Media, Nitish and Forbesganj mayhem

Governments world over use different methods to muzzle freedom of press. The most common way is to bribe media houses by giving them advertisements. Other popular methods practiced to silence the press are either to co opt the media or embed senior journalists. And if it doesn't work, then kill them, as it happened to Syed Saleem Shahzad in Pakistan and Jyotirmoy Dey in India's financial capital Mumbai.

In India, however, cases like Dey are rare. But several state governments have adopted subtle ways to tame the free media. Among them the Nitish Kumar government of Bihar has mastered the art of keeping the local and national media quiet by offering them government largess in plenty.

It has worked well for him, as nobody in the mainstream media, both print and electronic, in Patna and Delhi gave a prominent coverage to the June 3 incident of police firing to silence unarmed protesters of Forbesganj, a sub-division in Araria district, just a few kilometer from state capital Patna. The story was relegated to the middle pages. For some media houses, the report was of no importance as more important events were unfolding in Delhi vis-a-vis Anna Hazare and yoga guru Baba Ramdev. Many people, including some self-acclaimed senior journalists in Delhi, living far from the boondocks of India, came to know about the ghastly incident even only through websites that picked the footage from some regional TV channels and circulated it.

The video footage that has gone viral on the Internet showed some policemen jumping on the face and chest of a fallen man hit by bullets, who later on died in the hospital. As if that was not enough, monsters were even heard saying “ho gaya, ho gaya, badla lya ja chukka” (It’s all done. Revenge has been taken). In the police firing some four persons were killed and many injured including 25 policemen, according to the PTI report. But a few people who visited the hot spot even contradict this official version, claiming that the provocation was one sided.

Since becoming Chief Minister of Bihar after defeating the Yadav clan on November 24, 2005, the engineer-turn-politician has successfully managed social and media engineering in the impoverished state. During the last year itself, the JDU headed government in Bihar, which never fails to highlight its good governance, forked out Rupees 28.47 crore on advertisements to the media, according to a riveting write-up in Bihar Times.

In the last six years, the soft-spoken CM, who keeps media persons at arm's length, has showered tonnes of money on the media-houses on the name of advertisements. Care is taken to satisfy the insatiable appetite of big media houses, including newspapers and electronic channels.

An RTI activist, Purander Sawaran, found out to his dismay that exorbitant amounts were gifted to the fourth estate between September and November 2010. Around Rupees 10,12,13,999 were taken by one Hindi newspaper, Dainik Hindustan. Even not so circulated Urdu dailies have their share of pie, too. Urdu daily Quami Tanzeem got advertisement worth about Rupees one crore. The Times of India and Economic Times got Rupees 1,13,52,332. Hindustan Times bagged Rupees 58,63,454 advertisement. The list is long.

Banking on government advertisements for survival is nothing new for the media. But what has shocked people all over the country is the criminal silence maintained by the media houses in highlighting the plight of the innocent people who were at the receiving end of the police force. The same reporters, who never used to miss an opportunity to even highlight pick-pocketing cases in Patna during the Lalu-Rabri regime, are lying low.