Motivated journalism troubling Bangladesh

Take for example, the recent denial of US visa to Narendra Modi, the avowedly Hindu fundamentalist Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat. Despite his controversial role in the massacre of more than one thousand minority Muslims by Hindu extremists in the year 2002 and despite the fact that the ruling Congress party itself brought accusations of criminal abetment against him for innumerable times, the Congress government suddenly jumped to his defence the moment he was refused visa by the Bush administration.

The Indians may be at each others' throat in domestic politics, but whenever the question of Indian national interest and national pride comes, they are ever ready to join hands in facing external threats. But ironically, the situation appears to be quite the opposite in Bangladesh. Be it politics or the press, political affiliation is so blinding that one does not even hesitate to condemn the entire nation and rip asunder the country's image alongside that of the government if that is convenient for partisan political agenda.

An example of such journalistic bigotry has been the recent coverage given by a section of our press to the comment on Bangladesh made by the US Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice during her visit to India on March 16. I browsed the official websites of the US State Department, the US embassy in New Delhi as well as the relevant Indian and Bangladeshi press sites and found some interesting twists to the whole episode.

For example, Bangladesh was mentioned not even once in the US State Department transcript on the joint press conference in New Delhi (March 16) attended by Indian Minister for External Affairs Natwar Singh and US Secretary of State Dr. Rice. The same was true in case of the statements issued by the US embassy in New Delhi. But surprisingly, the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) circulated a news on March 16 quoting an unnamed senior US embassy official as saying that the US had suggested that the "two countries work together in Bangladesh" in view of the "general deterioration of security" in Bangladesh. "The official was referring to the spiralling violence and the growing assertiveness by fundamentalist groups in that country," so said the IANS despatch.

Judging from the anonymous nature of the source, it is most likely that the Indian news agency had merely cooked up the story to satisfy certain hostile quarters who find it advantageous to stigmatise the Bangladeshi nation as well as its democratically elected government.

The very next day, this very same news agency circulated a much more elaborate story on the subject by incorporating the views of some Indian security analysts who are clearly hostile to the government of the day in Bangladesh. And then on March 18, our very own news agency UNB picked up this news from the internet and the story was splashed all over the place in our leading English and Bangla language newspapers.

Indian defence analyst K. Subrahmanyam noted in the story that "there had been independent reports that Al-Qaeda activists had become active in Bangladesh." Another analyst Ajay Sahni said the US interest in Bangladesh amounted to recognition that there is a problem in that country. "They have now come closer to accepting the Indian position," he said and described the situation in Bangladesh as "very, very problematic."

After two days, our news media ran another story quoting the journal India Today with headlines like "Rice finds Bangladesh becoming quite troubling." I again read the detailed transcript of the interview at the US State Department web-site and found that the aspersion on Bangladesh was simply blown out of all proportions. In almost 6 pages of the interview transcript, Rice mentioned the name of Bangladesh only once and that too in the context of the South Asia region. Let me quote the motivated question asked by Mr. Chengappa of India Today and the reply given by Dr. Rice:

Mr. Chengappa: Looking at the region, you know, we're surrounded by failing states and problems, you know, whether you look at Nepal or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh and, of course, Pakistan. What is the sort of role you think India should be playing in the region? What do you really have in mind when you have a dialogue with us?

Secretary Rice: Well, there are several ways in which India, and then India and the United States together, can help in this region. If you look, for instance, at that arc, that included Afghanistan. We now have an opportunity in Afghanistan to actually have a stable, democratic Afghanistan in which its neighbours will not be inclined to interfere in Afghanistan politics to try to stabilise their own interests. That's sort of the history of Afghanistan, that there was interference in Afghanistan because people didn't trust a stable Afghanistan with all of its ethnic divisions. Now we are seeing the emergence of a unified, stable Afghanistan. We and India have been very engaged in that process with Afghanistan, and I think we will see more of that. Obviously in some of the troubled areas that you mentioned, Nepal, we've had very good cooperation since the events, the overturning of the democratic process in Nepal. I was talking recently with our ambassador to Nepal who was back on for consultation. And he said that he is in more than daily contact with the Indian and British ambassadors in Nepal and there is a coordination policy to try to impress upon the King the importance of returning to a democratic path. There is more that we probably need to do on Bangladesh which is, I think, a place that is becoming quite troubling. So in the region, there is a great deal that we can do. But I think we'll also see that also internationally, India, and globally, India will start to play more of a role.

It is quite clear from the foregoing that there was no mention of any Indo-US joint initiative on Bangladesh during the interview and the comment on Bangladesh was just a passing remark to a leading question.

But based on the above transcript, the first line of our BDNews story as published by the leading national dailies was: "UN Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Bangladesh is becoming 'quite troubling' and there is more that the USA and India could do." What a distorted presentation of facts! A section of the Indian and Western press may be justified in forever seeking holes in the social and political fabric of Bangladesh, but it is beyond comprehension why our very own press should go out of the way to put slur on the Bangladeshi nation.

The latest twist in this whole string of anti-Bangladesh propaganda centring on Dr. Rice's visit to India was the UNB story published in the national dailies on March 22. The story said: "There has been no development of specific initiatives on US-Indo cooperation on issues pertaining to Bangladesh, a spokesperson for the US embassy told UNB, responding to a query about what US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had stated in India about the US-India initiatives to deal with the security situation in Bangladesh."

If the story had been done as an admission of serious reporting errors in the past, that would have earned kudos from the adherents of ethical journalism. But the story continued with another round of vitriolic utterances on the state of affairs in Bangladesh: "The US mission in Dhaka, along with counterparts of other donor organisations, are concerned by the deterioration of governance in Bangladeshespecially by political violence and the law and order situation."

The spokesperson actually said, "Threats to, and attacks upon the press, the political opposition, cultural institutions, and minority communities are all causes for concern."

This is what I would call motivated, partisan, hostile, and unpatriotic journalism.

Helal Uddin Ahmed is a former editor of Bangladesh Quarterly.