At 12.30 pm, a group of four young men, who had refused to register their names for the event, started shouting anti-Pakistan slogans, and mouthed “Sri Ram Sene zindabad” slogans while being pushed out of IIC. The organisers, Foundation for Media Professionals, chose not to register an FIR to “avoid giving publicity to the miscreants”.

Police and Rapid Action Force personnel were later posted in and around IIC.

Ironically, journalists on both sides agreed that the media should not cover precisely these kind of fundamentalist faces.

Other questions raised were on challenges facing the media today: Should dead bodies be shown on TV? How is 24-hour television affecting tension between the two countries? How are media channels used as a tool to carry forward a country’s foreign policy?

There was consensus, though, on the power and the reach of the media. “There are stereotypes of Pakistan that are found in the Indian media and vice versa,” veteran Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai said. “These are the stereotypes we have to guard against. At the same time, the media has the power to bring war, or the mood for war — that should not be underestimated.”

Other panellists said a gap in communication often result in major misunderstandings. “In Pakistan, as in India, there is a ban on relaying news channels from the other country. Evidently, the demonisation process of turning news outlets into tools for foreign policy, or jingoism, has set in,” Pakistani journalist Saeed Minhas said. “We have to let people in one country watch news from the other; we can then find so many common identifying points between India and Pakistan.

“There would also be less scope for misinformation (because) right now, there is a lot of false information going around. For instance, I get calls from Indian TV channels asking me whether Swat is 15 or 20 kilometres from Islamabad, and I have to say, ‘no, it’s 100 kilometres from Islamabad’.”