Cops And Journos

An open letter to the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ)

I read with interest thereport expressing concern over the falling standards of reporting as evidentin the manner in which the police operation at Batla House on September 19, 2008was reported by various newspapers and TV channels in the capital. 

Before 9/11, the intelligence agencies and the police of the world avoidedpremature briefings of the media on the investigation into terrorism-relatedcases lest such briefings give the terrorist leaders and their state-sponsors anidea of what the agencies and the police knew from the interrogation of thosearrested.

After 9/11, as a result of tremendous public pressure to show that theirinvestigation is progressing, they have started briefing the media officiallyeven as the investigation is in progress. This could lead to very embarrassingsituations as one saw in connection with the case relating to the arrest of anumber of persons of Pakistani origin by the British Police in August 2006 on acharge of planning to blow up a number of US-bound planes by smuggling on boardliquids of every day use which can be converted into explosives and the case inAustralia relating to the arrest of an Indian Muslim doctor on suspicion of hisinvolvement with the attempted terrorist strike outside the Glasgow airport inJune, 2007.

In the British case, many of the arrested and prosecuted suspects were acquittedby a jury on the ground that there was no evidence that they were planning tofly to the US. In Australia, an enquiry established that the arrest of theIndian Muslim was wrong.

Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, believed thatpublicity was the oxygen of terrorists. When she was the Prime Minister, she hadbanned any reference to individual leaders of the Irish Republican Army by namein the Government-controlled electronic media and she kept a tight control overthe interactions between the Police and media in terrorism-related cases. Since9/11, these restrictions and controls are no longer there.

After 9/11, there has been a tremendous interest in the media and in the publicregarding terrorism and terrorist networks. News about terrorism sells--whetherin the print or electronic media. The more sensational, the better.Nobody--neither in the Police nor in the media-- is worried that they may be redin their face tomorrow if what they reported today proves to be wrong tomorrow.They calculate that public memory is short and won't remember tomorrow what theyreport today.

After the Mumbai blasts of March,1993, Sharad Pawar, the then Chief Minister ofMaharashtra, had set up a co-ordination committee chaired by him, which used tomeet in his office every evening to review the progress of the investigation anddecide what should be told to the media and what should not. This committee usedto instruct the Commissioner of Police of Mumbai as to what the media should betold.

The purpose of this exercise was, firstly, not to poison the public mind againstthe Muslims as a community, secondly, not to give the terrorists not yetarrested, including Dawood Ibrahim, and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)the benefit of knowing who had been arrested and what they were telling thepolice during the interrogation and, thirdly, to avoid embarrassing situationsif evidence of today was found wrong tomorrow. It took the Mumbai Police,assisted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), 17 months to complete theinvestigation and establish a complete chain of evidence against theaccused--those arrested as well as those absconding. Only then senior officialsof the Union Home Ministry held a big press conference at New Delhi inAugust,1994, to share with the media the results of the investigation. Later,Narasimha Rao, the then Prime Minister, was unhappy even with this pressconference. He felt that too many details had been given out which could benefitthe ISI and help it in covering up its tracks. "We should have kept the ISIguessing. What was the need for mentioning all these details?" he asked ina note which he sent to S.B.Chavan, the then Home Minister, after reading thesensational stories carried by the media the next day.

Since 9/11, one has been seeing all over the world a mushrooming growth of whatare called embedded journalists because of the media interest in terrorism. Theterm embedded journalist, inter alia, refers to journalists, who enjoyprivileged access to the powers that be and the chiefs and other senior officersof the intelligence agencies and the police and in return for this are preparedto disseminate any story given to them without applying a critical mind to it.Some months ago, the Guardian of London had come out with an article onsome Al Qaeda analysts in the West, whose credentials require closer scrutiny.Similarly in the US, there were references to embedded journalists who letthemselves be used by officials of the Bush Administration for disseminatingallegations about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and aboutthe links of Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda. These allegations, which were playedup by the embedded journalists, were subsequently found to be false.

In India, as a result of the mushrooming growth of TV channels and thecompetitive pressure for sensational stories, the evils of premature briefingeven before an investigation has been completed, different police officerstalking to the media without a proper control over them, the lack of politicalcontrol over the media briefings etc have been growing. The police startbriefing the media within a few hours of an arrest without giving themselvestime to verify the statements made by the arrested persons and analysing theevidence collected. This not only results in a media trial of the suspect evenbefore sufficient evidence justifying a charge-sheet is collected, but alsodamages the credibility of the police and the intelligence agencies due tocontradictory assertions by different officers.

One could give the following examples of the kind of embarrassing situationsthat could arise:

• In 2002, the Mumbai Police claimed to have arrested an Indian Muslim, who was allegedly working for Al Qaeda and had undergone flying training in Australia. This could not be substantiated.
  
  
• In 2006, the Mumbai Police held a high-profile press conference at which they claimed to have established that the ISI had orchestrated the suburban train blasts of July,2006, with the help of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI). Their claim was subsequently discounted by M.K.Narayanan, the National Security Adviser, in a TV interview. Now, we are told that investigation has established that it was, in fact, the Indian Mujahideen ( IM) which had carried out the blasts. If what we are told now is correct, what we were told in 2006 was wrong and vice versa.
  
  
• In their recent press conference, the Ahmedabad Police said that it was the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which was now operating under the name IM. The Delhi Police claimed subsequently that the SIMI, the IM and the LET were operating in tandem. They thus resurrected the LET, which had disappeared from the media headlines for some time.If one read carefully the transcripts of the press conferences of the Ahmedabad Police and the Delhi Police, one would find contradictions in some material particulars. Such publicly-exhibited contradictions play into the hands of the terrorists.
  
  
• We have had so many masterminds initially projected on the TV screens and in media columns and then downgraded. Initially Abdul Suban Quereshi alias Tauqueer of Mumbai was projected as the IT whiz-kid of the IM. Some TV channels even projected him as India's Osama bin Laden. Then, one Shabaz Hussain of Uttar Pradesh was projected as the real IT whiz-kid. Now, four Muslims of Pune are projected as the real IT whiz-kids. To point all this out is not to question the claims of the police, but to draw attention to the pitfalls of premature media briefings before the investigation is complete. One understands that the police officers of today are under tremendous pressure from the media to give sound bytes and there is hardly any centralised control of the investigation and briefings.

There is a need for clear-cut instructions by the government to the policeand the intelligence agencies on media briefings and for strict enforcement ofthose instructions. Similarly, the media too should examine the post-9/11 evilswhich have crept into their reporting on terrorism and lay down a list of dosand don'ts for the guidance of the media.

This may please be read in continuation of my earlier article titled TheAl Qaeda Striptease of August 2004.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Directior, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.