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Ranjona Banerji: Standing with journalists in this hour of need should be a must, not an option

"The battle that we are fighting now though is on two fronts. One is the affiliates, supporters and members of the BJP and its larger family. And the second is members of the media themselves. It is customary, or has been, for journalists to stand together when they are attacked. But watching some TV news channels or reading the tweets of some journalists, you wonder where this profession is heading," writes Ranjona Banerji

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By Ranjona Banerji

 

The intimidation of journalists is not new and it is not unprecedented. And yet it is intriguing that this is reason that some of us come up with when there are new attacks on our community. The physical attacks on reporters by lawyers outside the Patiala House Court on two days this week cannot and must not be condoned.

 

The Mumbai Press Club held a protest meeting outside its gates on Wednesday and I was proud to be part of this. At a discussion afterwards, some of us tried to analyse what has been happening and how we should respond. Many senior journalists like Darryl D’Monte and Sidharth Bhatia were reminded of the run-up to the Emergency and the eventual clampdown on the media by the Indira Gandhi government in 1975. Nikhil Wagle reminded everybody that it is not just BJP or RSS governments which have attacked journalists – just about every political party has. Gurbir Singh spoke about the murder of Jagendra Singh for exposing the criminality of a Samajwadi Party politician. Ayaz Memon reiterated that we have to fight on, against all odds.

 

The battle that we are fighting now though is on two fronts. One is the affiliates, supporters and members of the BJP and its larger family. And the second is members of the media themselves. It is customary, or has been, for journalists to stand together when they are attacked. But watching some TV news channels like Times Now or reading the tweets of some journalists, you wonder where this profession is heading. Regardless of which political party you feel you support or like or prefer, what does it say when you choose that affiliation over your junior staff and fellow journalists being attacked for doing their job?
Does the newsroom of Times Now, for instance, hold together or how does it cope when its editor-in-chief is bombastically yelling for some bizarre notion of nationalism every night when this is how its reporters are treated by supporters of the government?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Wheres-the-SC-now-lawyers-taunted-me/articleshow/51032085.cms

 

Meenakshi Bhanja of Times Now, in this piece carried in The Times of India and others from the stable, writes about how 40 lawyers surrounded her: “One lawyer asked, “Kaun ho tum?” I said I was a Times Now correspondent. I showed them my SC pass. Other lawyers in the crowd snatched my SC pass and tore it up and started taunting me, “Ab le aao SC ko apne saath. Kahaan gaya SC iss waqt?””

 

At the very least, one would have expected a bombastic anchor to lambast those lawyers after that?

 

But no, we were just murdering democracy with one more yelling match on who was more nationalistic and how students were the scourge of society.

 

Maybe George Bush was right: if you are not with us, you are against us?

 

**

 

Meanwhile, there is evidence that the videos that have been doing the rounds of JNU students’ union leader Kanhaiya Kumar being seditious were in fact doctored. One would expect our patriotic news channels to issue some sort of apology but expectations, as Hindu philosophy tells us, are bound to bring us distress.

 

But here are a couple of tweets to make your life happy.

 

This is Swapan Dasgupta, who openly bats for the BJP who shows some grace at least, even if a “but…”:

“I checked with responsible people. There is a part of video clip I retweeted that may be dodgy. I erred & say so openly. Larger q’s remain.”

 

And this is former colleague Abhijit Majumder, editor of Mail Today, about whom I am speechless:

A fake video doesn’t change the fact that Kanhaiya organised event with break-India posters, slogans, intention. So, #IStandWithNation

 

The nation however is larger than petty patriotism and hopefully always will be.

 

**

 

And to a miserable end, this is the sad story of Malini Subramaniam, hounded by the Chhatisgarh government and police for reporting for Scroll.in
http://scroll.in/article/803821/how-the-chhattisgarh-police-succeeded-in-hounding-out-those-who-questioned-it

 

**

 

If you don’t understand that there’s a battle, perhaps you really should look at PR as a career option. At least that way you will be honest about what you do.

 

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