Journalism in India





“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power because they control the minds of the masses.”
-Malcolm X

The inclination of the Indian media towards sensationalism rather than the credibility of the news is reason enough for the criticism it has been facing. As a democracy, India has freedom of the press. However, in India, it seems highly unlikely to be able to separate the media from politics; in fact, it seems to have turned into an extension of the State itself. Unlike older times when journalists would sometimes even risk their lives to show their viewers the reality, when journalism was defined by the courage of the reporters, nowadays all that we see are anchors sitting inside their lavish studios, spewing hate and throwing their biased opinions to the viewers. In 2019, India’s rank in the Press Freedom Index was 142nd, out of the 180 countries included in the index. The index has India performing worse than countries such as Afghanistan and Palestine, which is not at all a satisfactory state for a democracy. Despite being one of the largest democracies in the world, India has become a breeding ground for hate-spreading, biased journalism.

As quoted by Jim Morrison, “whoever controls the media controls the mind.” It is dangerous to have such an intense amount of interference from the state in the matters of the press not only because the government snatches away the sole representative to its public from them, but also because the media holds great power and can easily propagate the ruling party’s agenda to the public. The greatly criticised Emergency of 1975 also brought about a shut-down of the press, the rights of the people were taken away for the benefits of those in power. In India’s current political scenario, while things may seem hunky-dory from the outside, the ruling government is involved in something very similar, just without enraging the public; instead of publicly shutting down the press; it is trying to control it. Privately, journalists have admitted that they have been under pressure from the government to serve its agenda. From 2013 onwards, journalists and editors of channels and publications have been consistent receivers of hate and threats, primarily because of their criticism of the ruling party. In 2014, Sagarika Ghose, who was then the anchor of the prime time of CNN, had received several online threats because of her opinions on Narendra Modi. There have been speculations that CNN had pressurised her to not criticise Modi during her segment which led her to quit her job. In 2017, Bobby Ghosh, the editor of The Hindustan Times resigned, only 14 months after joining the paper. The Hindustan Times had been running a “Hate Tracker” since July 2017, which was described as “a national database on crimes in the name of religion, caste, and race.” The entire segment on the “hate tracker” had been taken down after the resignation of the editor in September. According to a piece by former ABP News anchor, Punya Prasun Bajpai in The Wire.in, his resignation was the cause of explicit instructions from an unnamed proprietor to not mention Prime Minister Modi in his show “Masterstroke” or to even carry any pictures of him. He also revealed that the government has employed over 200 staff to monitor the media and send directions to editors on how they must report on the prime minister’s activities. Since May 2014, there has been a visible increase in the threats and violence towards journalists. In September 2017, Gauri Lankesh was murdered for being a critic of right-wing extremism. It was an unprecedented act of silencing which still endures its effect. In 2016, Scroll.in’s correspondent, Malini Subramaniam’s house was attacked. Recently in 2018, a petrol bomb was hurled at the house of Patricia Mukhim, the Shillong Times editor. In May 2019, NDTV ran a programme on the attacks and death threats received by the chief editor of NDTV India, Ravish Kumar. Several women journalists have faced vicious trolling solely for having done exposes on the ruling party or the government. Slut-shaming and name-calling those who oppose or criticise the Bhartiya Janata Party on the internet has become a very casual thing nowadays. Not very surprisingly, most of these Twitter handles are bots or fake accounts, or have extremist right-wing slogans in their bios. Slightly surprisingly, a lot of these accounts are followed by the official, verified account of the Prime Minister and several other office-bearers. The government has also been selective in handing out TV licenses. Republic TV which is owned by BJP’s parliamentarian, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and anchored by Arnab Goswami, received its license within a year. In this manner, the government even monitors and controls who enters the media industry. 

“I want this government to be criticised. Criticism makes democracy strong. Democracy cannot succeed without constructive criticism,” reads a tweet by Narendra Modi in 2014. It is a funny dichotomy that in June 2014 itself, the Scroll.in reported that the Prime Minister had asked both senior bureaucrats and cabin colleagues to refrain from speaking with journalists. It is almost unbelievable that in six years of Narendra Modi’s tenure, there has not been a single press conference or any kind of interview apart from those with the few handpicked journalists. 71 per cent of respondents to an InstaVaani poll said that they think the news coverage is biased and over 80 per cent thought that the media tends to sensationalize relatively less important issues. The most recent example of biased media, propagating the ruling party would be the exit polls of the Delhi elections in 2020. Sudhir Chaudhary, the editor-in-chief of Zee News had a public meltdown when the exit polls had predicted the return of AAP’s power in Delhi. Chaudhary, in a manner which was not exactly unbiased, said, “If Pakistan PM Imran Khan had decided to contest the Delhi polls with the promise of freebies, the average Delhite would have voted for the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.” When the exit poll predictions proved right, the journalist repeated his words and claimed that the Delhi voter cared more about free electricity, water, and bus rides than the integrity of India. Such is the condition of the Indian media that identifies the integrity of the entire nation with one political party. Our present-day journalists would rather blame the public of a democracy for not bringing a said political party to power and degrade the entire essence of democracy than actually reporting unbiased news. Partisanship is not new; the scene has played and replayed itself a countless number of times in our public lives in recent years.

In a country like India, the media must act as the fourth pillar of democracy. Its job should be to question the government, and to hold it accountable for their actions. In the past few years, India has seen a rise in communal violence and riots that take place. There has been violence against students, protestors, and anybody who has dared to oppose or criticise the government. While there may be a possibility that the extremism may exist on both sides, the response of certain news channel who come out to defend activities that are unlawful, and whose focus lies only on spreading propaganda even in times of despair is extremely saddening.



REFERENCES

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Comments

  1. 007May 2, 2020 at 4:08 PM

    Wow, this speaks volumes. This is so precise. Keep up the good work whoever wrote this :'0

    ReplyDelete

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