MxMIndia

Tag: Swati Chaturvedi

  • The revelations are shocking and frightening, especially for the several journalists on the list – 40 in India itself, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Hacked!

     

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Ranjona BanerjiThere are seminal moments in history when journalism is called to account. The Pegasus Project is one of them.

     

    Sixteen news organisations are part of a worldwide media consortium called the Pegasus Project and include The Wire in India, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and Le Monde. The list of the hacked phone numbers was first accessed by Forbidden Stories, a French media non-profit and Amnesty International.

     

    The revelations are shocking and frightening, especially for the several journalists on the list – 40 in India itself.

     

    Therefore, we as a community have to call to account those amongst us who have who have dismissed the revelations of surveillance of citizens using military-use malware. This includes sections of the mainstream media which provide excuses for the governments using this malware. Made by the NSO Group and called Pegasus, this spyware is sold only to nations and not to private individuals. Thus, questions have to be thrown at the Government of India alone.

     

    Since some of our journalist friends have followed the BJP government line that the Pegasus Project was revealed on the night of July 18, especially to derail the monsoon session of Parliament, let’s forget India for a moment, if that is possible, and concentrate on the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi and how Pegasus was used to spy on his family.

    https://thewire.in/world/pegasus-hacking-jamal-khashoggi-wife

     

    The Pegasus Project looks at 10 nations who have used Pegasus under suspicious circumstances.

    The details are here:

    https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/explained-revelations-pegasus-project-and-who-were-those-hacked-152573

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/ revealed-leak-uncovers-global-abuse-of-cyber-surveillance-weapon-nso-group-pegasus

     

    There are questions to be asked. When and to what extent can the State in a democracy can spy on people? What protection do our fundamental rights give us? Why is it necessary to use military spyware to snoop on journalists like Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta, Swati Chaturvedi, Rohini Singh, Sushant Singh, to name just a few, if not to check on anti-BJP stories they might be working on? Does the Government of India then work solely for the BJP?

    https://thewire.in/media/pegasus-project-spyware-indian-journalists

    https://www.newsclick.in/government-impinging-privacy-and-human-rights-citizens-paranjoy-guha-thakurta

     

    The sort of dismissive arguments made have included:

    1) This happens all the time. For journalists, this is a massive no logic argument because just about everything we present as news happens all the time. We might as well shut shop because you know everyday someone wins or loses a cricket match or a film tanks at the box office or people die or a bridge collapses or a government gets up to some chicanery.

    2) Other governments have done it before. This excuse stretches back for millennia. Chanakya, who died in 283 BC, recommended spying. Thus, why should one discuss spying today?

    3) Foreign media are out to discredit us. This is the usual excuse from media houses which have demonstrated almost no signs of journalism since the Modi government came to power in 2014.

     

    Some of these dismissals are often a sign of sour grapes – why wasn’t I part of this? – but regardless, this is how journalism works. Someone breaks a story one day, you follow up the next. Especially a story as big as this:

    https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/several-delhi-based-diplomats-staff-of-international-ngos-on-pegasus-list/article35413018.ece

     

    Despite the fog around surveillance and the idea of national security, surveillance of the sort exposed by the Pegasus Project is illegal in India:

    https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/what-are-the-surveillance-laws-in-india/article29993602.ece

     

    This analysis by the Internet Freedom Foundation on the Pegasus Projects explains the dangers of privacy invasion.

    https://internetfreedom.in/iffs-statement-on-hacking-revelations-made-by-the-pegasus-project/

     

    The analysis mentions ANI, the BJP’s favoured news agency which interestingly had the BJP government’s response to the Pegasus Project hours before the story broke on Sunday night.

     

    I have been schooled on social media that this time-discrepancy is not relevant because it is accepted practice for newsrooms to ask for responses to things before they happen, and then carry these responses without question. In my limited understanding of how journalism works, I would say the opposite is true. You get a response to the question which you ask, and you question every answer you get from authority as rigorously as possible. Any amount of press releases may be sent to you at any time. There is no rule that says you have to believe all or any of them.

     

    Anyone who accepts a government response unquestioningly is a government stooge and should shift to a government PR department.

     

    Media organisations have come together and issued statements. But we need more. We need to be part of any legal battle that any of the 40 targeted journalists may want to fight. The right to privacy cannot be sold because a few amongst us have neither courage nor conscience.

    https://thewire.in/media/pegasus-project-press-bodies-condemn-spyware-attacks-against-journalists-demand-probe

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia every Tuesday and Friday. Her views here are personal

     

  • What Goswami did is not excusable, writes Ranjona Banerji. He stole an experience to make himself look bigger and braver. All it has done is make him look smaller and sillier

    Arnab Goswami – A Legend in His Own Mind?

     

    B​y Ranjona Banerji

    What an incredible kerfuffle! In a speech he made a couple of years ago, TV anchor Arnab Goswami told a moving story about how he was attacked by riotous mobs carrying trishuls, close to the chief minister’s residence, while covering the Gujarat riots in 2002. Great story​,​ ​but one slight issue with it. The incident did happen. But it did not happen to Goswami. It happened to Rajdeep Sardesai and other colleagues at NDTV.

    Sardesai put the video of Goswami’s speech up on Twitter, expressing surprise at Goswami’s story. The video was taken down and then put up again. Inevitably, minor spats broke out all over Twitter. An employee of Republic TV standing up for her boss, Goswami, posted a photograph where Goswami was part of the group covering the riots. This claim was quickly demolished by Goswami’s former colleagues – he was sent to Gujarat yes but to Kheda and a week after Sardesai’s car was attacked by a mob. The photo was taken later. Several colleagues from NDTV corroborated Sardesai’s assertion that Goswami was lying. Goswami was also defended, or rather Sardesai was attacked, by actor Anupam Kher who occasionally functions as a spokesperson for the government and now also apparently for Goswami.

    What makes someone lie like this? In an article for DailyO, journalist Swati Chaturvedi called Goswami a “fantasist”. On an India Today TV show on the issue, lawyer Sanjay Hegde pointed out, tongue firmly in cheek, that everyone is entitled to be a “legend in their own minds”.

    But what it comes to down to plain and simple is plagiarism. Writers steal words. Those who do not write, steal experiences. Goswami’s story had many personal touches which add verisimilitude – the fear of the driver who had no ID, Goswami’s preference to sit in the front of a car, the sound of the mob. This was a story he must have internalised until it became his own. Perhaps he really believes it happened to him. Maybe he wished it happened to him. Goswami is a studio creation. He was forgettable in his earlier jobs, whatever he did there. He came into his own thundering behind a desk at Times Now.

    Perhaps however he still carries a torch for his non-existent days as an intrepid reporter, covering perilous ground and breaking earth-shattering stories. Since he does not have enough fireside chat experiences of his own, he has no option but to steal the experiences of others. Or maybe he was just borrowing this one: he was going to return it but he forgot: “I covered the riots but not this part that I wanted to cover. So I thought I’d just try your part for a bit to see what it felt like.”

    Of all the roles that journalism offers you, reporting is only one of them. It is not too late for Goswami to become a reporter. He may find it suits him. But he must be more courageous than he has been in the past. Even recently, during one of Mumbai’s super-rainy days, he did not venture very far from his office and stood under a flyover on Tulsi Pipe Road with an umbrella. That is not proper reporting. Nor is going to Milan ​Subway in Santa Cruz.

    He can instead prowl the countryside of Raigad to find any more clues in Sheena Bora’s murder. It may be more dramatic to go at night. And not wear a suit while he does it, although that can be his signature move. He might also lurk around the Leela Palace hotel in Delhi and solve the Sunanda Pushkar case all by himself.

    But let us get down to brasstacks. What Goswami did is not excusable. He stole an experience to make himself look bigger and braver. All it has done is make him look smaller and sillier.

    It has been a while since Goswami stopped practising any type or form of journalism. If he wants to make a comeback, I am not sure that stealing someone else’s experience is the right way to go about it.

    But who knows. This is the “new India”. Anything is possible.

    **

    Meanwhile, it is terrible that one more journalist was brutally killed, this time in the line of duty. Santanu Bhowmick was covering a protest in Tripura when he was abducted and hacked to death by political elements at the rally. This has sadly become all too common – to kill journalists in an attempt to silence the media. Appalling, unacceptable.

     

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