Need to counter false narrative with facts: Omar

Srinagar, Mar 19: The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference Vice President Omar Abdullah asked JKNC Communications team to continue counter false narrative being peddled by forces inimical to peace and brotherhood with facts.
He said this while addressing party functionaries at Nawa-e-Subha. On the occasion party’s Chief Spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq assumed Office in presence of VP Omar Abdullah, party General Secretary Ali Muhammad Sagar, Women’s wing President Shameema Firdous, Irfan Shah, Showkat Mir, Peer Mohammad Hussain, Salman Ali Sagar, Ahsan Pardesi, Sabiya Qadri, Sara Hayat Shah, other functionaries.
Earlier Chief Spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq, State Spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar, Provincial Spokesperson Ifra Jan, Deputy Political Secretary to VP Mudassir Shahmiri were felicitated in a function held here at the party headquarters Nawa-e-Subha.
Addressing the functionaries, Omar said, “Media has assumed immense importance. 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 JK has been at the receiving end of this bias. 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 said.
In present times, Omar said that it is very hard to have open debate on issues our people are confronting. “During our stint in power, a number of columns and articles critical of our policies used to surface on 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. 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. At this juncture our 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.
Omar further stated that all the ruling dispensation wants is to portray a false reality. He cautioned the functionaries that with each passing day the shoddy and bogus propaganda machinery will go into overdrive to polarise the atmosphere in J&K. “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. It is a big challenge before us, and I believe our new media team headed by Tanvir Sadiq will engage with such devious elements at all platforms with facts and reality checks,” he added.
On the occasion Party General Secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar said troubling trends in the shape of rise of intolerance in Jammu and Kashmir need to be countered. “We have to work together to stem out this system of intolerance which has gained roots in Jammu and Kashmir in the absence of a democratically elected government. Our media team has to be ready with fact-checkers to repel the dangers of misleading, one sided information. We are up for a long drawn battle and tackling misinformation cannot be done in isolation. We ought to work for a collective response to the prevailing widespread and monopolised misinformation. I’m hopeful that our media functionaries will respond to the emerging challenges with utmost strength,” he said.