Is the media always right? Is the media fickle? Is the media sincere? Does the media overturn its own verdict?

Why am I asking all these questions?

For good reason, I’ll say. I was sort of dumbstruck when I saw the media’s response to the death of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who passed away in Delhi on Friday morning last week.

Times Now was full of praise for the man who it had labelled “Separatist CM” every time Syed Ali Shah Geelani spoke, and every time Madame Andrabi raised the Pakistani flag.

On Friday morning, Times Now put it out in capital letters: A STATESMAN PASSES AWAY.

It appeared to me that Times Now had turned turtle on the news highway. The next thing I wondered was if Arnab Goswami had abdicated from the channel.

If anybody, Arnab was the most critical of the “Separatist CM”.

“I think Times Now despite occasional efforts to appear neutral is an out-and-out government supporter, and Modi government does not want to rock the boat in J&K at the moment, given the delicate stage the engagement with Pakistan is, so Times Now would have taken cue from it,” said Columnist and former Editor-in-Chief of DNA, Aditya Sinha.

In fact, every time Kashmir figured in Newshour, Peoples Democratic Party spokesmen were pilloried and dragged over the coals by Arnab’s acerbic tongue. When it came to Mufti and his government, Arnab’s policy was to not take prisoners. It was war.

So, when suddenly, as if overnight, Times Now was remembering Mufti as a STATESMAN, it didn’t exactly go down the gullet. Was it oversight? An error that crept in, without Arnab knowing?

“Once a decent period of mourning is over, Times Now will go back to pillorying PDP spokespersons,” added Sinha.

Later, I looked up websites of other media organisations, and it was a new world out there. A FirstPost headline read, “A democrat at heart, nationalist to the core, and titan of modern Kashmir, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed passes away.”

Democrat. Nationalist. Titan. Mercifully, Mufti wasn’t around to read the words, or he might have wondered at the fickle nature of media with renewed interest.

“The mainstream media failed to understand the ideology and stances of Mufti. There was perception back in 2002, when he became the CM that he favours the separatist because of policies like ‘Healing Touch’. But he was always a man of character who tried to resolve complex issues in J&K,” said Arun Kumar Gupta, Correspondent, Kashmir Times.

The Times of India headline was no less an eye-opener: “Mufti Mohammad Sayeed: A suave politician.” Suddenly, the man most in the media would take the stick to at every opportunity, had turned into a knight in shining armour. A swashbuckling hero. My media-painted impression of Mufti was changing colour by the minute on Friday.

So, being an inquisitive chap, I dug up the archives. It was a graveyard of reports on how untrustworthy the late-lamented CM was. Flipping the pages back, the media narratives baffled me.

In a Newshour debate, Arnab labelled the PDP government as the “B-Team of Pakistan”. NewsX had earlier broadcasted that the Mufti government is spending millions on Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in India. NewsX and Times Now have earlier labelled him anti-army CM and accused him of allowing anti-India propaganda.

Gupta, who extensively covered Kashmir for years explained, “From the very start, when BJP came into power in centre, some news channels and print publications started leaning toward BJP and talking in their line. They first criticised Mufti but after coalition with BJP took a different stand on him.”

A headline from the past made me stop. A March 1, 2015, FirstPost headline, stated: “J&K finally gets a govt, but Sayeed’s BJP alliance won’t solve things.” Odd that on Friday, the same FirstPost was uploading praise about him.

The author of the March 1 report was sceptical about the alliance and felt it “fostered and bred Pritchett’s deep uncertainties with differing horizons in Jammu & Kashmir”.

Journalist and author of “A View from the Raisina Hill” PP Balachandran put it succinctly on his Facebook page, “Speak no evil of the dead. So I kept quiet while watching the news of J&K Chief Minister Mufti Mohd Sayeed’s death yesterday. What got me was the syrupy eulogy to someone who was nothing more than a run-of-the mill, crafty, sectarian politician who used the Kashmiriyat identity politics as and when it suited him. He was called outragous things like a statesman, a thinker etc. etc. Mufti a statesman!!!!??? A thinker!!!??? Give yourself a break guys. Mufti in the same league as Gandhi, Mandela and Lincoln to be called a statesman? Mufti a thinker as in a Socratese or Confusious or Voltaire? I expected Mufti to jump out of the coffin and shout: Bastards, give me the right obit, will you?”

But this had been our standard approach, especially when it comes to politicians: Lampooning and driving the reputation of a man all through his life, and then when he cannot hear, praise him to the skies just because there is a tradition to never speak ill of the dead. Does this cultural tendency keep us from dissecting any leaders or events dispassionately? Is that why even our take on history is so polarised? Imagine historians digging out newspaper archives 100 years from now to figure what kind of a leader Mufti was.

“The mainstream media is clueless, ultra-patriotic or plain blind when it comes to Kashmir. We need to see what the Kashmiri media says in the days after mourning is over. That will tell you the truth,” said Sinha.