[Reader-list] Fw: Shame is a revolutionary sentiment

[ravi agarwal]

The Uses and Misuses of Photographs

By Sadanand Menon

Monday, September 22 was an extraordinary day in the annals the Indian
media. I would like to call it a day of shame. For, on that day, our
media collectively displayed its herd-like mentality and its entirely
uncritical attitude to the use – and misuse – of the photographs it
publishes.

At least eight mainstream English language newspapers (including The
Times of India, The Indian and The New Indian Express, The Hindu, the
Hindustan Times, The Deccan Chronicle) and many more in the language
press from North to South and East to West, uncritically published
almost identical photographs on their front pages. The photographs
were not generated by any single agency. They were neither taken by
'citizen' photographers nor were they official handouts. They were
shots by individual staff photographers as well as professional
syndicated photographers. What is amazing is what newsrooms across the
country chose to do with the image.

The photographs were of three suspects involved in the Delhi blasts,
who were arrested from their residence in Delhi's Jamia Nagar. Reports
also claimed they were students of the Jamia Milia Islamia. What was
fishy about the photographs was that they showed three totally
unidentifiable people, their head and face completely swathed in
generous length of cloth, flanked by gun-toting policemen in mufti and
other hangers-on. Yet it seemed obvious that this was a photo-op
provided to the media – not to protect anyone's identity – but to
precisely create a definite sense of identity.

For all the three suspects, to mask their identity, were tricked up by
the local police in identical 'Palestinian Rumaals' or kaffiyehs or
abayas or cassavas as this piece of head-dress is variously known.
Though none of their faces were visible, to any casual reader of the
newspapers it would be abundantly clear that they were of 'Arab',
'West Asian' or 'Islamic' origin. A clear case of racial
profiling!

Some sceptical comments about this on the net, primarily generated by
documentary film maker Yousuf Sayeed who lives in the same area, led
to a small critical piece in The Hindustan Times two days later,
raising critical questions. The sceptics wondered how it came about
that the three arrested suspects came to be in possession of
identical, brand new rumaals, which they could readily pull out of
their pockets to cover their faces. As if, upon realising they might
be arrested soon, they went shopping and bought identical scarves, so
that everyone will recognise them as 'Islamic terrorists'. Critics
pointed out that usually suspects arrested on various charges mask
their faces with their own handkerchiefs or borrow towels or black
cloth to hood their faces; never before had it seemed like such a
costume drama as the Delhi police had managed to stage.

Then came the stunning revelation by the Delhi police commissioner. He
confessed that it was his department which had dressed up the suspects
in such a suggestive manner and, even more alarmingly, that the Delhi
police had purchased these pieces of cloth "in bulk" for use by those
arrested. Obviously, every arrested person could now be given a
suggestive 'Islamic terrorist' look, thereby setting up dangerous
subliminal propaganda within the media.

Repulsive as it is, most people will agree that the Police and its
dirty-tricks department are not beyond using such obnoxious methods.
What is beyond explanation is how the media collectively fell into
this trap and carried these images without a single question mark or
doubt about what they so readily display on their front pages.

For those not used to thinking about these things, the question can be
framed a little differently. It has to do with conceptual issues
related to the use (or misuse) of the image in the media. On any given
day, hundreds of thousands of photographs are clicked. Of these, by
common consensus, and governed by a largely abstract logic dealing
with the received wisdom of 'news-value' or 'news-worthiness',
about five hundred to a thousand pictures might be considered for use within
the media. After that, it is quite chancy or dependent on strong
editorial choices why a photograph makes it to the papers, in
particular the front page.

The front page photo, in the world of the print media, is usually
associated with an iconic status. It is supposed be a quick
encapsulation of what a paper or a region or a nation or a
civilisation imagines as its primary concern. It frames the news of
the day with a kind of visual evidence or back-up which then
illustrates how it wants to set up the communication and how it wants
the readers to enter the narrative.

Very seldom, across 365 days in a year, do we find identical images on
the front page. That is supposed to be the greatness and the strength
of democratic media practice that editorial position and
interpretation of events can vary. It is also part of the notion of
healthy competition in the media that variety, diversity and
contrariness are seen as virtues – that a news item or image which is
used sycophantically by one section of the press, can as easily be
used critically by another section of the same press.

That is why, when you come across a substantial section of the
national press use just one common image on their front page, and that
too without an critical remarks or interrogative comments, one begins
to smell the operation of 'ideology', which is nothing but a blind
acceptance of certain 'ruling' ideas of a class or of a moment –
ideas
that indicate the power structures within which 'information' and
'meaning' are manufactured.

To me it is shattering, that on the evening of September 21, across
the newsrooms of the best of Indian newspapers, not one editorial
discussion chose to evaluate the photograph of the three arrested
youngsters draped in checked cloth and use their judgement to 'read'
the picture in a dispassionate manner worthy of a free press. Instead
the Indian media collectively behaved as they had not even during the
period of the Emergency and its draconian censorship. They all fell
prey to their own sense of prejudice and communal mindset. The Nazi
propaganda machine could not have expected to produce better results.

Obviously, Indian media needs to re-investigate the 'frame' within
which it is presenting, colouring and analysing news. Such evidence of
a collective cop-out is a serious failing, which it needs to
critically examine and carry out correctives. In fact, this is a fit
case for being taken before the Press Council.

Shame, a little shame is all that the media needs. For shame as Marx
said, is a revolutionary sentiment.