By Karan Thapar

There’s at least one respect in which politicians never differ. When they don’t like the message their instinctive response is to shoot the messenger. This reaction is as old as Cleopatra (Act 2 Scene V). It’s also as common in Britain as India. Mrs. Thatcher’s favourite whipping horse was the BBC. Fifteen years earlier Harold Wilson was convinced the Beeb had it in for him. Twelve years later Tony Blair feels the same. Paradoxically, there could not be a better argument to establish the BBC’s credibility.

So I suppose we should not be surprised by the BJP’s attack on the media coverage of Gujarat. Nor is it my intention to quarrel with the critique as such. In fact, a small part of it – although that’s certainly not what the BJP had in mind – is even true. The local Gujarati papers were less than even-handed. One refused to publish corrections and clarifications. Another, in a private comment, claimed that Ehsan Jaffri “got what he deserved”.

My concern is different. Last weekend, in a SAB TV interview, Arun Jaitley said the media erred by showing dead bodies. His argument was that, wittingly or unintendedly, this incited passion, inflamed anger and perhaps provoked a response. “At the time of the World Trade Centre why did they not show dead bodies?” he asked. The question, he thought, proved his point.

Well, Mr. Jaitley, they did show dead bodies. Do you remember those shots of people jumping out of 80th floor windows, tumbling like packages through the air? The television channels circled them in red so they would stand out. The commentary deliberately drew our attention in case we missed them. What’s more they weren’t dead bodies. They were bodies in the process of dying. They were human beings caught in the act of death.

Thereafter, I accept, dead bodies were not shown. But only because no one had access to them. The twin towers collapsed in a heap of rubble and 5000 bodies were buried inside. Only the New York city fire brigade was permitted into the site. Television cameramen and newspaper photographers were not.

Arun Jaitley also had a second point. He argued that television had broken a golden rule by naming names and identifying communities. “We don’t mention names, we don’t mention which community attacked which community” he said. By doing just that television was guilty of stirring further trouble.

This is a more beguiling argument because it’s half correct. I’ve grown up on bland newspaper accounts of how one community attacked another. As a child I often wondered what they meant. Now, as an adult, I know. More often than not it’s upper castes versus Dalits or Hindus versus Muslims and the context gives it away.

But did it serve a purpose? I don’t think so. No doubt it was well intentioned but it was also farcical. Normally newspaper readers do not riot and those who wish to don’t look to The Express or The Times for justification.

In 2002, however, there was more to it. Neither at Godhara nor afterwards was there a riot. In both cases it was deliberate, planned and community-targeted. Therefore the community under target was central to what was happening. Without it the story would have been incomplete. After all, what made Godhara explosive was that everyone killed in the train was Hindu. What made Ahmedabad and Baroda butchery was that Muslims were carefully chosen as the victims. Not to have said so would have been to miss the point.

But that’s not all. Isn’t it time we gave up our pussy-footing, euphemistic response to hard truths? They won’t go away merely because we won’t face up to them. The ugly face of India has to be confronted. Accepting it might be a start.

I’ll go further. It’s because the media showed what happened that we felt the horror of Gujarat. That’s why we’re so appalled by it. That’s why we are so shaken. Had names been withheld, communities not identified, butchered bodies not shown or gruesome accounts diluted the impact would have been very different.

It’s also true that if the media had been more coy the government would seem less guilty. If today Mr. Vajpayee and his ministers appear to have lost moral credibility, if Narendra Modi and his cabinet have altogether lost our respect, that, in no small measure, is because the media made us conscious of their culpability. Not simply by exposing what they have done or not done. But also by showing the full extent – the gruesome truth – of what happened.

I’m left with a wicked thought I can’t resist. Is Arun Jaitley exercised because the media did a good job? Would he care if television and the newspapers had left his government smelling of roses?