospel truth? Is it just
>> laziness, and the race for `breaking news'? How much easier –and more
>> importantly, quicker - it is to get the story from the police than
>> actually go to the place and get as comprehensive a picture as
>> possible.
>>
>> Laziness and deadline pressure are at least partly responsible for the
>> communal stereotypes perpetrated by the press. Urdu journalists allege
>> that only two kinds of Muslim voices, always of the same persons, get
>> heard in the English press:  liberal and conservative. True, the
>> ambivalent  views of the average Muslim rarely make it to the
>> newspapers because s/he isn't easily available for  `quotes'  on the
>> phone! Also, it's mostly the liberal Muslim who writes in English. Who
>> will bother to translate? Similarly, if pictures of only burqah-clad
>> and topi-wearing Muslims are published, it's often because these are
>> immediately identifiable as Muslims and their pictures are always
>> available in newspaper libraries. Actually sending a photographer to
>> the nearest college or call centre, computer repair office or timber
>> mart – places where Muslims abound – is just too much trouble.
>>
>> Besides, many of the Muslims working there may not fit the popular
>> image of a Muslim, and that instant identification appears to be very
>> important for the media. So be it Imrana or education, Eid or
>> elections, you have the same black burqah, beard and rows of bent
>> namazees. Even when the majority of signatories at a street corner
>> campaign in Mumbai on the Srikrishna Commission Report were
>> non-Muslims, the cameraman  chose to click the only burqah-clad
>> signatory, making what was as much a human rights issue into a purely
>> Muslim issue.
>>
>> But what explains the headlines and use of language? It is revealing
>> that even after it was clear that Hindu terrorists were responsible
>> for the Thane blasts, no newspaper used the word `terrorist' or even
>> `extremist' in the headlines to describe them; the most they said was
>> `Hindu radicals'.  What makes English journalists use terms of
>> endearment for the likes of rabble rousers such as Bal Thackeray and
>> Uma Bharti?  When does the Babri Masjid become a `disputed structure'
>> and an economic blockade of the Kashmir Valley imposed in the glare of
>> cameras, an `alleged blockade'? And what makes them devote more space
>> to the violent protests against the mutilation and murder of a Dalit
>> teenager and her family in Khairlanji, than to the barbaric act
>> itself?
>>
>> Recent reports revealed that  `reserved category' students have fared
>> better than many general category (hence automatically `meritorious')
>> students in the IIT entrance exam; that while reserved students who
>> score zero in one subject will now get in (thanks to further lowering
>> of  cut-off marks for them) , many general students scoring zero have
>> already got in. Guess what the headlines were: not the discovery of
>> the truly meritorious performance of the SCs/STs/OBCs, but the
>> lowering of the cut-off into these `hallowed'' institutes.
>>
>> So is there truth in the allegations of communal bias that were being
>> made long before the `Indian Mujaheedin's emails made them into
>> headlines? (They should have added caste bias.) Yet, can we ignore the
>> fact that this is the same media that exposed the RSS' violence in
>> Gujarat, and that shows its revulsion whenever Hindutva goons act as
>> violent censors? In Gujarat 2002, even the Hindi channels went all out
>> against the massacre of Muslims.
>>
>> Nor is the Urdu press free of communal bias and actual rabble rousing.
>> The most recent example was the regret expressed by leading Urdu
>> dailies that Taslima Nasreen wasn't attacked more brutally, when her
>> meeting was disrupted in Hyderabad. If the English press dutifully
>> publishes the police version of every bomb blast – that Muslims are
>> behind it , the Urdu press is at the other extreme. It attributes the
>> blasts to anyone – RSS/security agencies/Naxalites/USA/Mossad – but
>> Muslims. Not all Muslims agree; indeed, some were so disgusted by the
>> Urdu press' refusal to acknowledge the possibility that Muslims could
>> be responsible for the 2006 train blasts, that they switched to the
>> `communal' English press.
>>
>> However, the Urdu press can harm only its readers, which in itself has
>> repercussions for everyone. Imagine the  harm done by the English
>> media! Before asking Muslims to introspect, shouldn't the media do so?
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