Publications
Troubled Reflections: Reporting Violence
by Gobind Thukral 
This book offers a firsthand account of reporting violence
in Punjab, once considered toughest assignments for journalists.
During the peak of militancy in Punjab from April 1978 to
1995, the journalists were at the receiving end of the morbid
State and the trigger-happy melancholic militants. These torturous
years were marked by a real fear of the gun, as a large number
of editors, reporters and their associates were prey to the
marauders in different garbs. It was also a period when information
was hard to obtain and write about as the police laced almost
each news story with lies and the apathetic bureaucracy mired
in corruption, indulged in subterfuge. The militants dictated
their own terms for reporting which the journalists could
ignore at the risk of their lives. The wily divided politicians
played their crafty games as did a few media houses.
In this scenario, journalists found themselves in a stifling
and frightful situation. There was always that lurking fear
of the gun. But much worse was the paucity of authentic information
that could be weaved into convincing news stories and analyses.
Information came in bits and pieces and at times there was
no second line of source to cross check. Journalists were
supposed to sniff and filter it, and they tried that. This
book details how well they performed this difficult task.
The book is divided into two parts. Book One broadly discusses
the media machine and how newspapers are structured and how
they functioned, business of newspapers and the manner in
which technology is impacting it. Various filters that allow
or stop news from reaching the public and various players
that decide all this find adequate space. There is discussion
on how media reported the Gujarat carnage and Kashmir trouble.
There is discussion on prevention of deadly conflicts and
the role of newspapers, particularly in resolving conflicts
and bringing peace. And, finally what should be the role of
media in general, particularly in reporting violence. Book
Two details history of press in Punjab and tries to figure
out why and how communalism infected it right from the beginning.
The other part details the coverage of the Punjab crisis.
Gobind Thukral has spent nearly three and
a half decades as an active journalist with various leading
newspapers: Indian Express, Financial Express, India Today,
Hindustan Times and The Tribune in senior positions. He has
reported not only from the states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal
Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir but from the troubled spots of
the north-east and Bihar. He has written on Indian Diaspora
from Canada, America, Malaysia and Singapore. His extensive
writings on rural India won him the prestigious Statesman
Rural Reporting Award in the very year of its inception for
reports on the migrant farm workers. His awards include one
from his Alumina Association of Government College, Ludhiana
and Panj Pani Award for excellence in journalism from Doordarshan
Kendra, Jalandhar.
Though his main interest is in political economy, yet Thukral
covered his home state Punjab extensively at the height of
militancy in the state. He writes a popular weekly column
in Ajit, the largest selling Punjabi daily and is a regular
contributor to The Tribune. He edits a Canada based a fortnightly
web magazine, South Asia Post besides editing Haryana Review,
a monthly published by Samvad, Chandigarh.
