Yawar Hussain
Srinagar, DD: On June 14, seven years ago, it wasn’t just one Shujaat (Dr Syed Shujaat Bukhari) who was killed by gunmen, but with him another Shujaat, the meaning of his name, courage, also waned away from his beloved profession of journalism.
Ever since, the journalistic space in the region has been crept by public relations dubbed as news by unprofessional as well as professional media platforms, along with the withering away of the newsroom culture, and an ever-widening gap between academia and industry.
While his absence can’t be attributed as the sole reason for nose-diving professional practices in journalism, his former colleagues opine that he would have become the baton holder for reclaiming the lost fort.
Daanish Bin Nabi, who was Shujaat’s colleague at the Rising Kashmir newspaper, opines that Shujaat would have stood up to all the non-professionals who have engulfed the scene and exposed them on all fronts.
“In my over six years of professional relationship with Mr. Shujaat Bukhari, I have always seen him take out and lead protests on behalf of his fraternity whenever there was pressure on our community or when they were harassed or beaten by the government forces,” Nabi said.
“As I know him, he would have never allowed this to happen to Kashmir journalism.”
Legless Newsrooms
Shujaat, who started his career during the tumultuous 90s, always understood the importance of a functional newsroom. He would push beat reporters at the Rising Kashmir to break news stories from their respective domains for the public and news organisations to consume. This job has now been sublet by the professional organisations in Kashmir to the newswires.
Most of the Online Editors remain glued to their WhatsApp chat groups to catch breaking news items to drive, what their editor terms as “traffic” for the official websites. The news updates on Valley’s most news organisations are mainly copied from various national and local newswires, while the news reporters with these organisations seldom bring out new information for the reader or viewer to consume. The newsroom culture where beat reporters used to chase news to expand the knowledge space has now been replaced by the newswires and WhatsApp group forwards.
Along with newswires and WhatsApp-driven breaking news domain, the government press notes are also being passed off as exclusive news by print era organisations competing on the new media platforms. The government press notes, which the government itself disseminates for the masses, are being read out on social media platforms by news organisations.
A Kashmir-based journalist says reading out government press notes is being done by “so-called” professional organisations to keep the traffic going to their websites. “They have no original journalistic content to put out.”
Journalist Daanish Bin Nabi said that when it came to the newsroom culture, Shujaat had a golden rule in the office. “He always kept the newsroom alive and thriving with an end number of professionals, many of whom are now working for international organisations today.”
He said that most of the media houses are being headed by non-professionals, while very few are run by professionals.
“Mr. Shujaat Bukhari was one such professional. Knowing Mr. Shujaat well, I don’t think he would have hired any of these embedded so-called journalists who have been running the show in Kashmir for the last many years now.”
Oldies In New Media
With the advent of live streaming on most social media platforms, the traditional media houses across the globe have faced the brunt of the new media, with anybody holding a mic in front of a smartphone camera turning into a journalist.
For Shujaat, new media, before live streaming was as common as it is today, was a place where the traditional professional media had to set the ethical and professional boundaries for new players to adhere to.
In 2017, a year before his death, he hired two reporters from the University of Kashmir with a master’s in journalism for video reporting for the Rising Kashmir’s Facebook page. The first video report by the duo was in Urdu, leading to a reprimand in the evening edit meet by Shujaat.
“Rising Kashmir is an English daily. We have hired you for that. If you want to report in Urdu, then please shift to Buland Kashmir, our Urdu daily,” Shujaat told the duo in front of this reporter, adding that since the primary level, every subject in schools is taught in English, and all the government transactions are mostly in English.
While Shujaat tried to set the bar for Kashmir media on new media platforms, his absence has let every ethical level get buried several notches below the earth. Mic-wielding interviewers and anchors, not broadcast reporters or journalists, who shout their lungs out reading government press notes, have mostly usurped the journalistic spaces in the Valley. Using Doordarshan’s boilerplate of the 1990s for Urdu, these mic wielders of English dailies and magazines have replaced the camerapersons of various news channels who earlier used to take reactions of people on an exclusive news report. This act of taking reactions live on social media by anchors is being passed on as news now.
Employing Urdu on camera for an organisation publishing its news in English is being done primarily for two reasons. Firstly, the old generation editors, while being good at writing in English, mostly haven’t been trained in broadcast journalism, leading to new media anchors under them being rudderless. Secondly, the old generation editors, themselves being freshers on the new media domain, are mostly driven by views, which ultimately generates revenue for them. Urdu, being the language understood by commoners, becomes a tool to that end for the oldies in the business.
However, while the choice of language is still debatable, the old generation editors are caught in more difficult doldrums regarding the content to be produced. Being freshers, they have knowingly employed the Uses and Gratification theory of mass communication wherein the viewer or reader decides what content would be prepared for him/her to consume.
The new media being a dynamic space where a finger’s movement can change the content a viewer is consuming has led to editors formulating the content which the viewer wants. The hard news has gradually paved the way for infotainment—information and entertainment, primarily used by FM Radio outlets in India, as they are barred by law from disseminating news.
A journalist working with a local English news organisation in the Valley said that in one of the edit meetings, their editor-in-chief asked them to brainstorm on content which can get the most views.
“Since then, our anchors presented as reporters are walking bare feet on green grass or between trees with pigeons flying around. This was decided to make the video more viewable and appealing,” the journalist said.
“Our newsroom, pantry department and advertising department have been merged now. Ideation has been sublet to our kitchen wing staffers,” the journalist added.
The anchors dubbed as reporters/journalists are being made to institutionalise cringe by old generation editors who, before the rise of new media, always termed journalism as a sacred field.
Shujaat, on the other hand, had stuck to the Agenda Setting theory of mass communication, where the news organisation decides the content to be produced rather than the viewer or reader.
At an edit meet in 2018 at the Rising Kashmir, Shujaat, in presence of this reporter, told another reporter that while a news organisation can afford to give preference to creating content as per a reader’s or viewer’s liking but it can only be one percent of the total news disseminated by that organisation.
“As journalists, we have a responsibility, which in turn describes us, to uphold the level of discourse a society will indulge in,” Shujaat told the reporter.
Daanish Bin Nabi terms the current content produced by Kashmir-based organisations as “gutter”.
“Likes and shares have completely taken over professional journalism in Kashmir. Even more heartbreaking is the behaviour of readers, who have now developed the same mentality. It is a very grim situation for Kashmiri journalism, with no future and no hope of revival,” Nabi said.
Politico-Bureaucratic Turpitude
Post Shujaat’s killing, while the role of the media industry itself has been pivotal to the fall of ethical and professional journalism in the Valley, the rise of the new media touts, often embedded but mostly uneducated or unprofessional, needs to be attributed to the political and bureaucratic class as well.
The Facebook pages and WhatsApp groups, created in countless numbers by uneducated touts, instantly gain legitimacy because of the unbridled access given to them by politicians and bureaucrats.
A commoner seeing an uneducated or a non-journalism graduate holding a mic near the mouth of a top-level bureaucrat or a top-notch politician often ends up thinking that particular social media page would be a good source to follow. The more followers, the larger the reach of these uneducated or non-journalism graduates running social media pages or groups.
Khalid Bashir Gura, a media researcher at the University of Kashmir, opines that since 2019, when most Kashmir-based news organisations started toeing the government line, a new narrative was built through unprofessional gate-crashers who filled the scene.
“These unprofessional people either started diverting public attention from critical issues or they became an extension of the government’s Public Relations wing.”
He said the often-tear-jerking content of these new touts appeals to audiences, especially uncritical masses.
“The content panders to gratify the core beliefs or appeals to the emotions of the masses. This algorithm leads to followers, which in turn makes them so-called voices of the people.”
“These voices are seen by commoners as a medium to get their voices heard in power corridors. In turn, political parties, bureaucrats and people wielding power end up inviting these unprofessional touts because through them they can create or reinforce narratives without critical questions being asked,” Gura said.
Recently, a Kashmir-based university’s vice chancellor was interviewed by an Instagram page handler who posed all kinds of flowery questions. This reliance of the politico-bureaucratic class on these touts is mainly to further their public image. They are asked only what they want to be. A professional journalist finds it difficult to get such access as he/she might end up hurting the public relations exercise of the politico-bureaucratic class.
“Amidst this noise, the general public is deluged with information overload and remains misinformed and devoid of critical information. But the question remains, why can’t officials use and communicate via proper media channels? Or has it become difficult to blur the differences between the mainstream media and these new outlets?” Khalid Bashir Gura said.
In 2016, at the height of the Kashmir uprising, a senior Peoples Democratic Party minister had asked a reporter with the Rising Kashmir for an interview in which he could try and spin doctor the then-prevalent narrative. Shujaat not only declined the request but also discussed whether a story could be run on the minister’s request. But since the request was “off-record”, it continues to be so. Calling out political turpitude then, Shujaat would have called it out today as well.
Academia-Industry Gap
A widening gap between the media industry and academia is also now diminishing the value of the degree courses offered by various universities. Media houses now themselves are offering three to six-month courses to turn any fellow into a “journalist”.
The industry keeps arguing that the students coming out of universities lack basic reporting skills, as the curriculum isn’t in sync with what the industry requires.
The gap, while always being there, has only been widening as academia is being dominated by teachers with no field experience.
Dr Danish Nabi Gadda, Head Media Studies department at Government Degree College Baramulla opines that most media schools in the Valley aren’t imparting the required skills for a student to be ready for the industry. “A lot more is wanted from the media academic institutions in terms of how they train aspiring media professionals.”
He said that there has always been a gap between industry and academia in media in Kashmir. “Both the industry and academia are to be blamed for it, because they never tried to complement each other. Academic institutions and industry in Kashmir have worked independently or in isolation.”
Dr Gadda believes that the media schools in Kashmir need to have teachers who have several years of field experience before they teach students. “In my opinion, it is necessary.”
A former Rising Kashmir editorial staffer and now an academic opines that gaining requisite skills ultimately depends on a student’s own initiative. “Those who are passionate about pursuing professional journalism will pick up skills beyond the classroom or the newsroom. Those who tend to rely solely on media schools or newsrooms don’t survive the industry competition long enough.”
On the role media schools and news organisations can play in lessening the gap, he said that while media schools do send their students on internships along with inviting media practitioners for workshops and interactions, the media houses on the other hand haven’t been doing much.
“Kashmir-based organisations can take a lead from organisations like BBC World Trust, which organised tailor-made programmes for students of the Media Education Research Centre of Kashmir University some years back.”
“Within the news organisations, I also don’t remember seeing many workshops being organised to upgrade the knowledge and skills of the staffers,” he said.
However, he said that he vividly remembers Shujaat inviting academicians, authors and senior national and international journalists regularly to the Rising Kashmir newsroom.
“These interactions were quite useful for the reporters, editors, and even the interns working there at that time. In one instance, he roped in a senior journalist for some reporting master classes for his staffers. He also encouraged senior reporters to help the beginners and interns with reporting skills.”
With both Shujaats now away from Kashmir’s journalism, will Syed Shujaat Bukhari’s once contemporaries in the field rise to regain the lost fort or die in the traffic and views race? I opine the latter.DD
