A news ombudsman’s task is easy when it involves addressing specific complaints from readers. If readers ask the right questions, the newspaper’s code of editorial values and good journalism practices provide enough material to decide whether the reader is correct in finding fault with the newspaper or not. However, the investigation becomes layered if there is a suo motu concern.
Contributing to the crisis
In the last two columns of 2017, I would like to examine some of the words used in common parlance with disturbing consequences. It is important for journalists to realise that in the past three decades, many of our earlier assumptions have proved to be wrong. We were certain that some ideas seemed incendiary but did not represent the mainstream view. We felt that the gap between the periphery and the centre would be guarded by a sense of collective egalitarianism. However, history has proved the fallibility of journalists in a cruel manner; dangerous fringe groups have galloped to occupy the core of our public narrative. The fundamental nature of flawed words is that the perpetrators of violence, intolerance and bigotry create them. The core principle of journalism is to use words that are descriptive, not use loaded terms that colour our perception. By reproducing the words used by those who shun inclusivity and diversity, journalism in a way contributes to further escalating the crisis rather than defusing it.
In this first instalment, let me examine a term that has gained currency over the last decade: ‘honour killing’. In 2008, Pakistani journalist Beena Sarwar wrote a powerful edit page lead article titled “There is no ‘honour’ in killing” ( The Hindu , September 8). One of her arguments, which essentially dealt with specific cases in Pakistan, applies to India too. She wrote: “Some would prefer not to discuss such issues because this ‘brings a bad name to the country’… They need to ask themselves who is responsible: those who perpetuate the violence, or those who are its victims? What would make us a better, stronger nation: dealing with the issue, or burying it in the sand?”
Dexter Dias and Charlotte Proudman, legal researchers at Harvard University and practising barristers, wrote about how linguistic labels matter: “The term ‘honour killing’ not only cedes too much power to the perpetrator, but is offensive to survivors and women. Instead, we need to see the crime through the eyes of those attacked, because these acts of gender violence attack something more than women’s bodies, something precarious and precious: the challenge by thousands of courageous young women around the world to oppressive patriarchy and stultifying social convention. In this sense, they are an attack on us all.”
The need to revisit the use of the term ‘honour killing’ is the recent sentencing by a Tamil Nadu trial court. Six persons were awarded the death penalty for conspiring and killing a young Dalit man who had married a caste Hindu girl. This term has gained much commonsensical understanding. A general reader is able to grasp the full import of the meaning — the caste dynamics and the reason for the murder. This provides journalists a justification to use the term, even in headlines. I can hear the protest from a section that would instantly point out the use of the inverted comma for the term honour killing. I am not sure whether a punctuation mark has an enduring power to qualify an oft-repeated term.
Call a spade a spade
There is an alluring power to those words that are created by the perpetrators of violence. These perpetrators tend to cover-up their crime by invoking family pride and collective honour. But, as a public good, journalism needs to come up with alternative words and terms to describe such horrendous attacks on people. It is important to realise that brutal killings in the name of honour are not restricted to some remote rural areas but have a presence across the subcontinent. From khap panchayats to various extrajudicial entities, many present these cruel invasions into the lives of young people as corrective mechanisms and give a cloak of respectability to crimes with the prefix ‘honour’. The time has come for journalists to drop these cloak-and-dagger words and start calling a spade a spade.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
