Twenty-first-century India has tolerated a number of myths about the role of the media. One of the most commonplace is that a good investigative journalist is a sort of inspired genius. And during general elections, their reports supply the vital oxygen to democracy, ensuring its norms are followed by all political parties and the Election Commission.
A recent report from The Free Speech Collective, Crossing The Line, raises several red flags that merit attention. According to the report, in the run-up to one of the most contentious and divisive general elections in India, there have been 134 instances of free speech violations in the first four months of the year. These include false narratives, deliberate disinformation and vicious hate speech provoking communal disharmony. These have led to an alarming shrinkage of space available for verified information, voicing of dissent by citizens and student bodies, and forums for holding serious debates about issues vital to our democracy on the eve of elections.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Journalism and politics are meant to be incompatible partners, but in the last decade many journalists and the media outfits they belong to have gotten involved with politics. On popular news channels we see anchors and reporters telling the public with a straight face how the electoral bonds have been able to keep check on black cash flowing into electoral coffers, how the Lord himself has blessed the present regime which has housed (?) him in a grand temple after 500 years of lonely dereliction, how science was put to the service of religious faith when the nation’s top scientists invented a novel technique to guide sun rays upon the Lord’s forehead on his birthday.
Good, honest reporting is not a solitary or marvellously romantic act. Its real worth lies in it being a carefully written and verifiable construct of particular events. The act is not purely self contained. The singular eyewitness accounts journalists cull from the field are further bolstered by the accounts of locals, local language reports, contemporary historians and political scientists. The reporter at this point is not just a figure of glitz and glamour, indulged by political mentors, singled out for interviews and paying back the political warlords with flattering words in long interviews. A journalist worth his salt must be answerable to history, to the audiences and above all to the media world in which they all exist and share a common corpus of words and stories.
This, says The Free Speech Collective’s report, is where the axe has been falling regularly on all suspects ranging from journalists, YouTubers and stand-up comedians to academics and student leaders leading protests within campuses. The annual World Press Freedom Index for 2024 ranks us at 159 out of 176 countries, nine points higher from 2022 when we were ranked at 150. Apart from the stringent government laws and frequent crackdowns by state police, the public incited by political parties against the media, and unaware of how the complex world of news gathering functions in the age of the internet, is also increasingly seen taking law in their own hands. One example of this worrisome trend was the recent attack on veteran journalist Nikhil Wagle, one of our most fearless journalists. Then there was sloganeering against a popular woman anchor who had to be whisked away to safety. Maximum attacks on free speech, according to the report, have occurred in Devbhumi Uttarakhand. Ten journalists visiting Haldwani to enquire into communal rioting earlier this year were attacked my mobs, their bikes burnt. According to the report, Uttarakhand saw 46 free speech violations.
Foreign journalists have also suffered the wrath of the Indian state. The reports in foreign media have fore several months been alleging muzzling of dissent and increasing violence against marginalised groups. These have led to the ouster of several foreign correspondents from Australia and France. Their OCI cards and permissions to report from Indian soil have been revoked, under charges of filing misleading reports.
International voices are a charged zone, and comments by domestic academics are taken very seriously if they seem contrary to views of the government. Recently, a principal of a school in Mumbai was asked to quit over her posts on Israel and Palestine on social media. The raids on organisations funded under the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act and long incarceration of several members of NGOs and academics reveal we are living in times when freedom of expression within educational campuses is also deeply threatened. The Rouse Avenue Court voiced its worry over how “Strong leaders, laws and agencies generally come back to bite the very citizens they vow to protect”. The context was a case wherein the Enforcement Directorate had invoked the stringent Prevention of Money Laundering Act against a doctor who was merely consulted by one of the accused in another PMLA case.
As the country prepares to face the third phase of elections, the question of debatable promises in political manifestos, issues like a caste-based census, reservation quotas and the Constitution, have come to the fore. How can the media avoid what are, after all, moral questions that a nation must grapple with, to help the people choose their leaders wisely and well? In as much as they also feed and sustain each other, extremes were generally avoided by political leaders and the media when debating touchy issues. No longer. The Opposition and the incumbents are constantly demonising each other with personal charges of the most debased kind in public rallies, using epithets seldom heard in electoral rallies. At this juncture India needs a mainstream media that can not be shushed. And journalists who can interact directly with the leadership.
Sadly in the last decade, a whole new template has been crafted and put in place for media-government interaction. What the government wishes to communicate is mostly by way of press notes. No more informal chats with ministry officials or lunches in the Central Hall. Rituals like deeply bowing to or touching the feet of leaders and walking several steps behind the top leadership, presenting leaders with naked swords or tridents that they wave theatrically for effect and applause, are slowly being transformed into acceptable political acts. This does not augur well for a democracy.
Everyone sat up when on the eve of the third phase, the prime minister granted an exclusive interview to no less them five selected editors on TV9. It turned out to be a non-event that generated no new stories or visions. The editors seated in a semi-circle were like accompanists to a maestro doing a solo performance under the spotlights. Heads bent, smiles in place, heads nodding in appreciation, the interviewers asked no hard questions in any Indian language: what about the incarceration of two elected chief ministers at this crucial time? How about a strategy for Manipur? And last but not the least, how come men with serious charges against them of abusing women – Prajwal Revanna, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Kuldeep Sengar – remain out of jail and are being stoutly defended despite the party manifesto underscoring its veneration for Nari Shakti?
Ultimately, the travesty of such reporting is bound to backfire. People are already turning away from newspapers and TV and just dipping into the digitised online news streaming 24×7 onto their smart phones. Our fabled young, “India’s democratic dividend”, have refused to go out and vote in large numbers. The recent attempts to round up a part of this lot to protest against Congress’s manifesto backfired in the face of the organisers. The undergrads from a private university were clueless about what they were protesting against. Many could not even read the placards they carried, nor answer the simplest questions on inequality and unemployment rampant among their age groups. The efforts to shush and restructure old, free-thinking institutes of higher learning and simultaneously provide “World Class Education” to rich kids through private universities, are self goals – like jailing or evacuating serious scientists, academics and seasoned journalists.
The staged and choreographed interview by an all-male, fawning multilingual cluster of editors from a friendly channel was another self goal. One who kicks out trained minds and surrounds oneself with a group of clowns will end up with a theatre of the absurd.
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
