New Delhi: The Foundation for Media Professionals (FMP) has issued a set of demands to protect the freedom of the press in the country and its right to question the government of the day. At the top of its demands included a press meet that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should call “without further delay, to uphold, if nothing else, the media’s right to question any holder of that high office”.
“Narendra Modi is perhaps the first prime minister of India to have not held a single press conference, four years at a stretch. This could not, however, have been unrelated to a series of events that raise fresh concerns about media freedom,” it said.
In a statement issued on May 28 keeping in mind escalating threats to media freedom, the journalists’ organisation also demanded “exemplary action against trolls on social media harassing journalists Rana Ayyub and Ravish Kumar” besides demanding that the prime minister, his ministers and party leaders stop following trolls and cyber bullies.
Last week, a group of experts from the United Nations Human Rights Council called on Indian authorities to protect Ayyub as she had been facing backlash ever since a parody Twitter handle similar to news channel Republic TV put out a tweet with a quote falsely attributed to her on April 22
Popular TV anchor Ravish Kumar too has been receiving death threats. News reports quoting Kumar last week said, “Suddenly, I started getting thousands of calls on my phone. When I used to block one number, I got calls from another and the kind of language used by all of them was derogatory.” This included a video message sent by a former paramilitary forces jawan threatening to shoot him in his office.
Referring to “the concerted online hate campaign against Rana Ayyub and Ravish Kumar, where they were subjected to similar intimidation and cyber bullying”, the Foundation said, “It’s a commentary on the state of Indian democracy that the government has reacted to neither of these attacks on the Fourth Estate. This silence is despite the cautionary precedent of Gauri Lankesh’s murder and the gleeful reactions to it from trolls known to be issuing murder/rape threats and hate speech couched in the language of nationalism.”
Referring to the recent Cobrapost exposé on several top media organisations purportedly seen ready to compromise editorial space to promote the Hindutva agenda under the guise of advertisements and advertorials, it said, “If the Radia tapes scandal of 2010 was about the influence evidently wielded by a corporate lobbyist over senior journalists, the two tranches of videos released by Cobrapost have raised questions about the proclivity of media owners and managers to disregard journalistic ethics in deference to dominant political interests.”
“That a major media organisation defended itself by claiming that, far from being stung, it had actually carried out a ‘reverse sting’ has only served to reinforce the credibility of the undercover investigation conducted by Cobrapost. That, out of the 27 media organisations covered by the second tranche of videos, a couple of them flatly refused to participate in the proposed scheme of fomenting communal polarisation gives hope that there are still islands of journalistic integrity, against all odds,” it added.
Pointing out that the “government and the ruling party cannot any longer shirk their responsibility of checking this alarming trend”, the Foundation’s president and director, well known journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Manoj Mitta respectively, said, “Civil society organisations, including political parties and media associations, should condemn those media owners and managers who have been caught on camera saying that they were already striving to promote sectarian ideologies or willing to fan communal hatred for a price.” (Cobrapost founder Aniruddha Bahal is one of the founding members of FMP.)
The FMP also demanded that the ongoing exercise of framing regulations for online media “should ensure that the proposed watchdog is independent of not only the government but also the market”.
In April, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting formed a ten-member committee comprising secretaries of five ministries and representatives of the Press Council of India, News Broadcasters Association and Indian Broadcasters Federation. However, it didn’t include anyone from the online media, even though the regulations were to be framed for this sector.
On May 29, the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) issued a statement congratulating Cobrapost and its intrepid journalists, particularly Pushp Sharma and Aniruddha Bahal, for “their daring sting operation” on some of the biggest media houses in the country.
“They have exposed on camera the enormous greed of the media barons, who are ready to promote the Hindutva agenda of the BJP in the run-up to the 2019 elections, at a fat price,” it said.
Expressing “extreme concern” about the media barons’ abject willingness to sell news space and influence election outcomes, it said, “The Delhi Union of Journalists has long warned of the dangers of unbridled cross-media holdings and demands that the recommendations of the TRAI report on this issue be implemented to curb the power and outreach of corporate media houses.”
It also pointed out, “The same media that is compromising the credibility of its journalists by pushing them to conform to a certain agenda also refuses to defend them when they are attacked on social media or in real life.”
Appreciating “the courage of outspoken journalists like Ravish Kumar, Rana Ayyub and others who have filed complaints against their abusers”, the DUJ not only demanded that the police “immediately investigate their complaints” but also urged the judiciary to take suo moto cognisance of it “and rise to the defence of these journalists.”