Srinagar, Mar 19 : National Conference (NC) Vice President Omar Abdullah today asked JKNC Communications team “to continue counter with facts the false narrative being peddled by forces inimical to peace and brotherhood.”
He was addressing party functionaries at Nawa-e-Subha here. On the occasion party’s Chief Spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq assumed office in presence of 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 Vice President , Mudassir Shahmiri were felicitated in a function.
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 are not allowed to see. Reporting from J&K 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 the 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. 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.