Media Attention and Kashmir.

The situation is Kashmir has had a mixed bag of media attention. Admittedly the US mainstream media is rather caught up in their own news and mention of Kashmir has been scant to negligible. Even Bernie Sander's scathing comments on what he called the appalling conditions in Indian administered Kashmir barely got a few seconds on the air waves. However, closer to the sub continent itself both Indian and Pakistani media channels have been cranking up the news on the dispute, each with its own narrative.

Sadly international media has looked at the Kashmir issue much like a dead horse that occasionally is beaten to give the semblance of coming to back to life and therefore suffers the fatigue of seventy years. During the Kargil war between India and Pakistan the focus was more on the limited war between them rather than on Kashmir itself. Whenever the leaders of India and Pakistan have mustered up the courage to be civil to each other the customary declaration to 'discuss' the Kashmir issue has been banded around in press statements. The UN for its part has been content to never really discuss the matter believing that both sides are agreeing to discuss the matter. In a sense the international media has much juicier stories from the Trumps and the marriages of royal families rather than talk of state of affairs in Kashmir.

In August of this year all this changed with Indian Prime Minister Modi changing the status of Kashmir. In a sense he not only brought the dead horse of Kashmir back to life, he even injected it with enough political fluid to hop around, perhaps on three legs, to suddenly wake up some quarters of the media to pay attention to the issue. Perhaps the gamble was that the world will not really care if a seventy year old horse lives or dies or indeed if its status is changed to some other animal; now an integrated part of India.

While the international press is slowly focusing on the situation in Indian administered Kashmir, with BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and many others beginning to write about the subject, Indian and Pakistan media have been in a media overdrive. Lets see how this looks from the outside.

India, as I have always said, has always had the louder media voice; the Bollywood effect, the larger economy, the larger country and a media entrenched in the style of Fox News. India's television is a mixture of Hindi and regional languages, with also an effective presence of a few channels largely using English as the medium of delivery. While this is also because in India perhaps English is the language of preference when addressing a wide diverse base of people some of whom only speak their regional tongue and some English (more than Hindi in some cases), this also affords Indian media to be addressing a wider international audience.

I have a number of Indian friends, and some of them are journalists and I do admire their social networking skills. Whenever I introduced an Indian journalist to someone I soon found that they had networked not only with that person so well but also three and four layers of friends around the person I had introduced them to. While this may not help the narrative it sure brings more eyeballs to the screens you want to be seen.

By and large the louder voice of Indian media, especially television is that of those who support the BJP line. Not surprising that Republic TV and Times Now would label any Indian politician disagreeing with PM Modi on Kashmir as a "Pakistan supported traitor". Yes there is also the voice within India of those who question the government and have tried to bring a reasonable debate to the issue, even if drowned by the shouting of the anchors on these channels. The story spin of Indian media is all the more remarkable that patriotism and nationalism seem to be the kingpins upon which a story revolves. Surprisingly the spin of the Indian 'brave' pilot who was shot down, captured by Pakistan and returned, is still spilled out as the hero who shot down a Pakistani F 16, when no such independent third party proof exists. (In fact the US counted the Pakistan inventory and said no F16 was lost).

Whether the arguments are right or wrong the Indian media has positioned itself better on the spin side of things. Ignore what is not in the agenda, push the narrative even if its wrong and when it becomes clear the spin is not working just quietly drop the story. The delivery of their message though is commendable; smartly presented, fluent in English the presenters have an aggressive almost bullying demeanor, but the message is consistent.


Pakistan's media on the other hand perhaps has a better and more compelling narrative, if you follow Urdu. It almost seems that the disease of years past inflicts the Pakistan media even today; the incessant urge to only convince their own people and ignore the international audience. I could not find one well presented international affairs program on any on Pakistan's TV channels. In terms of their Urdu channels I would say on content, delivery and presentation they were excellent, but then there is an audience to which India is speaking and the Pakistan media is not getting their attention. In the print media newspapers like Dawn, The News and others have had an excellent reportage and in fairness those who have criticized PM Imran Khan's handling of the Kashmir issue have not been dubbed as traitors or Indian agents.

I do believe that the situation in Indian Kashmir will not improve over night and New Delhi knows that you cannot detain 4000 people and not expect to have any repercussions in the area. For Indian media the gloss over of the situation on the ground can hold out for some time, but if international medias attention increases and the situation within Indian Kashmir does not improve they will either have to change their narrative or simply drop the story on Kashmir.

On the Pakistan side the government will have to measure its words and avoid fueling radical groups to cross the border and engage in military acts against the Indian forces in Indian controlled Kashmir. Even though home grown acts of violence against Indian forces by Indian Kashmiris will be blamed on Pakistan there is a need for Islamabad to be calm and play the media game better than India. Encouraging the likes of Reuters, CNN and BBC to actually set up field offices on the Pakistan side of Kashmir will give them a psychological victory in the media face off with India. Imran Khan's statement today that Pakistan will not start a war with India is encouraging and it needs to be supported by diplomatic efforts and a better international media presence.

For the moment while I believe India may be wining the media war, Pakistan can quickly turn the tables with some clever thinking by its media moguls and the government. A crucial step will be  to change the footprint of the TV channels in Pakistan by bringing out a couple of decent international affairs programs in English. They have the personnel to do it with comperes like Humaira Shah (Geo TV) and Hamid Mir and many others. Indian media for its part needs to tone down the Fox look alike image and have less shouting and more discussion to the air.

Dubai's Media Gambit

Dubai has announced that it is merging some of its media handling assets, like Brand Dubai, the Dubai Press Club etc, all into a new form and structure. This perhaps does, in one important sense, clear up the confusions of what each media unit did on their own. More importantly, till the last quarter of 2009 the general perception was that Dubai did handle the media better than most in the region. However, in my opinion their handling of the Dubai World debt issues was appalling and fell way off the mark, more so very uncharacteristically of the way Dubai handled other issues in the media. Indeed, the press in general does have the propensity to move people, companies and countries from 'darlings' to 'devils' in nano seconds and not even worry about the accolades they showered a few months back are now being replaced by journalist jibes.

Dealing with the media is an art, and in the ever proliferating world of media platforms, it requires speed of action and clarity of position on the subjects that crop up. Keeping silent at times is a virtue, but keeping silent in a crisis is a crime that the media punishes with the ferocity of lion going for the kill. Once having decided to speak, and needing to speak, it is important that the message is consistent, coherent and has clarity. Crisis management techniques are fundamental to this process of handling the media, one cannot just believe one has the gift of the gab. Yes the gift of the gab and a good presence can impress once, twice and perhaps if lucky a third time, then when it begins to wear thin the facade begins to peel away and the media then look for substance.

This substances comes from a proper media strategy and the use of think tanks to postulate the responses that can and should come up through the evolution of a crisis. "What if" scenarios are discussed at length, and often with people from the outside. There is no point in listening to an employee ramble on about how great everything is, because frankly the media does not buy that each time; one needs to have a broad input into the process. Twenty years back when I was dealing with an internationally explosive story, which stayed in the media for a good two years, I always made sure I met the critics more often than I met the supporters. In 1992 I was asked by a leading financial paper if the bank I ran had a problem, and I answered ofcourse we have a huge problem, and then explained to him how I believe as the CEO of the bank we will navigate through it. I guess the sting of his story was gone because he expected me to 'deny' there was a problem.

What Dubai is doing is in essence a good thing and a fresh start in handling things better with the media. It will need thought on many aspects of this process and I do believe they should, even at the national level, consider encouraging a think tank to be formed and to listen to them. I am no media expert and while have written extensively for 25 years on the region I still find it fascinating how in a crisis everyone gets paralysis, almost as if one wonders what is going on. I also believe we who are living and working in the Arab world have to stop saying the world press is unfair with us. This is life! We have elected to be part of the global system and benefit from globalization and with it comes the mentality of 'trial by press'.

Yes the international press has been harsh on the current debt crisis issue, and I have spoken against them, but I also believe we have to present our point of view, take responsibility for where we messed up or were not on the ball, and then move on with the strategy we have carefully framed. We must also cultivate our well wishers even if at times given the nature of journalism they will be critical of things. Perfection is terrible it cannot have children so why be sensitive to a few paragraphs that do not compliment what we have done.

The feeling I have is that while on paper this media management consolidation is a good thing and it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds in the manner in which a strategy is formulated and then rolled out. I am not a huge fan of big splash advertisement campaigns, they only make the media buying company rich, but rather believe in channels of media that are encouraged into a dialogue, like a forum in the media format itself that brings focus to the issues and has healthy debates. I think this is a good gambit that Dubai has played and it will now be important to see its results. As a first step it would help if they started a weekly media breakfast briefing, which should be off the record, and then bring in also people who comment and focus on the issues on the region and engage in healthy discussions with them.


Media management is about networks, cultivating them, nurturing them and honoring them in the long term. The biggest mistake to make is to think the media needs us, no we need the media, and this is why the pen remains more powerful than the sword.