MEDIA MATTERS
Media as peacemaker
SEVANTI NINAN
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Is conflict resolution the business of journalists?
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REUTERS
DO journalists have a legitimate role as peacemakers? Is conflict resolution their business? Imtiaz Alam seems to think so. This large, shrewd, hustling journalist from The News in Pakistan has spent the last four years nurturing a South Asian entity called SAFMA, which most Indian journalists are only dimly aware of. Those who have heard of it associate it with big, well-publicised conferences at which journalists get to visit Pakistan and generally have a good time. And then do not give it further thought.
But SAFMA, which stands for South Asian Free Media Association, is a ball which is slowly gathering momentum. During this calendar year it is going to end up organising something like 12 meets in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, apart from running a web portal which has become a one-stop site for news of the region (www.southasianmedia.net), and a South Asia journal. What makes it intriguing is that these conferences go beyond discussing media. It is a body of journalists which is attempting — rather grandiosely some might think — to be a player in the region. Last year it organised a conference where parliamentarians from India and Pakistan were brought together, and Mr. Alam likes to claim that 100 parliamentarians from both sides of the border are now in regular telephonic touch because of his initiative. An event immortalised by Laloo Prasad Yadav in Lahore. This December they will meet a second time for a South Asian Parliament. And before they do so, there will be other meets to facilitate trade issues, human rights, and people to people exchanges between the Punjabs on both sides of the border. He likes to get hard core political elements from both sides to meet.
Many journalists would consider this posturing, if not racketeering. Why should journalists indulge in foreign-funded diplomacy? Alam has a logic for presuming a larger than professional role for his tribe. The Jang group sponsored the first meeting aimed at easing regional restrictions which affect scribes. Namely difficulty in obtaining visas, and restrictions on publications being sold across borders. Today you can subscribe to the Newsweek or the Economist, but not to Dawn or Herald. The idea of SAFMA grew out of that meeting. And in getting off the block it became apparent, he says, that you cannot ease free flow of information without having normalcy between India and Pakistan. "So we decided to engage media in conflict resolution." He talks of CBMs (confidence building measures) proposed by SAFMA, and of getting it associated as an apex body by the SAARC. (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) secretariat.
There is also the realisation that journalists could promote peace in the region simply by doing their job better. Inter South Asia ignorance is legendary, and it is compounded by indifference. Nepal has been in turmoil for months, but its travails scarcely get a look in in Indian newspapers. G.P. Koirala, President of the Nepal Congress, cornered me at a just-concluded SAFMA meet in Nepal and expressed anguish about the Indian press's indifference to Nepal. Says Alam, "I found that even editors in Pakistan knew nothing about India, Sri Lanka and Nepal." He adds that the situation is compounded by the combination of aggression and ignorance that the young Turks in the television news channels bring to their jobs. The ones who rattle on glibly about body language. "Your work of years of bridge-building can be undone in minutes. They have no orientation. We have to engage with them."
B.G. Verghese, writing recently in the media journal Vidura, described the perils for the region of such facile ignorance: "Over 80 per cent of the questions asked in Parliament are based on what newspapers and journals write. Ninety per cent of what foreign offices think comes from what they read in the media. The diplomatic reports, the dispatches from the ambassadors come much later."
SAFMA delivers politicians to journalists and vice-versa. The first conference in 2000, when the association came into being, saw many eminences of Indian journalism going to dine with General Musharraf. The latter, doubtless, found this as useful as the former. A SAFMA meeting on the eve of the SAARC conference in January this year saw five foreign ministers attend. The SAFMA conference in Nepal last month saw the Prime Minister, the leading opposition leaders, and a cabinet minister perform a variety of ceremonial functions. In the evenings, ambassadors hosted dinners. A beauteous journalist from the Pakistan Observer who sat next to the Indian ambassador (and foreign secretary designate) through a two-hour dinner promptly filed a story for her paper. SAFMA has begun to facilitate access rather effectively.
You cannot easily establish a legal entity which covers five countries so SAFMA has no legal status. Instead, its promoters have registered a body called Free Media Foundation in Pakistan which does all the fund raising and spending. And with no legal bar to taking foreign funding in that country (unlike the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act in India) donor money is flowing in. Early endowments came from media houses in Pakistan, followed by UNDP, the Pakistan Foundation, the Norwegians, Canadians, and the Germans. The organisation now has resources to hire staff to expand its activities and organise conferences where it lays it on for those who come. Journalists typically, eat, drink, sight-see and shop, and ask each other where SAFMA is getting the money for all this from. They also bond very well with fellow scribes from across borders. An imaginative initiative is the exchange of 15 journalists from Kashmir on both sides of the border which will take place in August.
Alam is plotting several other firsts. Internships in newspaper establishments across borders so that mindsets change. A feature service which will engage journalists from all the countries and get them to produce features to feed to newspapers in the region. Persuading newspapers to appoint columnists from other countries so that views flow across borders. An electronic media section which will produce documentaries. "Chota mota kaam nahin karna hai," says the secretary general expansively. "NGO-wen-go nahin banna hai. That is stupid. (we don't want to do minor things, or become an NGO.")
Aspiring to conflict resolution can make one feel quite grand.
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