Tweedledee, tweedledum ran The Dependent’s title of an image that compared the Indian and Pakistani media’s reaction to the International Court of Justice’s verdict on Kulbhushan Yadav’s trial.
While the rather lengthy verdict had only begun being announced, the feisty news media of both the countries declared victory for their respective countries.
The truth lies somewhere in between. Though, since the issue was whether or not Yadav had been given a fair trial, it would be reasonable to assume that India got its way. Yes, the Indian request for his release was rejected, but it is being conjectured that the Indians knew they weren’t going to get it in the first place; the sort of thing local lawyers, in their plea to the judges, call ‘..and any other possible relief.” However, the decision could have been worse for Pakistan: rather than merely asking for a retrial, this time with consular access, the ICJ could have said that the retrial should be in a civil court this time.
Since the Pakistani press can’t apply their good judgment in this particular area anymore, the we-crushed-them verdict given by them the next day was to be expected.
The earlier ICJ verdict, the one announced in May, 2017, however, was too much of an Indian win for the local news media to possibly spin in any other direction.
An interesting thing happened back then, though. Some Pakistani newspapers called it a victory initially, only to change their opinion later on.
That reminds me of an interesting instance in American media history.
The Democratic party government of former President Barack Obama had put in a considerable amount of political capital in the medicare initiative. The Republican party, of course, in its opposition to costly social welfare programs, not only opposed it in Congress, but after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, went to court.
The day that the final judgment was to be announced, there was an electric tension in not just the capital but the entire country as a whole. The ruling party, as explained, had invested a lot in it. Furthermore, the initiative was going to be affecting millions of lives. For the Republicans, it would represent a big blow or victory as well, as they saw themselves as some sort of bulwark against such spending (‘socialism’, they called it) and felt that this would open the floodgates of hell.
Now the press corps, in its entirety, was present there, outside the gates of the Supreme Court, ready to immediately relay the judgment and announce it.
As soon as the decision was announced, the Supreme Court website crashed because of so much traffic, while the reporters present on the ground started quickly poring through the physical copies of the judgment.
The Attorney General’s principal argument in defence of the act had been rejected. However, the courts had upheld the act on the basis of the government’s third line of reasoning. The intrepid reporters on the site, of course, didn’t reach that and quickly announced that the Supreme Court had struck down the Affordable Care Act.
The penny dropped a little later and they changed tack. But not before giving the Democrat party all over the country a series of heart attacks. And some hubris to the Republicans.
“We’re getting wildly differing assessments…,” read out a sheepish CNN newscaster when first acknowledging that they had gotten it wrong. It was wrong to say that there were differing assessments, of course. There was nothing cryptic about the judgment; the act had been upheld. They were just in a rush to be the first ones with the news.
We’re getting wildly differing assessments, by the way, is the name of an article on this episode on the SCOTUS Blog. It was picked up by certain online aggregators, like longform.org as a good read. And that it is. It is a 7000-word description of those 5 minutes, with each action laid bare in slow motion. Riveting read.
Moral of the story: hold your horses till you hear the full verdict. And get lawyers to race through it.
Moral of our particular story: don’t have to read the judgment at all; just phrase in a different, inconsequential way, what ‘national interest’ dictates.
