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Titled “Modi tightens his grip on the media”, this year’s report has been chalked upon the government’s increasing pressure on the industry to “toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line”, use of sedition laws to curb independent voices, and the condition of media in Kashmir after August 5, 2019. India’s ranking for 2019, is behind most of its neighbors, including Myanmar (139), Afghanistan (122), Bhutan (67), Nepal (112), and Sri Lanka (127).
Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), or Reporters Without Borders, is a Paris-based, non-profit organization that works to document and confront the attacks on journalists and media-assistants around the world.
The parameters used by RSF for the index, according to its official website, are – “pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and the quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news and information".
India’s Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar, speaking on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, chastised the report by saying that “Media in India enjoy absolute freedom” and that his government will “expose” the surveys “that tend to portray bad picture about ‘Freedom of Press’ in India”
Like with most of the International surveys, it is easier to call this report as a “western mouthpiece” or a subject to disseminate political propaganda than to take it as a wake-up call. Whatever the influence, these rankings do carry some bitter truth, and rendering them redundant will be shirking from responsibilities.
In this article, I have tried to decode the RSF’s report bit by bit, and show how the mentioned aspects are contributing to fetter the independence of India’s media industry.
Killings
According to the RSF report, “The coordinated hate campaigns waged on social networks against journalists who dare to speak or write about subjects that annoy Hindutva followers are alarming and include calls for the journalists concerned to be murdered. The campaigns are particularly virulent when the targets are women.”
Between the 26 years from 1992 - 2018, 47 journalists have been killed in India, while hundreds of others have faced serious attacks, according to data compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). These 47 are out of 1,305 journalists killed worldwide — who were either murdered or killed in crossfire or on dangerous assignments.
In India, these include the 2019 deaths of Editor of Rising Kashmir Shujaat Bukhari who was gunned down in Srinagar, Gauri Lankesh who was shot dead in Bengaluru, Sudip Dutta Bhaumik who was killed by a police officer in Tripura, and three journalists who were mowed down by vehicles in back-to-back killings — Sandeep Sharma in Madhya Pradesh and Navin Singh and Vijay Singh in Bihar. Almost all of these were staunch critics of the right-wing, fundamentalist groups, or kingpins of religious cults and organizations.
India ranks 13th among countries where journalists are murdered and their killers manage to escape conviction. Besides, the third-highest cases of intimidation against female reporters are also from India. Moreover, only three of the perpetrators have been convicted in murder cases of journalists since 2010.
Intimidation and deaths among people from media followed by sluggish trials and lack of convictions not only dissuade the honest journalists from reporting anything against the powerful and the goons but also induces a fear among young aspirants from taking Journalism as a career.
In 2019, there was no reported death of any journalist in India – which is a major factor while calculating data for surveys like RSF – even then the fall in ranking suggests an increase in different methods to restrain the Press like by using stringent laws, regulations, and belligerent rhetoric.
Misuse of Laws
The RSF report adds how in India, criminal prosecutions are used “to gag journalists critical of the authorities, with some prosecutors invoking Section 124a of the penal code, under which “sedition” is punishable by life imprisonment.” The section mentioned is a colonial law from November 1870 brought by the British rulers to deal with dissent by Indian freedom fighters.
Often in India, these draconian sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are revoked against journalists. These journalists and reporters are then called ‘terrorists’, ‘anti-national’, or ‘arm-chair intellectuals’ to curb their honest voices when they are raised against someone in power. It will not be wrong to say that for the rulers of the day, being ‘anti-government’ equates to being ‘anti-India’.
In 2019, Journalist Prashant Kanojia was arrested over a Twitter post directed at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. For the tweet, which featured a woman who claimed to be the Chief Minister’s lover, the U.P. police invoked the IPC sections 500 (criminal defamation) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief), among others, against Kanojia.
Section 124A of IPC was used against, Kamal Shukla editor of the newspaper Bhumkal Samachar, for sharing a mere cartoon criticizing a controversial Supreme Court Judgment.
The use of defamation and sedition laws for journalists did not cease even for a pandemic that’s ravaging the world. As reported by The Diplomat, “On May 11, 2020, Dhaval Patel, editor of the Gujarati news portal Face of Nation, was detained and booked with sedition for writing about the change in Gujarat’s political leadership by the BJP after the state’s rapid rise of coronavirus cases.”
Besides, the report added, “in Himachal Pradesh, 10 FIR cases have been filed against at least six journalists for their reporting on India’s migrant crisis and the lack of food distribution in the area.”
The more recent cases have been against senior journalist and Padma Shri awardee Vinod Dua and the Executive Editor of Scroll.in Supriya Sharma, both registered by BJP associates. An FIR was registered against the former for a webcast in which he spoke against the “functionaries” who didn’t visit the areas affected by the North-East Delhi violence amidst the ongoing ‘Namaste Trump’ event.
In the later, the FIR was lodged against the Editor for a report on the impact of the lockdown on the Prime Minister’s constituency, Varanasi which showed a women struggling to make ends meet. While condemning the FIRs, the Editors Guild of India rightly stated that “the increasing frequency of such misuse of laws by the authorities is tantamount to shooting the messenger and destroying a key pillar of India’s democracy.”
During the Pandemic
While one section of media is earnestly raising its voice for the public - against those elected by the public - another section is contented with appeasing the Hindu nationalist agenda – as the lock down has illustrated. The RSF report pointed out "a clear correlation between suppression of media freedom in response to the Coronavirus pandemic and a country's ranking in the Index."
The mainstream media got a new gist for its mill after the Tablighi Jamaat conference in Delhi's Nizamuddin. A barrage of fake news targeting the Muslim community followed suit, both by social media users and mainstream media. With the use of hashtags like #CoronaJihad, the pandemic took the form of a hate campaign against the minority community.
Another incident showcasing these biases was when a crowd of hungry and needy migrants gathered in front of the Bandra railway station in Mumbai on April 14, following the announcement of the extension of the lock down. While there were similar gatherings in Surat, Gujarat, TV news channels were fixated on why the crowd gathered near a Masjid at the station - even when the Masjid played no role in the gathering.
In an almost similar situation, the U.P. government charged Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of The Wire, with allegedly causing ‘panic’ through his tweet when the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath attended a religious event in Ayodhya on March 25 - without any distancing measures - only a day after the lockdown was announced.
By performing a simple experiment of noting down the subjects and titles of ‘debate’ shows by India’s top Television News channels, one can easily unravel the prejudices of our main-stream media when handling sensitive issues.
If you sit through these debates further, you’ll never find the hosts listening objectively to both sides of a story (as done in an actual debate), instead, you will see them more often than not, leaving their roles of arbitrators and jumping into the debate to speak for the government or its policies.
Coming directly to the health crisis, at a time when the country needs nothing but factual, impartial reporting, the BJP-led government went so far as to petition the Supreme Court to stop publication of any COVID-19 related information that is not cleared by them. The court albeit denied the petition directed the media to “refer to and publish the official version of the developments.”
A New Indian Express article titled “Centre’s COVID-19 Communication Plan: hold back data, gag agencies and scientists”, questioning the sudden absence of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) officials from the government press briefings and the central government’s reluctance to share data was also abruptly pulled down by the site without any explanation.
Self-censoring and vanishing news reports have become the norm rather than an exception in India. Last year, The Caravan reported about ten other news reports critical of the BJP government – including one on India’s poor performance on the press freedom index – that were similarly retracted during Narendra Modi’s first term as Prime Minister.
Fiasco in Kashmir
The RSF report concluded with the statement that India’s ranking this year was heavily affected by the "situation in Kashmir where, after rescinding the state’s autonomy, the federal government shut down fixed-line and mobile Internet connections completely for several months, making it virtually impossible for journalists to cover what was happening in what has become a vast open prison”
In April this year, three Kashmiri journalists, Peerzada Ashiq, a senior reporter with The Hindu; Gowhar Geelani, a freelance columnist, author and former editor for Deutsche Welle; and Masrat Zahra, a freelance photojournalist; were charged with stringent laws like the amended Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) - designed for terrorists - for their reporting on Kashmir.
As reported by The Quint, at least 20 Journalists were incarcerated immediately after the abrogation of Article 370 in August last year. These were treated as terrorists, kept in solitary confinements away from their families in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
To add insult to injury, there has been a major recent development in the union territory in the name of a new 'Media Policy'. The 53-page document empowers the Jammu and Kashmir government officials to decide which news is “anti-social” and “anti-national”.
All this is, as per the government, for building “a genuinely positive image of the government based on performance”, and to “build public trust” and “increase public understanding about the Government’s roles and responsibilities”. The framers of this policy have managed to provide a remarkably clear picture of the media they want — journalists and news organizations answerable not to their readers or editors, but government bureaucrats and security officials.
Journalists in J&K have characterized this policy as more restrictive than the censorship mechanisms of colonial era. At a time when democracy is in doldrums in J&K with the voices of the public restrained for almost an year, the government is talking about equality of Kashmiris. It seems like the government’s opinion of equality is a lot different from what the Constitution of India promises.
Need for a Free Press
In India, Press existed before Democracy and will exist even if India us it as a mere adornment. The Press not only acts as a medium for the Government to communicate but also for the public to speak up to the government. The Media and Press are heavily advertised as the fourth pillar of Democracy along with the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary. In fact, a free Press is the most specialized institution of a Democracy for it involves explicit and bona fide contribution from its citizens.
Without a free and unbiased Press, it is impossible to ensure accountability and to sustain freedom and human rights. A free Press never forgets the promises made by the rulers; instead, it stands for the civic, political, religious, and cultural rights of the public.
The brazen attacks on journalists in the line of duty, using them as a scapegoat to protect the face, or the wanton use of draconian laws designed for terrorists on Editors is pushing our democracy miles behind from where we started.
Many esteemed high-end journalists, facing pressures from their bosses and politicians, have lost or left their jobs as TV Presenters and have gone ahead with opening their own YouTube channels, it is only a matter of time when others follow suit.
Independent media not only has the potential to help the government take the right actions more effectively than sunshine stories but also to help the public with a voice to make them do it. The sooner we learn this, the sooner we can pride ourselves as the world’s largest democracy. Till then, we are just a house with three and a half pillar.
Independent media not only has the potential to help the government take the right actions more effectively than sunshine stories but also to help the public with a voice to make them do it. The sooner we learn this, the sooner we can pride ourselves as the world’s largest democracy. Till then, we are just a house with three and a half pillar.
Written by - Rudransh Khurana
Edited by - Arnav Mehra
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