The Pathankot fiasco: How official communication faltered and the media failed to do due diligence

At 7.52 pm, on Friday, January 1, 2016, Times Now tweeted a PTI wire story, which quoted H S Dhillon, the ADGP of the Punjab Police, as saying that the gun battle between the terrorists and security forces at the Pathankot Air Force Base had come to an end. It was reported that four terrorists had been killed, and two Air Force personnel martyred on the Indian side. Soon after, combing operations had commenced to sanitise the area.

However, in the wee hours of Saturday, January 2, reports emerged about loud explosions emanating from the Base. It was clear that some terrorists were still present within the Air Force Base and that the operation was not over.

Almost twenty four hours later, at 6.50 pm, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted, congratulating the Indian security forces on a successful operation in Pathankot and made a public statement in the media. The Hindu released a timeline of the events that evening, reporting Rajnath Singh’s statement, along with a further update that the operation was completed and five terrorists killed.

However, a few hours later, this time in the wee hours of Sunday, more reports emerged of fresh firing in the area. If anyone earlier had even an iota of doubt, it was now crystal clear that there was a huge botch up – if not operationally, then definitely in the communication to the country through news and social media.

The terrorists had split into teams and there were clearly more of them concealed within the Base. Either the minister was tweeting in haste, or the press briefing wasn’t thought-through. To make matters worse, Lieutenant Colonel Niranjan Kumar, a member of the NSG’s bomb defusal squad, was injured by an improvised explosive device which one of the terrorists, in his last dying act, had activated and placed under his body. When the body was moved during the combing operations, it reportedly exploded. “In many other countries”, an NSG officer tells The Indian Express, “this is a task that would be done by robots, or personnel using highly specialised bomb-disposal equipment. That kind of equipment was not available with us. ”Lt. Col. Niranjan Kumar was martyred that day. And just like that a “swift and successful” counter-terror operation had turned into a massive failure of the establishment.

Later, Rajiv Mehrishi, Home Secretary, briefed the media from New Delhi, saying that six security personnel of the Air Force had been killed. Saikat Datta, a journalist, took umbrage to the reference to five jawans of the Defence Security Corps (DSC) as Air Force personnel. “In which country would you have a home secretary refer to the DSC as Air Force personnel? These men are ex-army officers who have been rehired into the DSC to look after defence installations. The Home Secretary doesn’t know the difference, he doesn’t know his troops.” With each update, the flaws in the government’s communication were exposed.

The media narrative

News channels had been setting up televised discussions on the terror ops, pulling at the common threads that ran through the stories, competing over jingoistic coverage (NewsX ran the hashtag #MakePakPay), all while counter-terror operations were still underway.

Arnab Goswami railed at the Pakistani guests on his show and accused the Pakistani army of using mercenaries, “high on drugs”, for the attack. None of the reports mentioned the use of drugs. It seems that for Arnab Goswami, sincere conviction makes up for the lack of forensic evidence.

By Monday morning, the scenes shifted to the funerals of the seven martyred soldiers. News crews spoke to the widows and the bereaved relatives, flashing images on loop. CNN-IBN committed the biggest blunder in their coverage. A photo started doing the rounds, showing dead bodies laid out in army fatigues. It was a photo from Syria and CNN-IBN had tweeted it out as an “exclusive”, crediting the photo to Ashok Bagariya, the legal editor at CNN IBN. A source at CNN-IBN confirmed to Newslaundry that they did indeed tweet out this photo, passing it off as Pathankot. When asked about the involvement of Ashok Bagariya in the hoopla, the source refused to comment. When we contacted Ashok Bagariya, he refused to confirm or deny, and simply hung up saying that he was in a meeting. We also contacted Bhupendra Chaubey, executive editor at CNN-IBN, and apprised him about the photo. He sounded surprised and said that he had no information of any such photo put out by CNN IBN.

A quick check confirmed that the photo was posted online by a handle @saleemrisheh on June 18, 2015. Then things took a turn for the worse when India Today TV used the photo as a part of their televised coverage of the Pathankot attacks. A source at India Today dropped a bombshell. He said the origin of this photo was a Whatsapp group which several editors, journalists and Army men are part of. The source tells us that a senior officer in the Army, who also handles press liaison had forwarded this on the Whatsapp group. Journalists rushed to use this image throwing caution to the wind before the army officer hurriedly got back to them and confessed that he had mistakenly assumed it to be authentic. But the damage was done and it was broadcasted on television.

https://twitter.com/saleemrisheh/status/611643982959939585

When quizzed on the quality of media coverage of the operations, R Jagannathan, editorial director at Swarajya magazine, expressed concerns. “While one cannot gag the media, I believe there must be a code of conduct for everybody to follow. There must be a press briefing every three hours, like in the U.S. Over there, they have a standard system of media briefing. There is a standard operating procedure. Please understand that Twitter is a slippery slope. People should not jump the gun and tweet prematurely, especially ministers.”

Veteran journalist, Co-founder and Promoter of The News Minute, Chitra Subramaniam, wrote an introspective piece, calling for restraint and respect on the part of journalists covering a terrorist attack. When Newslaundry contacted her via email, she reiterated her stance, urging journalists to err on the side of caution, even if it meant missing a story. “Caution has to become an instinct. Caution because lives are at stake. Newsrooms don’t exist in a vacuum. If there is the slightest possibility of harming the government’s work, caution must be extreme even if it means missing a story. There will be time to tell stories – there will not be another time to save a life”.

Sushant Sareen, a strategic affairs analyst, also called for an improved system of communication. “Competition between (news) channels means that information will flow much faster these days. However, we still haven’t figured out how to have a single window for information to flow through. The media should not talk to just any cop, take his opinion, and farm it out as news. This results in so many conflicting accounts. An ASI/SP from a distant part of the same district is not a reliable source.”

Over the weekend, Sushant Sareen had walked off midway through a televised debate on Aaj Tak because he felt the Pakistani guests were treated with kid gloves. “That anchor wasn’t able to conduct the debate properly. The Pakistanis were allowed to spout lies and propaganda. A better anchor would have shown the Pakistanis their place. Sitting there was an assault on my senses.”

Another facet of media coverage is the analysis of counter-terror ops. Defence experts are usually roped in to evaluate the efficacy of the operations and to provide insights to the general public. One such expert is Ajai Shukla, a war correspondent and former Colonel in the Indian army. He wrote a scathing piece attacking Ajit Doval and the current dispensation for what he perceived to be an inept and amateurish approach to national security. He lambasted journalists for being opaque about the information they put out. “Journalists were reporting what they were told in Delhi. They were like mouthpieces. Rather than putting out balanced, informed reports, they were putting out what the NSA told them, without verifying the facts or naming the agencies they received information from,” he said. He hit bull’s eye with this evaluation of the media. Every channel was so desperate to break the news first, they put out information without checking its accuracy. This is why PTI journalists took HS Dhillon’s word at face value, others did it with Home Minister’s inexplicably premature statement; CNN- IBN circulated the Syrian photo, while India Today recycled it without checking.

Madhu Trehan, editor-in-chief at Newslaundry, is not in favour of live coverage of terror ops. She believes that reporting should be limited to news bulletins with enough information for citizens to take measures for their safety. In fact, everyone we spoke to for this story believes that the government must set up robust channels to ensure a smooth flow of accurate information. At a time when the credibility of the media is under the spotlight, journalists must take it upon themselves to be responsible with the information that comes their way. Is it responsible journalism to use forwarded photos from Whatsapp without verifying it? Not just journalists, why are ministers briefing the media without ascertaining all the facts? Why are army personnel bypassing the official lines of communication? These glaring questions are cause for introspection for all parties. Information from the government is a vital tool for journalists, but information determined by a thorough investigation is a journalist’s mandate.

With inputs from Urmi Duggal