NEW DELHI: The BJP is readying a report on how the media covers incidents involving Dalits and the minority community. With this, the saffron outfit wants to persuade media houses to agree to parameters like “unadulterated news reporting quotient, news reporting code, rating of journals and media houses”.
The study was undertaken by Public Policy Research, headed by BJP vice-president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe.
He has readied a report on incidents that took place between 2015 and 2016, after the NDA came to power. “The aim was to analyse the anti-Dalit and anti-minority rhetoric prevalent in the country,” the report noted.
The report argues that incidents were selectively coloured with political motives to target the Central government. “Such selective reporting is followed by political escalation by the Opposition parties to tarnish the incumbent establishment,” said Sahashrabuddhe. The report analysed three incidences of murders in Uttar Pradesh—Akhlaq in Dadri, Gaurav in Aligarh, and Sanju Rathore in Rampur.
The report states that Gaurav was killed by members of a minority community. It adds that Sanju Rathore was also killed by members of the minority community. “The Akhlaq murder clocked 233 news items in five leading media houses in English and Hindi languages, which included 44 news items on the front page. In contrast, Gaurav murder case could garner only four news items, with zero mention on the front page. In the case of Sanju Rathore, just one news item was carried, without any mention on the front page,” the report notes.
The report also draws a comparison between the media coverage of Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the suicide of three girls of a medical college in Viluppuram in Tamil Nadu. “The Vemula suicide had 282 news items in five selected media outlets, including 47 on the front page. The suicides by the girls, who had also alleged torture by the administration, could get only 25 news items and seven front page coverages,” the report added.
It further compared coverage of the incident of a Dalit youth allegedly flogged in Una, Gujarat, with a similar incident in Babutola, Bihar, in 2016. “After studying the media coverage of incidents of crime against marginal communities, it can be clearly observed that the media does selective reporting, which paints the establishment as communal and anti-Dalit,” the report concluded. The report advocates a common standardised style book of reporting by both the print and TV media.