[Reader-list] Media realities in Kashmir: Just a tip of the iceberg

[Wali Arifi]

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2009/04/12/stories/2009041250100300.htm

MEDIA MATTERS

*The Kashmir jigsaw *

SEVANTI NINAN

  In a State without big industries, the media is a growth industry. But
things are done a little differently here…


The media in Kashmir is relatively immune to the Lok Sabha elections. Varun
Gandhi is easily found on the pages of the Jammu press, so is news about the
elections in general. Not so in the newspapers in the valley. Not even Chief
Minister Omar Abdullah’s pronouncements on both issues get the same
prominence here. When you are in Jammu you are in India. When you are in
Srinagar you are in Kashmir.

If there is an election which journalists here still want to discuss, it is
the one which took place last December for the State assembly, not the one
that is coming up. The “turnout” continues to be a matter of considerable
academic discussion, with dimensions to it which never surface in the
national press.

Shared legacy

What both Jammu and Kashmir have in common though is a thriving media. For a
State with a population of around 80 lakhs, the media presence is
considerable. There are 71 dailies in Srinagar, the only publishing centre
in Kashmir, and some 61 in Jammu. Many of these are referred to as lithos,
black and white four pagers. In Jammu even some of the four pagers sport
colour. In a State with little industry, media, mysteriously, is a growth
industry. There is no media recession here. The year has already seen the
launch of a weekly newspaper called *Kashmir Life*, *Rising Kashmir’s *Urdu
daily is on the cards, so is the Urdu edition of *The **Kashmir Times* which
has long been in the offing, and an English and Hindi newspaper are
scheduled to come out of a publishing stable in Jammu.

In one to one conversations here, correspondents and editors love doing the
math to show you how a paper with a proper editorial set up including
reporters, cannot possibly be viable, let alone profitable, on cover price
and advertisements alone. The ad flow is more from retail outlets than
industry and comes to only a leading handful of publications. The State
government has a total annual advertising budget of Rs. 5 crores, which
stretches in some years, but is still not adequate to keep some 378
publications in business. And DAVP ads put in by the central government
require circulation of an order which less than a handful of publications in
the State would have.
Supported by the State

So who patronises the media in Kashmir with exclusive stories, monetary
help, advertising, and bank loans? The many arms of the ruling
establishment, including the State government and the intelligence agencies,
the Jammu and Kashmir Bank, and the militants, though the local ones are not
as well endowed today as they were before. Conflict, as you discover from
day one, has been a huge fillip to the media here. Before 1990 there were
only three Urdu publications including the Congress organ, *Khidmat*. The
only English newspaper, *The Kashmir Times*, was published out of Jammu.
Today the numbers tell the story.

In some ways, it is a cosy place to be a journalist. Government apartments
in Press Colony provide office space for many publications. The enterprising
do better: an NDTV correspondent here even occupies a ministerial bungalow.
This is also a place where working journalists are media owners: at least
three representatives of the Delhi press have publications of their own,
though their names do not figure on these. Even young reporters are widely
travelled, fellowship programmes in the West covet applicants from this
conflict hotspot. There was a time not long ago when you risked your life
being a journalist in Kashmir, but not so now. Today, it is the Northeast
which is the dangerous place to work.

The flip side of all this is a media that is so poorly paid that many
journalists do two or three jobs, and some publications are edited and run
by government bureaucrats, teachers and lecturers who switch roles after 4
p.m. I met an anchor from the cable TV channel Sen TV who begins his day
voicing bulletins for Radio Kashmir, then moves on to a news agency to file
five or six stories there, then goes on by evening to the cable channel to
help put the evening bulletin in place and anchor it. Local cable channels
are meant to give you exposure, not a livelihood. A cameraman gets Rs. 200 a
story, a reporter could get Rs. 1500 a month.

Backbone

The real backbone of J&K journalism is the news agencies: KNS, CNS, UNS,
API, PBI and several others. These put out dozens of stories which enable
all small newspapers to function without their own reporting staff, both in
Jammu and in Srinagar. All the power centres in Kashmir feed these agencies
stories, some of which get carried the next day under a newspaper staffer’s
byline. It also makes getting media coverage across the State easy. You
don’t have to contact lots of reporters. You just to have to give, or leak
an item to a news agency.

Subscribing to them is not just cheap though in practice it is often free.
The editor of an Urdu daily *Nida-I-Mashriq* says, “I have used one agency
for the last four years. I have not paid them anything, and they have not
asked for anything till this moment. I have never received a bill.”

When you are trying to figure out the real picture about the media in
Kashmir these are all different pieces of a jigsaw that you have to fit
together.

 *

(The author is currently undertaking a Hivos-Panos research project on media
in conflict areas which pays for her travel.)
*