MxMIndia

Tag: Reporters Without Borders

  • India finds itself in the piquant situation of having no deaths but an  increased pressure on Indian journalists for reporting news perceived as “anti-government”, writes Ranjona Banerji

    When Real Journalists Suffer

     

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The annual press freedom index published by Reporters without Borders (RSF) for 2020 sees India drop down two places from 140 in 2019 to 142 in 2020.

     

    The 2020 report “suggests that the next 10 years will be pivotal for press freedom because of converging crises affecting the future of journalism: a geopolitical crisis (due to the aggressiveness of authoritarian regimes); a technological crisis (due to a lack of democratic guarantees); a democratic crisis (due to polarisation and repressive policies); a crisis of trust (due to suspicion and even hatred of the media); and an economic crisis (impoverishing quality journalism).”

     

    India, according to RSF, finds itself in the piquant situation of having no deaths, a relief, upended by the increased pressure on Indian journalists for reporting news perceived as “anti-government”.

     

    This is what the RSF report writes on India:

     

    “With no murders of journalists in India in 2019, as against six in 2018, the security situation for the country’s media might seem, on the face of it, to have improved. However, there have been constant press freedom violations, including police violence against journalists, ambushes by political activists, and reprisals instigated by criminal groups or corrupt local officials. Ever since the general elections in the spring of 2019, won overwhelmingly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, pressure on the media to toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line has increased.”

     

    This is especially true as far as coverage of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is concerned. Journalists have been arrested, jailed, had draconian laws used against them, all for questioning government information or presenting the government’s relief efforts in a “bad light”.

     

    https://rsf.org/en/2020-world-press-freedom-index-entering-decisive-decade-journalism-exacerbated-coronavirus

     

    https://rsf.org/en/india

     

    The Committee to Protect Journalists has done a number of stories about the threats and attacks which journalists, especially those who cover the Covid-19 crisis, face from the police, local administrations or the enormous might of the state or Centre face.

     

    https://cpj.org/blog/2020/04/journalists-in-indias-uttar-pradesh-say-threat-of-.php

     

    The CPJ and 73 media and rights groups have issued this statement to several Asian heads of state:

    https://cpj.org/2020/04/cpj-73-media-and-rights-groups-urge-asian-heads-of.php

     

    Journalists working in Kashmir have been targeted since the state was stripped of its civil liberties and disenfranchised by the Modi-led government last December. Now, those covering the virus are being attacked once again.

     

    The CPJ has issued statements to stop harassing Masrat Zahra and Peerzada Ashiq:

    https://cpj.org/2020/04/jammu-and-kashmir-police-launch-investigations-int.php

     

    Posts on social media are also being used to harass journalists, as with Gowhar Geelani:

    https://cpj.org/2020/04/jammu-and-kashmir-police-launch-investigation-into.php

     

     

    And this is Tamil Nadu, and again the crime is giving a “bad name” to the government in their Covid coverage.

    https://cpj.org/2020/04/police-in-indias-tamil-nadu-state-arrest-journalis.php

     

    When much of the general public refers to “the media”, they usually mean TV anchors orchestrating hate talk in their studios or what they see as intrusive TV reporters and camerapersons. The tremendous work that goes into a news report or an investigation by a number of people is obviously unknown to them. So also is the danger under which they work. And the main job of journalism has to be questioning the government in power. Which includes showing it in a “bad light” and giving it a “bad name”. Every journalist who has acted as a govermment – any government – publicity agent has helped to create this situation where journalists are harangued and harassed for doing their basic job.

    When you consider that a substantial number of journalists on the ground have caught the virus themselves, that should alert even us within of the hazards of our profession. If, that is, we can tear ourselves away from the drama of Arnab Goswami and hot social media debate over his inalienable right to hate speech under the Indian Constitution. However horrific a 12-and-a-half-hour interrogation by the Mumbai police, it cannot compare to Masrat Zahra having the UAPA used against her for posting her photos on social media. Nor, if it is not unfair to mention this, Gauri Lankesh being shot at her doorstep by rightwing goons, for daring to oppose the rightwing.

    We go down the press freedom index because of people like Goswami, people who do not just toe the government line but actively exacerbate the hatred of Muslims, other minorities, Dalits and whoever else the Hindutva machinery takes against. These are the people who help the Modi government to carry on with its RSS agenda. It’s not as if they don’t know. They do it because they know.

    Goswami is at the “increase hate” part of the pro-Modi-BJP spectrum, others are the Modi-BJP publicity end like India Today TV, which may well lose its mega-city TRP status after the Goswami drama. One shudders to imagine what new lows they will now come up with to compete.

    The result, as we can see, is that journalism as a whole suffers; and real journalists suffer.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. Her views here are personal

     

  • A private member's bill, subsequently disowned by the ruling Congress, sought to empower the government to ban coverage of any event that may pose a threat to national security

    UPA tenure sees surge in attempts on media curbs

    By A Correspondent

     

    Last month, Congress MP Meenakshi Natarajan, reportedly close to Rahul Gandhi, the party’s general secretary, proposed a legislation that sought to regulate the media. The private member’s bill, subsequently disowned by the ruling Congress after uproar, sought to empower the government to ban coverage of an event that may pose a threat to national security. The bill also prescribes detailed ‘standards’ that the media should follow.

     

    Late last year, communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal famously sought to regulate the social media. The itch to regulate the media is not new but ever since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) returned to power in 2009, attempts to do so have become alarmingly frequent.

     

    “The problem started when media organisations across the country began reporting on political issues aggressively,” said IBN7 managing editor Ashutosh. This was in late 2009 and 2010, when a series of scams were exposed by different sections of the media, including the alleged 2G spectrum scam in which former minister A Raja and a clutch of bureaucrats and industrialists are on trial.

     

    When questioned, political parties and media groups across the board agree that the government should stay away from media regulation, but that has not stopped the government from trying at various levels.

     

    During the time Anna Hazare’s campaign was gathering steam last year, there were reports of impending curbs on the social media, which was being used to garner support by the Anna camp. “At some stage we were told that the mainstream media was instructed not to report on the Anna Hazare campaign,” said former top-cop Kiran Bedi, who is also a member of India Against Corruption. “People voice their opinions through the media and the moment government gags that, you are abusing people’s vote,” she added. However, no such curbs were eventually imposed.

     

    For a country that prides itself on its status as the world’s largest democracy, the years under the UPA government, which came to power in 2004, have seen an alarming slippage in press freedom. This is ironical, political observers say, as the Congress-led UPA had benefited from the media’s aggressive exposure of scams during the NDA era. The media’s extensive, and overwhelmingly negative coverage of the Gujarat riots had also helped turn public opinion.

     

    The 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders shows that India has dropped on the index from the 80th position held in 2002 to the 131st position in 2011-12 among 179 countries.

     

    “There is a complete absence of confidence and lot of insecurity among the elected representatives today, which is adding to the problem,” said Abraham Koshy, professor of marketing at IIM, Ahmedabad.

     

    In recent years, a number of politicians have invested in media businesses across the country, which some say, is another way to restrict the media.

     

    “The politician-corporate nexus too has grown further over the years and that is also impacting freedom of the media as some of these corporate own parts of the media. The government should not try to impose restrictions on the media,” said Nilotpal Basu, central committee member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

     

    There is a school of thought that politicians and political parties should not be allowed to own media companies under the law as that could lead to media being used as a tool for propaganda.

     

    “TV channels and newspapers are watchdogs of the government but if they are owned by the politicians themselves, there is a conflict of interest and that is what should be regulated,” said an editor of a news channel, who did not wish to be named. “We must sit down and discuss these issues,” said Vinod Mehta, former editor-in-chief of Outlook India. While most of those quoted in this story are also concerned about the quality of reporting in the country, which needs to be improved, most prefer self-regulation.

     

    Mr Ashutosh said: “Self-regulation within the media is working. Media needs to improve the same way the functioning of the Parliament, the judiciary and the executive need to improve in the country.”

     

    Ms Bedi said the media needs to be more independent and non-partisan but it is a fact that “media plays the roles of a visual and verbal Lokpal. Without media exposing the scams, India would have been a Banana Republic.”

     

    Source: The Economic Times
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