The media coverage of the 2019 India-Pakistan standoff was criticised for largely being "jingoistic" and "nationalistic", to the extent of the media war-mongering and the battle being fought between India and Pakistan through newsrooms. During the escalation, fake videos and misinformation were prevalent on the social media which were further reported to escalate tensions between India and Pakistan. Once tensions started de-escalating, the media coverage shifted to comparisons being made between "India and Pakistan" and "

Narendra Modi Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician who has served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Par ...

and Imran Khan" in terms of who won the "perception battle".

Background

Propaganda and psychological warfare through the media is an old concept. The media in both India and Pakistan are important "stakeholders" during times of heightened tensions between the two countries. Previous studies conducted have suggested the "nationalistic" role of the media in relation to India and Pakistan conflicts. A Bournemouth University doctoral study by Chindu Sreedharan concluded the dominance of "anti-peace news" in the overall coverage of Kashmir suggesting that the press in India and Pakistan has a counterproductive role in the Kashmir issue and that the "coverage was vigorously government-led and intensely 'negative'". A study in the Pakistan Journal of History and Culture found that newspapers of both countries (India and Pakistan) were "setting the agenda on Kashmir issue positively in the light of foreign policy of their respective country".

War mongering

Various accusations were made against the sections of the Indian and Pakistani media for war-mongering. Indian

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...

laureate

Kailash Satyarthi Kailash Satyarthi (born 11 January 1954) is an Indian social reformers of India, social reformer who campaigned against child labor in India and advocated the universal right to education. In 2014, he was the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace ...

acknowledged the war-mongering prevalent among the Indian media, but added that there were many journalists trying to "de-escalate" the situation too. Both in India and Pakistan, media unions called for a stop on the war-mongering. A story in

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

quotes Indian journalist Sadanand Dhume (a fellow at the American think tank

American Enterprise Institute The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right think tank based in Washington, D.C., that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare ...

) where he says "Paradoxically, the over-zealous Indian media and Pakistani media may help prevent escalation of conflict."

Foreign Policy Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...

came out with an article titled "India’s Media Is War-Crazy". According to it, Indian journalists were very much willing to “reproduce unverified, contradictory and speculative information” that suited the Indian government.

Perception war

Ajai Shukla, an Indian journalist and former

Indian Army The Indian Army (IA) (ISO 15919, ISO: ) is the Land warfare, land-based branch and largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Commander-in-Chief, Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head ...

colonel, writes in

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN; , ) is a private-media conglomerate headquartered in Wadi Al Sail, Doha, funded in part by the government of Qatar. The network's flagship channels include Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, which pro ...

that "Pakistan won the perception war", however adds that Pakistan is losing out in other ways. A report in an Indian media digital website, '' Scroll.in,'' was titled "How Imran Khan stumped Narendra Modi in the perception battle over air strikes" where it criticises Narendra Modi for not addressing the media directly during the crisis as compared to Imran Khan who addressed the media directly during the crisis more than once, and in turn directed the narrative. A report in a Pakistani newspaper T''he News International'' however said that even if Imran Khan and Narendra Modi won the perception battles in their respective constituencies, neither side wanted a war according to Vipin Narang, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Fake news and fact-checking

Various media houses resorted to

fact-checking Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such che ...

related to misinformation related to Air Marshal

Chandrashekharan Hari Kumar Air Marshal Chandrashekharan Hari Kumar, PVSM, AVSM, VM, VSM, ADC is a retired officer of the Indian Air Force. He served as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C), Western Air Command from 1 January 2017 to 28 February 2019. He assum ...

, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthanman,

F-16s The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American single-engine supersonic Multirole combat aircraft, multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superio ...

, an Indian submarine and various other things. It was reported after the Balakot airstrikes on 26 February, a fact checking website "Check4Spam" reported a 79% increase in traffic. Old videos and photographs of "crashing fighter jets" were being circulated in both India and Pakistan during the crisis as recent events.

Background

War mongering

Perception war

Fake news and fact-checking

See also

References

Further reading