Break Fast TV

Jaypee Hotel (Agra), 11.30 am, July 16: A grim-faced Sudheendra Kulkarni rushes to home minister L.K. Advani and whispers in his ear. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was on Star TV, he says, needling India for its intransigence on Kashmir. The breakfast meeting between Musharraf and top editors—intended as an informal, bonhomous interaction between the general and India's leading opinion-makers—becomes a platform from which Musharraf airs his hardline stance on Kashmir.

President Musharraf's meeting with the editors may have gained him brownie points at home and abroad but it was, to quote one of the 1,000-plus mediapersons covering the summit, nothing less than "an abuse of good faith".

"It was unfortunate in that it vitiated the atmosphere of confidence," observed Dainik Jagaran editor-in-chief Narendra Mohan, who attended the meeting. Not only were the editors unaware that the affair was being televised but "what should have remained between the two leaders was said openly and that (act) was detrimental (to the talks)". The Pakistani government-run ptv had been permitted to station a camera crew at the venue but the Indian government hadn't a clue that the goodwill exercise would become a press conference. Even half an hour before the meeting, the Pakistani delegation had maintained it would be an informal one. But immediately afterwards, Star TV ran an unedited tape of the event. Thus ensuring that the most enduring image from the summit was that of Musharraf saying, "Let us not remain under any illusion that the issue confronting us is Kashmir."

Until then, it had appeared as if the talks were going well, apart from a small hiccup over i&b minister Sushma Swaraj's briefing, at the instance of the pmo, to the effect that 'composite' talks were held. The overall impression was that the negotiators were finding a way around the semantic quibbles over Kashmir. Indeed, as one of the editors at the meeting said, "When we went in for breakfast we thought we were meeting a man who was about to sign a ground-breaking agreement. The Pakistanis were then telling us that an agreement had virtually been reached." Once the general's hardline stance was made public, courtesy Star TV and ndtv, the bonhomie of the previous night's dinner hosted by the Uttar Pradesh governor rapidly evaporated. The general became a prisoner of what he had said, since it had become a matter of public record.

Government sources say Star TV had arranged well in advance for the airing of the meeting. ndtv's Prannoy Roy was seen rushing off immediately after the morning do and, within a short while, the event was on air. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who was undergoing physiotherapy at the time, was informed. He and Advani met with external affairs minister Jaswant Singh to discuss the turn of events. All three were astonished and upset at the unprecedented breach of confidentiality. Bang in the middle of the summit, one of the principals had decided to go public. Later, Jaswant Singh was to gently criticise the Pakistani president, saying "this isn't the way diplomacy is conducted".

"It's all very well to berate the general but he used every media opportunity and with rare brilliance," observed Dileep Padgaonkar of The Times of India. Meanwhile, sources close to Pakistani high commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi said they had nothing to do with the telecast of the meeting and all editors who had expressed their unhappiness were advised to take up the matter with Roy. NDTV threw the ball right back in Qazi's court. "Don't shoot the messenger," said Roy. He didn't see the telecast as a breach of journalistic ethics; if anything, he felt it was something of a coup.

The pmo and cabinet members see it very differently. They're upset that ndtv hadn't at least warned them of the telecast, which they believe was the single biggest setback to the summit. One minister admitted to the press that Roy had called him in Mumbai on July 14 and said Musharraf might make a statement on TV, but he had not taken it seriously. A senior cabinet minister observed: "Liberalisation may mean no private TV channel is accountable to the government but it does not mean they should not be responsible."

That the government was not keen on the general holding a press conference on Indian soil was no secret but that's precisely what Star TV facilitated. And by not informing the editors who attended the meeting, it ensured that instead of treating the event as a press conference where hard questions could be asked, the majority of those present went out of their way to maintain an atmosphere of goodwill. Even more so because, during his meeting with Vajpayee and Advani in New Delhi, Musharraf had complained that he had been demonised by the Indian media. So, to several million viewers in India and Pakistan, it seemed the Indian media was soft on the general, even as he expressed his pious exasperation over Indian obduracy.

What's clear is that the Pakistani delegation ran rings around their Indian counterparts, using the media an effective propaganda tool. Gen Musharraf, the "Butcher of Kargil", was projected as an affable, big-hearted, straight-from-the-shoulder kind of guy. Whether it was a stroll down memory lane in Old Delhi or a tour of the Taj Mahal, he cooperated fully with the visual media. The government of India, on the other hand, had chosen to emphasise on media arrangements rather than management. So, while the i&b ministry set up a media centre which ran with clockwork efficiency, the ministry of external affairs (mea) ensured the media did nothing but run around in circles.

The Indian version of events, thanks to a tight-lipped mea, was never heard. The least the XP (External Publicity) division of the mea could have done was to hold a briefing after each round of talks. In fact, while the mea was focused on diplomacy, they lost sight of politics. This became evident when Swaraj's stodgy briefing on a composite dialogue, including trade and prisoners of war, was blown out of proportion. The Pakistani press told Indian journalists their delegation was upset and would be issuing a statement. It came half past midnight, by when no one from this side was available for comment. With the local delegation's cellphones off and the gates of Jaypee Hotel firmly barred, Indian journalists had no clue what was happening and were compelled to accept the blow-by-blow version put out by the Pakistani journalists.

Small wonder that by the end of the second day, foreign media correspondents were speaking of the general's "statesmanlike" remarks (The Washington Post) and the fact that he seemed "frustrated" (The Times). Pakistani journalists were quoted as saying (The New York Times) that they'd been told "India had backed away three times" and "there was a sense of betrayal". It also referred to the general's desire to hold a press conference which had been denied. As Congress leader Manmohan Singh put it, after the all-party meeting last week, the mea had ignored the link between diplomacy and the media.

A senior cabinet minister, looking for a silver lining amid all the enveloping greyness, said it was perhaps just as well the breakfast meeting had been telecast. "At least we got to know the general's mind before rushing into anything."