SC’s baffling bail order rattled the press. Voter rolls exercise should terrify it

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on January 9, 2026

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2026/01/09/scs-baffling-bail-order-rattled-the-press-voter-rolls-exercise-should-terrify-it

It is rare for India’s mainstream media to speak with one voice on an issue that makes the government uncomfortable. It is remarkable, therefore, that almost every major newspaper made strong editorial comments about the recent Supreme Court ruling granting bail to five of those implicated in the 2020 Delhi riots but making an exception in the case of two of them.

While the ruling party at the Centre, the Bharatiya Janata Party, lauded the court’s decision, newspapers ranging from The Hindu to Times of India as well as The Telegraph, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, Deccan Herald and several more questioned the reasoning behind the court’s ruling.

The Deccan Herald, in its long editorial, states upfront: “Supreme Court's no-bail ruling risks branding of dissent as terrorism, may normalise incarceration without trial.”  Its main argument is that the court’s ruling denying bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, who have already spent more than five years behind bars without trial, expands the definition of terrorism to include acts that “disrupt services and threaten the economy”. This would allow the government to declare any protest or demonstration as a terrorist act, the editorial argues. 

The editorial in The Hindu questions the court’s reasoning of the “hierarchy of participation” to deny bail to Khalid and Imam even as it granted bail to the other five incarcerated on the same charges. It points out that the evidence for this has not been examined in court. Like the Deccan Herald, it points out that the court’s expansion of the definition of terrorism to include other protests would have a “chilling effect”.  

Interestingly, even a business newspaper like Economic Times made a critical comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling. Questioning, as the others have done, the court’s reasoning about the role played by the two denied bail, the paper writes that “the court makes it seem that a battle of ego is brewing between the state and those it has identified as its enemy.”

Much more has been written on this ruling of the Supreme Court in specialist legal websites and in op-eds in newspapers. Most crucial for the media is the broadening of the definition of terror in a law that has already been used to incarcerate critics of the government for years without trial.

  

Apart from this important Supreme Court ruling, which should concern any citizen who believes that the Indian Constitution grants them the right to protest, there is another story unfolding that begs for more detailed media follow up.

This is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls now being conducted in several states including Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The number of voters disqualified is staggering.  In UP for instance, out of 15.44 voters, 2.7 crore names have been removed. Although there is time for voters to appeal, the sheer numbers raise several questions worth following up. Who are these voters? How many are women? What are the reasons given for their disqualification?

Some of these answers have been provided by an op-ed by Yogendra Yadav and Rahul Shastri in Indian Express based on earlier SIR exercises that were conducted last year. Examining in detail the data from Bihar, the authors come up with the startling revelation that more women have been disenfranchised than men and that as a result the gap between male and female voters has increased in Bihar. 

 

To quote from the article: “Bihar gave us the first glimpse of what was to come. Before the SIR, the gender ratio in Bihar’s population was 932 — for every 1,000 men in Bihar’s adult population, there were only 932 women. The voters’ list made it worse. For every 1,000 men on the voters’ list, there were only 914 women — fewer than their share in the population. The list should have had 7 lakh more women if the share of women was the same as in the population. After the SIR, the gender ratio in the final voters’ list of Bihar fell sharply to 890. Thus, thanks to the SIR, the number of ‘missing women voters’ increased from 7 lakh to 16 lakh. In Bihar, the SIR wiped out a whole decade’s gain in the gender ratio of electoral rolls.”

This is something that the media can surely follow up as the SIR exercise continues to be conducted in states like UP, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and others. Why is this happening? If indeed more women are losing their right to vote than men, surely there is a need to question the process. 

Also disturbing is the investigation by Reporters’ Collective about the software being used by the Election Commission during the SIR exercise.

According to the writers, not only is this software untested but that it is being used “without written instructions, protocols and manuals “and that it “red-flagged 1.31 crore voters in West Bengal and 2.35 crore voters in Madhya Pradesh as suspicious, putting their voting rights in jeopardy. These voters earmarked as suspicious comprised a whopping 17.11% of the voting population in West Bengal and 41.22% of the voting population in Madhya Pradesh.”

The article goes on to point out that while the commission “tweaked” the algorithm so that the numbers came down, there is no explanation about the process used to change the numbers of suspicious voters. The authors state that “the ECI has not made public any records, protocols, data or orders about this failed attempt to use an undocumented and untested software to test the voting rights of crores of voters at risk”.  

The details in this article raise important questions that need to be addressed. Is the SIR exercise really about cleaning up the electoral rolls or something else, a question that has been raised repeatedly last year in the context of Bihar.

In fact, The Hindu in this forthright editorial on January 8 asks whether the role of the Election Commission is to detect “foreign nationals” who have managed to get onto electoral rolls or to ensure that legitimate Indian citizens get their right to vote. While pointing out that there are other institutions that determine a person’s citizenship, the editorial argues: “The litmus test of an electoral process — very much like a judicial process — is whether the side that loses still trusts the process. Unfortunately for India, the current ECI has its priorities turned on their head when it frames its constitutional duty as the removal of foreigners, and not the enrolment of every Indian citizen.”

Read together, Yogendra Yadav’s article, the investigation by the Reporters’ Collective, and the editorial in The Hindu should push the media into following up the SIR exercise in as much detail as was done in Bihar. There is enough to give anyone, who still has some faith in India’s election process, reason to be disturbed.

Let me end with a conversation I had with a Mumbai taxi driver about the forthcoming municipal elections in Mumbai. I asked him which political party he thought had the edge. He replied, “What is the point in thinking about this? We know now that only one side will win.” 

TV media sinks lower as independent media offers glimmer of hope in 2025

 Broken News

2025 in Review

Published in Newslaundry on December 22, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/12/22/tv-media-sinks-lower-as-independent-media-offers-glimmer-of-hope-in-2025

As we come to the end of 2025, how do we assess the state of our mainstream media? Can it sink lower than it already has, given that it stands at 151 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index? 

It can because in more than two instances this year, mainstream media, especially TV news, has demonstrated the depths to which it can fall.

Yet there is a glimmer of hope: despite the dismal performance of mainstream TV channels, independent journalists and digital platforms still survive and do the kind of journalism this country needs.

The two lowest points for our mainstream media this year, in my view, were the coverage of Operation Sindoor and the reporting and follow-up stories after the Delhi blast, when a car exploded at peak hour near the Red Fort, killing an estimated 15 people.

Indian TV channels love war and conflict. It allows them to dramatise, increase decibel levels, and stage the conflict in their studios by pitching individuals who can outshout their opponents. But the coverage of Operation Sindoor exceeded expectations. 

Indian channels, even so-called “respectable” news channels like India Today, fell for the fake news that India had captured Lahore and bombed Karachi. In the rush to be the first, these channels fell hook, line and sinker for the most obvious fake news. 

Even a slight pause, a pinch of scepticism, and taking time to implement a basic journalistic norm – verify and double check – would have saved them from this stupid and appalling faux pas. But no, who has the time these days to do this? Scepticism is reserved for statements made by those who oppose the government, while obedience to the narrative of those who support it is the norm.

Just watch this episode of TV Newsance by Manisha Pande to remind yourself of the disgraceful coverage by our leading TV news channels. It is cringeworthy.

In fact, Rajdeep Sardesai, one of the many anchors who allowed these fairy tales to be broadcast as if they were verified news, acknowledges that it was a mistake and says he apologised on air. A long profile piece on him in Caravan mentions that in a post-mortem bureau meeting, when asked why they didn’t verify the news, India Today staffers said that several reporters had been called by ministers and senior officials from various ministries telling them that this was precisely what was going to happen and that TV channels should “break” this news.

The media’s behaviour during Operation Sindoor reconfirms what’s now well known: that the government briefs journalists through messages and phone calls about what should be reported.

The other low point in my view is the way the media reported the Delhi blast and its aftermath. All kinds of unverified information were instantly broadcast and reported. Basically, anything the government or investigative agencies told the media was presented as the truth, with no effort at fact-checking (read here).

A consequence of such reporting was felt immediately by ordinary Kashmiris in other parts of the country and in Kashmir. The demolition of the house of the main suspect was reported but not questioned; the fact that all doctors from Kashmir were being viewed as potential suspects was also not questioned. 

And if this was not enough, the locked office of the Kashmir Times in Jammu was raided by the State Investigation Agency, which claimed it had found guns and ammunition in it. The editors and owners of the paper, which is now published remotely as a digital publication, have been charged under various sections, including for violating India’s “sovereignty”. Kashmir Times is practically the only independent voice coming out of Kashmir, as most others have either fallen in line or been banned. 

The state of the media in Kashmir, and the problems that journalists there face almost every day, continues to be the litmus test for the extent of freedom that the Indian media enjoys. Just this week, the police arrived at the home of Jehangir Ali, the reporter for The Wire, and without a warrant, seized his phone without providing him with the hash value to ensure that it would not be tampered with. He finally got the phone back after several hours.

A glimmer of hope

Despite the Modi government's proactive efforts to ensure that mainstream media sticks to the approved narrative, and the threats and intimidation, especially against journalists in Kashmir, aimed at sending a clear message to other journalists who choose to do their jobs, several remarkable investigative stories have appeared on independent platforms.

At a time when the word “environment” is clubbed with the killer air pollution levels in Delhi and in many other cities in India, it is important to remember that there are other pressing environmental challenges that get precious little coverage in the media, such as the handing over of forests to private interests. 

A story to note is independent journalist M. Rajshekhar's piece on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Writing in Time magazine, Rajshekhar reports on the disaster that the natural resources of the islands and the indigenous communities face due to the government’s policies.

Another story that stands out for the challenge the reporter must have faced while investigating it is Nidhi Suresh's report in The News Minute. The journalist did a remarkable job by talking to the nun who alleged she was raped by Bishop Franco Mulakkal in 2018. Although the Bishop was acquitted, no one knows what happened to the nun. Nidhi Suresh traced her and persuaded her to speak. The result is a chilling narrative in 10 parts of the life of this woman.

Another recent investigative story is Sukanya Shantha's three-part series in The Wire.  Based on publicly available data, Shantha has followed up on the National Investigation Agency’s claims that it secured convictions in 100 percent of its cases in 2024. Her digging revealed that this was happening because the people accused, the majority of them Muslim men charged under laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), were persuaded to plead guilty when faced with the reality that they would spend much longer in jail as undertrials waiting for the trial to begin.  

While Alt News remains outstanding in its fact-checking work, as seen best during Operation Sindoor, Newslaundry has also done notable stories, like this one on the stampede during the Kumbh Mela this year. The government insisted that only 30 people had died. NL reporters, however, found that as many as 79 had died in the stampede. This was established by doing the kind of routine work that journalists are expected to do: first being sceptical of government data, then following up and checking for yourself. When that is done, as we saw during the Covid pandemic, there’s always a yawning gap between official figures and reality.

While “vote chori” and elections continue to be widely covered, the back story of how political parties like the BJP are funded, particularly before the Supreme Court scrapped the Electoral bonds scheme, did not get the same kind of attention. 

Although Indian Express has now done a detailed story on who funds political parties, earlier it was independent platforms that investigated the Electoral Bonds scheme. More recently, the Reporters’ Collective has investigated the BJP's funding in Assam. The results are revealing. Most of the funders are people who have won lucrative government contracts.

And finally, like Kashmir, some of the best reporting on Northeast India, which only comes into focus during conflict, is from reporters working for independent digital news platforms. Like this report by Rokibuz Zaman of Scroll of the people physically pushed out of Assam into Bangladesh because they were suspected to be “foreigners” even though they were Indian citizens.

In sum, at the end of 2025, we are where we were at the end of 2024. The mainstream media houses, and specifically their television channels, continue to compete to go lower with news that is sometimes untrue and almost always divisive in a country where the nature of our politics increasingly fractures the polity.

And for real journalism, for in-depth stories, practically the only source – although some print media like Indian Express, The Hindu and Times of India have done some excellent long-form stories – are the independent digital news platforms that continue to survive, even if precariously.

When media ‘solves’ terror cases, Kashmiris are collateral damage

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 27, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/11/27/when-media-solves-terror-cases-kashmiris-are-collateral-damage

The story about the Delhi blast on November 10, where a car exploded at peak hour in the Red Fort area, killing 15 people and injuring many more, continues to unravel as we read every day about the police and investigating agencies uncovering so-called “terror modules” and arresting more people. 

The headlines paint an intricate web of how it happened. They suggest an amazing certainty, as if the puzzle has already been solved. But read the story beneath those headlines, and you find that the information printed is based on what the investigating agencies are choosing to tell the media. It is their version.  

The people arrested so far are “suspects”. It has still to be established in a court of law that they were behind what happened. But readers, and especially viewers of our mainstream television channels, would not know that. Because the reporting has this quality of certainty, rather than being qualified by attribution to any source or agency. 

The cost of this kind of irresponsible reporting, something that runs contrary to the basic tenets of journalism that all of us have been taught, is being borne primarily by ordinary Kashmiris, who are living their lives, trying to study and qualify for jobs, selling their wares in Kashmir and outside, and basically surviving like so many in the rest of this country.

Let me quote here from an article which appeared as an op-ed in The Hindu on November 27 by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Chairman of the Hurriyat Conference. It is based on a sermon he gave at the Jama Masjid in Srinagar. Here is what he wrote, referring to the media and the November 10 incident: 

“Yet, while we mourn, it is troubling to see how quickly such tragedies are converted into sensational narratives. Even before investigations establish facts, sections of the media are quoting ‘inside sources’ and are ready with headlines that cast suspicion on a particular community and religion. This rush to judge not only misleads the public but also places an entire population under scrutiny – especially Kashmiri students and professionals living across India, who suddenly find themselves being treated as suspects. Fear replaces safety, and anxiety grips families back home.”

His observations come as no surprise. They should make us in the media pause. But that is unlikely to happen because Mirwaiz is anyway condemned to be part of “them”, the so-called anti-nationals.  

Barring a few honourable exceptions, mostly in mainstream print media, qualifiers like “alleged” or “suspect” or “according to” have virtually disappeared. Even if they appear in the main story, they are certainly not reflected in the headlines, which is what most people read and remember.  

Mainstream media probably needs to be educated about the fundamental right of every citizen to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Even the spate of judgments in terror-related cases, where people have spent years in jail on charges that were finally dismissed by courts, does not seem to have informed reporting of such incidents in this country. The latest is the Allahabad High Court judgement on November 10, absolving Mohammad Ilyas, who spent 28 years in jail after being convicted for being the brain behind the 1996 blast in a UP Roadways bus. In my last column in Newslaundry, I had mentioned the men acquitted by the Bombay High Court for their alleged role in the 2006 serial train blasts in Mumbai.

Apart from the permanent harm such media coverage is doing to scores of families of these alleged culprits and co-conspirators, the more troubling aspect is the impact on the lives of people who have had nothing to do with that incident, namely all Kashmiris. Several reports in newspapers tell us that Kashmiri students are being targeted, that they are being asked to leave from rented accommodation in cities outside Kashmir, that itinerant dry-fruit and shawl sellers who can be seen on the streets in many cities once the weather becomes cooler are being harassed.  

This can only happen because the media is complicit in creating a narrative that places all Kashmiris in the same basket as a few who might be responsible for what happened in Delhi.

Equally concerning is the virtual absence of solidarity from India’s mainstream media with the Kashmir Times, one of the oldest English-language newspapers in Kashmir, founded by the respected journalist Ved Bhasin in 1954 and now published as a digital edition by his daughter, Anuradha Bhasin.

On November 20, the Kashmir Times office in Jammu was raided by the State Investigation Agency (SIA). The office had been locked for four years as the print version of the newspaper had been suspended. According to Anuradha, no one worked in the office. Yet the SIA chose not just to raid it but claimed that arms and ammunition had been found in the premises. All this was dutifully reported by newspapers. 

Furthermore, according to this report in Indian Express, the SIA has charged the owners and the editor of the paper with “disseminating terrorist and secessionist ideology”; “spreading inflammatory, fabricated and false narratives”; “attempting to radicalise the youth” of J&K; “inciting disaffection and separatist sentiments”; “disturbing peace and public order”; and, “challenging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India through print and digital content”.

The raid on Kashmir Times should jolt us into remembering the challenges that journalists living in Kashmir face every day, particularly since August 2019, when Article 370 was abrogated, and Jammu and Kashmir became a union territory governed directly from New Delhi.

This comprehensive article by Irfan Amin Malik in Frontline magazine spells this out. It covers the reality of print publications, like Kashmir Times, that have withered and died because of the absence of any financial support. Most of this came in the form of government advertising. But since a “media policy” was introduced specifically for Jammu and Kashmir in 2020, things have become worse.  

One of the provisions in the policy states: “There shall be no release of advertisements to any media which incite or intend to incite violence, question sovereignty and integrity of India or violate the accepted norms of public decency and behaviour.” In other words, if you don’t toe the line, you will not get advertisements from the government.

Kashmir Times has been raided before, on October 19, 2020, when according to an op-ed in 2023 in New York Times by Anuradha Bhasin, “government officials and the police swept into the newspaper’s offices in the city of Srinagar, chased out the staff and put a lock on the door that remains to this day.”

Have a look at the charges against Kashmir Times and then read some of the articles it has carried, such as this one on autism and the absence of care or this one on saffron, one of the staple exports from Kashmir. You will not find such stories in newspapers published outside Kashmir, or for that matter, even in those that have survived in Kashmir. How is this kind of reporting “challenging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India”?

The raid on Kashmir Times, the impact of media reporting of the November 10 Delhi blast on the lives of ordinary Kashmiris, and the routine surveillance and harassment that Kashmiri journalists go through call for some introspection by India’s mainstream media, which emphasises that Kashmir is an integral part of this country. If our colleagues in the media in one part of this country are facing such problems, surely it is a concern for all of us who support a free press in a democracy.

In this strong editorial following the raid on their office, Anuradha Bhasin and Prabodh Jamwal have said something that should be heeded by the media in India, before even the pretence of a free press is permanently erased.

“Journalism is not a crime. Accountability is not treason. And we will continue to inform, investigate, and advocate for those who depend on us. The state may have the power to raid our offices. But it cannot raid our commitment to the truth.”

From one WhatsApp to every frontpage: How ‘sources’ dictated the Delhi blast coverage

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 13, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/11/13/from-one-whatsapp-to-every-frontpage-how-sources-dictated-the-delhi-blast-coverage

Every time a suspected terror attack takes place in India, you can be certain about how it will play out in the Indian media.  

Without waiting for verifiable information, there will be confident conspiracy scenarios spelt out, it will be pronounced as “terror” even before there is official confirmation, the neighbouring country will be blamed, and those whose names are put out as possible suspects will be broadcast as the perpetrators of the crime even before there is adequate and plausible evidence to charge them. With its desperate need to beat the competition over a 24-hour news cycle, the spin given based on few, or even no facts, by TV channels will send many heads spinning.

Additionally, in today’s divisive political atmosphere, if the suspects happen to be Muslim, then inevitably the hate and invective against an entire community will be aired without any compunction. 

That is precisely what we have witnessed, yet again, after the explosion that killed 13 people and injured many more on the evening of November 10 near the Red Fort metro station in Delhi.  

We know now that it was an explosion in a car. We are told there is certainty about the identity of the person driving the car. And after two days of speculation, hints by “sources” and conspiracy theories set out with great certainty by the usual suspects on mainstream television channels, the Modi government finally issued a statement saying that it was a “heinous terror incident” by “anti-national forces.” The anticipated accusation that Pakistan was behind it, something that has occurred so routinely as to be taken for granted, was not in the statement.

What one should note, however, is that in the preceding two days before this statement, neither the Union Home Ministry, nor the Delhi Police that was on the spot, has held an official briefing for the media.

The reason this stands out as unusual is because in the past, when such incidents took place, the media has been briefed officially, and not through unofficial sources.  

In Mumbai for instance, when serial blasts took place on Mumbai’s suburban trains on July 11, 2006, at peak rush hour, in which 209 people were killed and more than 700 injured, reporters were sent out to the blast sites to speak to survivors and gauge the situation on the ground. But at the same time, the police held official briefings giving out what information it had on hand. There was little room, or for that matter time, for speculation. Mainstream media at that time largely stuck to basic journalistic norms, “err on the side of caution and verify.” In today’s media sphere, that sounds like something in a foreign language. 

In the days following the Mumbai serial blasts, people were questioned, detained and some arrested. Those charged with what was seen as a “terror attack,” faced a trial, were convicted, sent to jail, and some even given the death sentence.

Yet, in July this year, 12 of these men who had been charged and convicted for the 2006 train blasts in Mumbai were acquitted by the Bombay High Court. The court held that the prosecution had “utterly failed” in establishing that these men had committed the crime for which they were charged.  

Indeed, one of the men acquitted earlier this year, Ehtesham Siddiqui, spent 19 years in jail, some of them on death row, before finally being acquitted. Although the Supreme Court has stayed the Bombay High Court ruling, those acquitted, including Siddiqui have not been sent back to jail. While in jail, Siddiqui wrote a book on his experience titled, “Horror saga”. His story is important at a time when once again, people are being interrogated, and some will be charged for a “terror attack”. 

Also worth reading is this article by Aditya Menon in The Quint about previous such incidents in Delhi.

To come back to the Delhi blast, a story that will continue to unravel in the days ahead, it is interesting to view the similarity of the reporting in the national daily newspapers following the incident. None of them could quote a single person from the government who was prepared to go on record. All the reporting was attributed to “sources” which, those who cover the central government will tell you, are based on informal messages sent out to journalists like this one: 

Sharing informally, kindly attribute it to sources: 

•⁠  Raids by security agencies across multiple locations in Delhi-NCR and Pulwama, recovering significant quantities of explosives, are believed to have led the suspect to act hastily under mounting pressure. 

•⁠  ⁠Earlier, during raids carried out on November 9 and 10, 2025, in Faridabad, Haryana, almost 3,000 kg of explosives, along with detonators, timers and other bomb making material were caught and confiscated.  

•⁠  ⁠The explosion was caused by panic and desperation due to raids carried out by the security agencies to nab them.

•⁠  ⁠The bomb was premature and not fully developed, thus limiting the impact.

•⁠  ⁠The explosion did not create a crater, and no shrapnel or projectiles were found.

•⁠  ⁠A major attack has been averted, credited to ‘pan-India alertness and coordinated crackdown’ on suspect modules.

Not surprisingly, the next day’s newspapers reported precisely what was contained in the message quoted above. Incidentally, the name of the suspect driving the car with the explosives, Dr Umar Nabi, was all over the media even before the DNA test had established his identity. As were the names of the other doctors who are suspects in what is being called a “white-collar terror module.” 

Perhaps, given the nature of the media today, with people looking to social media platforms first for “breaking news” followed by mainstream TV channels and only after that to the print media, there is little point in hoping that any of this feeding frenzy, especially after a “terror attack,” will ever change.  

Nor can we expect that this plethora of avenues for information and disinformation that exist today will disappear any day soon.

Reflecting in many ways the wishful thinking of those of us who still believe that credible journalism is possible and needed, Varghese K George, the resident editor of The Hindu in Delhi put out this comment on X after the Delhi blast:

“News cannot be, and should not be, a 24×7 affair. Can we turn back the clock and have news bulletins at periodic intervals? If not three times a day, perhaps four?

"The link between clean public information and democracy is a well-established fact. The positive correlation between misinformation and democratic decline is also an evident fact. Social media is often rightly blamed for this, but legacy media too is complicit in this decadence. At the core of the media’s collapse is the pressure for a constant, unending requirement for ‘updates.’

"The reality is that there is not, and there cannot be, and there should not be, minute-to-minute updates on any news – whether it is a Delhi blast or a Supreme Court hearing. 

"News should happen first, then be processed by experts, and only then transmitted to the public. That is what mediation of information should be about."

“Mediation of information.” Yes, in an ideal world, that is the job of the media.  But is that possible today? Can we really turn back the clock? Or has that train left the station, never to return?

Washington Post’s Adani-LIC story fizzled out in India. That says a lot

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on October 30, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/10/30/washington-posts-adani-lic-story-fizzled-out-in-india-that-says-a-lot

Whether the story had substance or not, it is intriguing that there has been little to no follow up in mainstream print media to the Washington Post expose about the Life Insurance Corporation’s investments in Gautam Adani’s companies, allegedly at the behest of the Modi government.

Or perhaps, given the current state of much of our mainstream media, we should not be surprised that a story like this, in a major international outlet, landed in India and created only a small ripple before it disappeared. The ripple was the result of the Congress demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate the allegations.

The tepid response in the Indian media cannot be dismissed merely by observing that given the media’s fixation with elections, currently the forthcoming elections in Bihar, there is neither time nor space to follow-up on the story. There is clearly more to this.

The Washington Post has alleged in its exclusive published on October 25 that a plan to invest $3.9 billion by the Life Insurance Corporation in Gautam Adani’s companies was overseen by officials of the Department of Financial Services.

The story states: “The documents and interviews show it was just one piece of a larger plan by Indian authorities to direct taxpayer money to a conglomerate owned by one of the country’s most prominent and politically well-connected billionaires. It is a vivid illustration of Adani’s clout within the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his longtime ally, and of how officials in New Delhi have come to see his business empire as central to the country’s economic fortunes.”

Newspapers did respond to this story, but with headlines that mentioned the denial by the LIC and little about the substance of the revelations in the article.

Here are some of the headlines the day after the story broke:

“LIC refutes Washington Post report on $3.9 bn Adani investment” in the Economic Times.

“Made investments in Adani firms independently, after detailed due diligence: LIC” in The Hindu.

“‘No letter written to LIC,’ Govt official rejects Post report questioning $3.9 bn investment in Adani Group,” wrote Financial Express.

“‘False and baseless’: LIC denies Washington Post report, says investment decisions taken after due diligence,” stated Mint.

Most of the other headlines were similar. 

For readers, who would not have accessed the original article, all they read was that the LIC had called the allegations made by the paper “false, baseless, and far from the truth.” This rebuttal also appeared as an unsigned statement on the LIC letterhead on X.

The Indian Express carried a report with more details about the original story and quoted unnamed officials “familiar with the matter” dismissing the allegations. While the Washington Post had claimed that the investment plan had been “crafted by officials at DFS (Department of Financial Services) in coordination with LIC and India’s main government-funded think tank, Niti Aayog,” and “approved by the Finance Ministry”, the officials who spoke to The Indian Express said that their department does not write letters to the LIC like the one quoted in the Post article.

To quote from The Indian Express story: “A government official told The Indian Express that DFS has not written any letter to LIC asking it to invest in the Adani Group. ‘The documents being mentioned in the media are not from DFS. It’s not true that DFS wrote to LIC to invest in Adani companies… DFS doesn’t write such letters to LIC,’ the official said.”

In other words, readers are being told that what the Washington Post has reported is baseless but no one from the government will go on the record to say so, leaving it to newspapers to quote unnamed officials as The Indian Express has done. How then as a citizen, or a reader, do you decide that this is, or is not, a major transgression by the Modi government to boost one particular business house?

Sohit Misra, who used to work with NDTV before it was taken over by Gautam Adani, but now runs his own YouTube channel, raises important questions about the coverage, or rather non-coverage by India’s mainstream media of this expose in this report. 

Misra takes us back to the pre-Modi era, when the media relentlessly asked the government led by Manmohan Singh tough questions about several scams that were exposed, like the 2G scam for instance. Even though finally these cases were dismissed as there wasn’t enough evidence, at that time the media was out in full force questioning the government and alleging large-scale corruption. 

As Misra points out, the contrast today is striking. Even if the story in the Post is speculative or even wrong, given that it involves the government and India’s richest man, is it not an issue that ought to be followed up independently by our media? Is it enough just to run denials and quotes from anonymous officials? 

Of course, the journalists who have relentlessly followed the Adani story, how his wealth has grown dramatically in the last decade, have been subject to innumerable court cases and harassment. Journalists like Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, who holds that the Washington Post report is factual and substantive. 

This, in fact, is a story worth recounting because it illustrates how the job of investigating anything sensitive, that could land a media house in trouble, is now left entirely to under-resourced independent media platforms. 

Even as I write this column, another investigative platform, Cobra Post has come out with a story on the other big business house in India that is often in the news, the Ambanis. Given the response to the Adani story, if at all mainstream media takes note of this expose, the headlines in major newspapers will not surprise anyone.