IIOJK media Muzzled as newspapers peddling pro-BJP govt propaganda: Report
Srinagar: A content analysis by The Wire has revealed that opinion pages in two prominent English newspapers in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Greater Kashmir and Rising Kashmir, have been engineering pro-BJP narratives.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the analysis found that the newspapers’ editorial pages avoided discussing political topics including the burning issue of Kashmir, instead focusing on non-political issues. Additionally, several op-eds appeared to be written using AI, and some editorials were lifted from the Observer Research Foundation without credit.
“The highlight, of course, are the articles suffused with politically loaded language, nearly all of which conform to the ruling party’s worldview around the political situation in Kashmir.”
“On July 20, Greater Kashmir published a column by a local politician who drew a causal link between the spate of militant incidents and the electoral outcomes of the Lok Sabha polls, in which all three parliamentary seats in Kashmir were bagged by non-BJP parties. But the logic was counterintuitive because much of the militant upsurge is centred around Jammu where the BJP had emerged victorious.”
The analysis also showed an overrepresentation of columnists associated with the BJP, while regional political parties were underrepresented. Experts argue that this trend is a result of the IIOJK Media Policy, which penalizes newspapers for publishing “anti-national content” and encourages them to highlight “developmental activities.” This has led to a lack of critical opinions and free debates in the region’s media.
As per analysis: “Kashmiri observers who spoke to The Wire said that young readers were increasingly growing suspicious of the local newspapers. ‘Whether true or not, it is a conventional belief here that security agencies vet the content of these newspapers,’ said a scholar from Pulwama town in South Kashmir. ‘But if there’s no parallel documentation, these papers will become archives, and that is what will do long-term damage. It will completely warp the truth about this place.'”
