The cartography of silence

Once upon a time, there were maps. Not the kind folded in glove compartments or spread on those navigating wars, but maps of instinct, etched in the minds of those who told stories. Journalists carried them like secret compasses — lines never printed, yet always known. The red lines were part of the folklore of every newsroom. Don’t step there. Don't ask that. Don't mention him or her. The borders were invisible, yes, but steady.

The terrain was tricky enough: jungles of ideology, rivers of history, deserts of denial. But the cartographer could at least draw them with confidence. A fence, however irritating, is better than a shifting swamp.

The map now is a practical joke. Every morning, the cartographer wakes to find the borders redrawn overnight. Yesterday's safe road is today’s mined strip. A harmless headline becomes a hanging offence. Even weather bulletins raise suspicion: Whose agenda is this rain serving?

The newsroom today feels less like a workshop of ideas and more like a circus tent. Anchors wobble on tightropes, juggling truth in one hand and survival in the other, while editors play reluctant clowns, pretending nothing is amiss. Beneath them lies no safety net. Just silence, thick and endless.

The red lines, once fences, have grown into tripwires. One wrong step and entire segments vanish mid-broadcast. A guest evaporates from your talk show. A story dissolves from tomorrow's edition. Channels suddenly develop "technical issues" just when the questions grow interesting. The audience learns to decode the silence better than the speech.

And here lies the cruellest trick: censorship has outsourced itself. Why wait for a midnight phone call when journalists now preempt the blow? The sharpest scissors are in our own hands. Stories die unborn, aborted by self-censorship. "This won't air. This won't print. Why bother?" The newsroom grows quieter, not for lack of stories, but for lack of faith.

Audiences, however, are not blind. Though the flicker continues on their screens, something is missing. The unsaid is louder than the said. They notice the absent guests, the unasked questions, the clipped debates. Over time, their palate forgets the taste of unfiltered truth.

Ambiguity is now the mightiest weapon. In older seasons of fear, at least the rules were written in stone. Brutal, yes, but clear. Today, the lines stand disoriented. Yesterday's fact is today's crime. Today's crime might be tomorrow's patriotic duty. Every headline is a coin toss — except the house always wins.

The bazaar of ideas, once noisy with competing truths and clashing voices, has shrunk into a suffocating room with shrinking walls. Debate has become karaoke night with everyone singing the same tune, badly, but loudly. A nation once proud of noisy argument is now a one-note choir rehearsed in unison.

As the walls close in, those who were once expected to defend free expression – political parties, civil society, human rights organisations — have largely stepped back or fallen silent. Part of this soft music that lulls the public into acceptance is also media houses, clearing the stage for those who script the play of censorship with ink that erases rather than writes.

History, of course, is full of such seasons. The press has been gagged, throttled, chained before. But at least the red lines then were predictable. Today's cartographer is lost, spinning his compass. The young reporter asks, "What is allowed?" The old editor offers only a sigh, heavier than any rulebook.

So what becomes of a people who trim their own tongues before they even speak? What becomes of truth when it must disguise itself as satire just to pass through the gate?

Truth, though, is stubborn. It wears disguises. It sneaks into editorials dressed as fables. It hides in cartoons, whispers through poetry, mocks in late-night jokes. It flows like water — blocked, it seeps; dammed, it gathers; and when it bursts, it drowns without asking permission. Floods do not wait for NOCs.

For history has never been kind to those who erase voices. Memory resurrects what was silenced. Readers remember the blanks. Audiences hear the silence. And one day, silence itself testifies.

So the cartographer keeps drawing. Even if the map is blurred. Even if the borders vanish and reappear. Even if the compass spins wildly. He draws not for today's traveller, but for tomorrow's seeker, the one who will one day study these broken maps, trace the empty spaces and finally understand the silence between the lines. But all is not lost if this at least makes it to print.

The writer is the managing editor of Geo News.

Originally published in The News