On the night of February 28, at 10 pm, CNN News18’s anchor Bhupendra Chaubey questioned whether Gurmehar Kaur had insulted Indian Army soldiers with her appeal for peace. This was on Chaubey’s show, Big5@10.

The primetime offering was emblematic of everything that is wrong with mainstream television journalism in India today, which has replaced reportage with talking heads and rent-a-quotes. Besides the mediocrity of format, which is not exclusive to CNN News18, Chaubey’s show is noteworthy because it raises a fundamental question on the idea of balance and whether the zeal to appear to be neutral is dumbing down journalism.

False balance

Chaubey opened the debate with the “Big Question”: “Trolled, Abused & Threatened Gurmehar Withdraws But Who ‘Polluted’ Her Mind?”

He went on to ask, “How are we going to determine whether Gurmehar Kaur has added to this debate on nationalism in a constructive way or has she insulted the jawaan of the Indian Army who ended up paying for his life just to protect the motherland?”

Kaur is a 20-year-old student of Lady Shri Ram College who has come under intense media scrutiny for registering her protest against Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad following campus violence at Delhi University’s Ramjas College.

Her bigger crime, though, seems to have been a video appeal for peace between Pakistan and India, which was shot nine months ago.

The focus of Chaubey’s debate was this video. The hypothesis he presented to his manel of seven is whether the message is an insult to the Indian Army. The assumption that jawans at the border could be hurt by Kaur’s video was validated by two panellists in particular — Retired General GD Bakshi and Kashmiri Pandit activist Lalit Ambardar.

General Bakshi delivered tedious and shrill monologues to explain he has seen men die at the border and that it “hurts, damn you!” At one point, he broke down and spoke about everything from his elder brother losing his life in action, to him joining National Defence Academy, to soldiers dying for the nation.

Chaubey picked up from General Bakshi’s breakdown and asked if Kaur should apologise for playing with “people’s sentiments”.

Ambardar, on the other hand, attacked “compulsive peaceniks” and said he had a problem with Kaur “batting for Pakistan”. His tirade peaked with him screaming that three soldiers had died recently in Shopian. This was followed by Chaubey: “There is a vast, major section today which echoes the same sentiment as are being echoed by Mr Ambardar here who are trying to make a distinction between how her father died…why did Gurmehar in the very first place bring in her father?”

Throughout the show, Chaubey kept wondering aloud if Kaur should apologise, if she is part of a larger conspiracy and whether she has absolved Pakistan. At one point, he pulled out a list of soldiers who lost their lives in anti-terror operations and asked if the next of kin of these soldiers would feel insulted by Kaur’s video. Would they feel belittled by her, he asked.

A simple way to “determine” whether Kaur has indeed insulted soldiers would be to view her video, in its entirety.

Note Kaur’s final plea for peace in the concluding sentences:

“Enough state-sponsored terrorism. Enough state-sponsored spies. Enough state-sponsored hatred. Enough people have died on both sides of the border. Enough is enough.”

And note that the line “Pakistan did not kill my dad, war did” is preceded by Kaur stating that her mother gave her this explanation when Kaur was six years old. The reason? Kaur had tried to stab a woman in a burkha because she believed Pakistan was responsible for her father’s death. Is Kaur’s mother, then, batting for Pakistan or simply enabling her family to heal after the traumatic circumstances of Kaur’s father, Captain Mandeep Singh’s death? Is she absolving Pakistan or trying to make sure that her children don’t grow up to become hate mongers?

Chaubey completely ignored this context of the video and relied solely on Ambardar and Bakshi to create a false balance between the video’s peace appeal and its ability to hurt the Army’s sentiments. He did this by taking Ambardar and Bakshi as representatives of “people” or a “vast section” that is offended by Kaur. Chaubey did not once mention the fact that Army veterans have in fact come out in support of Kaur. Instead he ended up giving airtime to and legitimising fallacious positions like ‘she is batting for Pakistan’ or that she has somehow ‘hurt’ soldiers.

What’s worse is that the debate centred on Kaur’s so-called motivations made little effort to present her side of the story. The panel did not have her friends from college or teachers or even Army veterans who have supported her. The only person supporting her was film-maker Ram Subramanian, who had made the video with Kaur as part of his #ProfileForPeace campaign. He was cornered by the end of the show and Chaubey even asked him if he would like to apologise on behalf of Kaur.

Ram incidentally was also the only panellist whose political leanings (he is a supporter of Aam Admi Party) were brought up in an apparent effort to discredit him. Activist Ambardar’s voting preferences are obviously not a matter of concern since he wants war with Pakistan. Neither does it matter whether the retired general votes for Bharatiya Janata Party or supports the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The other side

This is not to say that there can be no opposition to Kaur and her mother’s worldviews. You may very well believe – like General Bakshi and Ambardar — that Pakistan is a terror nation deserving only of our contempt. But these positions can be discussed without accusing Kaur of insulting soldiers. Her video comes from an intensely personal space and talks of her own journey from hate to reconciliation. To present Kaur as someone who opposes a nationalist world view or link her video to disrespecting the Army in the garb of presenting “both sides” of a story is nothing short of lazy, sensationalist journalism.

At one point in the show, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said as much. He said that he would not like to bring up Kaur and her father – “we all have to respect her” – but that the ideology she holds can be debated. When a party spokesperson makes more sense than the news anchor, you know it doesn’t say much about the journalism being practiced.

The author can be contacted at manisha.pande1110@gmail.com and on Twitter @MnshaP