Srinagar, Mar 19 (PTI) National Conference (NC) vice president Omar Abdullah on Saturday said forces inimical to peace and brotherhood in Jammu and Kashmir were peddling a false narrative , and there was a need to counter it with facts.
Abdullah made these remarks while addressing party functionaries at Nawa-e-Subha where the newly-appointed NC chief spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq assumed office.
The NC last week revamped the party media cell, appointing Sadiq, political secretary to Abdullah, as its chief spokesperson.
The party also made some other appointments in its media cell giving key positions to young faces, including Imran Nabi Dar, who has been appointed as the state spokesperson.
They were also felicitated on the occasion.
Omar asked the asked the party’s communications team to continue countering the false narrative being peddled by forces inimical to peace and brotherhood with facts.
He said media has assumed immense importance, but truth has become the first casualty in this manifest shift in public opinion and perception building techniques.
How much factual information is reported and how much of it is being manufactured is open to question. Here what is important is not what people see, but what they aren’t allowed to see. Reporting from J&K has been at the receiving end of this bias,” he said.
“It is here that our media team has a role to play to put a real picture of what is happening in front of the people. It is upon your shoulders to counter the lies being churned out day in and day out,” he added.
In the present times, the NC leader said, it is very hard to have an open debate on the issues that people are confronting.
“During our stint in power, a number of columns and articles critical of our policies used to surface in local dailies. Pens which used to tell us off have become silent these days. Hardly ever do we see any column or articles exhibiting contrarian views being carried in local dailies. We always took criticism positively, but that cannot be said today, he said.
Even a single critical word is being loathed by the powers that be. There is no way a contrarian view can make it to local dailies these days. The new media policy has obliquely stifled the press. Fear and intimidation have further choked the freedom of press, he added.
At this juncture, Abdullah said, the NC’s media team has to come in to fill in the void.
On one hand you have to show a mirror to the government and on the other hand put people of the country in general, J&K in particular, in the picture about the ground realities of J&K, he said.
The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister said all the ruling dispensation wants is to portray a false reality and cautioned the functionaries that with each passing day, the shoddy and bogus propaganda machinery will go into overdrive to polarise the atmosphere in Jammu and Kashmir.
There is no way they can answer people on unavailability of jobs, lack of development and economic backsliding. Their face saving theatrics have fallen flat. We have to remain vigilant and not allow them to thrive on societal, regional and religious fault lines,” he said.
It is a big challenge before us, and I believe our new media team headed by Sadiq will engage with such devious elements at all platforms with facts and reality checks, he added.