No guarantee of protection or change: What the stories of 3 journalists tell us this month

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on October 17, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/10/17/no-guarantee-of-protection-or-change-what-the-stories-of-3-journalists-tell-us-this-month

Journalism and journalists have made news this last fortnight.

The recognition by the Supreme Court of the work done by a journalist in exposing the way caste operates within our prison system is significant for several reasons. It underlines the importance of this kind of deep-dive socially relevant journalism, it illustrates the process that journalists must follow to ensure that their revelations make a difference, and it reminds us that unfortunately, ultimately one must often turn to the highest court even though the matter could have been settled outside the judicial system.

Sukanya Shantha wrote a revelatory article for The Wire in December 2020 that exposed how caste-based discrimination in allocation of work in Indian prisons is endorsed by official prison manuals. Shantha spoke to former prisoners and examined whether the problem was restricted to a few states. She found that it was virtually universal, in that all states in India followed this norm. Prisoners from marginalised castes were given work like sweeping, cleaning toilets and even sewers while the more privileged castes were assigned duties as cooks or in the office.  

The court ruled this unconstitutional and directed that it be removed from prison manuals. It also ruled that the caste of prisoners should not be recorded when they begin their incarceration, something that the petitioner had not asked for. It remains to be seen whether the spirit of the judgment will be followed in prisons or if jail authorities will find ways around it.

But to come back to the journalistic work of Shantha, her investigative story is the kind that requires time, work and investment. She was able to devote seven months to the story with the support of funding from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. The platform for which she writes, The Wire, would not have had the funds to support such journalism. 

However, well-endowed media houses do have the money to invest in such reporting but do not bother in the current mediascape that prevails in India. They hesitate either because they are playing a balancing game to ensure that the government stays off their backs, or for crass commercial reasons where there’s place only for news that sells their product. The conditions of poor, marginalised caste prisoners are obviously not a selling proposition.

Shantha’s story did not go entirely unnoticed. Within a few months of it appearing, the Jodhpur bench of the Rajasthan High Court took suo motucognisance of it and asked the state government to make the changes in its jail manual. A couple of other states, such as Goa, also did this quietly.  

While Shantha had hoped that some of the groups concerned with prison reforms might follow up by taking the matter to court, this did not happen. 

That is when she decided, in December last year, to file a petition in the Supreme Court. Fortunately for her, she had lawyers willing to fight the case pro bono. 

What this case, and the Supreme Court’s ruling illustrates is that doing a well-researched explosive investigative piece for an independent platform is not enough to lead to policy change. Perhaps, if one of the national newspapers had published her story, there would have been a quicker response. But that too is not guaranteed given the tone-deaf attitude of most governments to media reports on social and human rights issues, particularly when they touch on caste. 

In the 1980s, in the post Emergency period when the Indian media woke up to human rights issues, some of the journalists who broke these stories also followed up by petitioning the Supreme Court. For instance, in 1984, well-known journalist Neerja Chowdhury filed a case against the Madhya Pradesh government based on a series she did on bonded labour. 

While Sukanya Shantha is in the news for exposing caste-based discrimination in Indian prisons, another journalist was fleetingly in the news for something more superficial. Abhishek Upadhyay reports from Uttar Pradesh. An FIR was lodged against him by another journalist, Pankaj Kumar, for a post by Upadhyay on social media platform X alleging that the state government favoured people from a particular caste. 

On the surface, this seems a petty matter. But Upadhyay had to turn to the Supreme Court for relief. In its October 4 interim ruling (the case is still being heard), the court stated: 

“In democratic nations, freedom to express one’s views are respected… The rights of the journalists are protected under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. Merely because writings of a journalist are perceived as criticism of the government, criminal cases should not be slapped against the writer.”

This appears like stating the obvious. Yet, the very fact that the highest court in India has to reiterate this illustrates the constant hazards journalists face if they choose to criticise the powerful, even casually.  Even if nothing comes of such cases, the process itself is the punishment. The only way to escape this is to keep quiet, and not stir the waters. 

The third journalist in the news is senior assistant editor and Gujarat correspondent of The Hindu, based in Ahmedabad, Mahesh Langa. On October 8, he was remanded to 10 days in police custody for alleged involvement in a GST scam. Langa is a well-respected journalist who has filed stories on Gujarat that have exposed the hollowness of some of the state government’s claims. While this case is still unravelling, it was notable that Langa was picked up even though his name is not mentioned in the FIR. While several journalists organisations issued a statement saying that his 10-day remand was “judicial overreach”, his own paper was more cautious in its response. 

The reason for concern in Langa’s case is obvious. Given the past record of the BJP-led central government and its counterpart in Gujarat, journalists can be charged with crimes that have nothing to do with their work but can tie them down to a point that they cannot continue to work. 

What these three disparate stories tell us about the status of journalists in the media today is that you have to be persistent and committed to ensure that your exposés lead to change, that even casual criticism of the government in some states, like UP, can lead to legal tangles, and that even if you work for a leading national newspaper, you are not protected from the State if it wants to send a message.

A noisy Indian media ought not to distract us from the reality that journalists trying to do real journalism face every day. Their freedom to report without fear or favour extends only to the boundaries set by those in power. 

I end with a quote that relates to another country, the United States, but could well apply to us here.

In a newsletter sent out to subscribers of New York Times, investigative reporter Michael Schmidt quotes Ian Bassin, executive director of a nonprofit group called Protect Democracy. In the context of the attitude of former President Donald Trump, and currently a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, towards his opponents, Bassin told Schmidt: “The very definition of freedom is to be able to do those things without retribution or even just fear of retribution by the government…Once the government has made clear it can and will attempt to use the awesome power of the state to seek to punish you based on who you are, what you think, how you’ve exercised your rights or whether you’ve shown sufficient fealty to the leader, you are no longer truly free.” 

From Gaza to Dhaka: Missing Indian lens in global reportage

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on October 4, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/10/04/from-gaza-to-dhaka-missing-indian-lens-in-global-reportage

October 7 marks one year since the attack on Israel by Hamas and the ongoing war on Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians, including children, have been killed in this past year, and much of Gaza has been reduced to a pile of rubble. Meanwhile, many of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas after its attack remain in captivity.

The world has watched this war through the media’s coverage. The heart of the conflict zone, that is Gaza, has been inaccessible to most journalists except those based there. We have seen their reports even as they came under fire. Their reports, often circulated through social media, gave us an unfiltered view of the devastation. And we know of the many who died while reporting or were targeted by the Israelis even when they were off duty. 

Since October last year, much has been written and analysed about the coverage of this conflict by Western media, including the words used to describe the devastation. For instance, when leading newspapers like the New York Times report that X number of people “died” in Gaza, the use of that word hides the ugly reality that these people, including small children, were “killed” by Israeli bombardment on civilian areas. They did not just die. 

Pointing this out is not nitpicking. It is essential to understand how what appears as factual, unbiased reporting can colour the understanding of the reader or viewer of a war. 

But this column is not about the reporting on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but on how we as Indians view what is going on. What is the filter through which we get our information when war breaks out outside our immediate region? Would we have paid more attention if journalists from Indian media organisations had also been reporting from the region? If we do not see Indian bylines in the reportage from there, why is that so?   

If you look at the “World” page of any major Indian newspaper, you will notice that most of the stories are from international news agencies like Reuters or by the news service of major Western newspapers like the New York Times. Rarely do you see an Indian byline.

One could argue that the Israel-Palestine conflict does not touch most Indians. Hence, media houses would not be interested in investing in sending journalists to cover the conflict. However, it must be noted that two small independent digital platforms, The News Minute and Newslaundry, have raised funds to send veteran television journalist Sreenivasan Jain to report from the region. Here’s a link to his first report.

Even if mainstream news organisations in India conclude that their average reader or viewer is not interested in a war taking place in some other part of the world, what about our immediate neighbourhood? Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal.

There was a time when several national newspapers had correspondents in all these countries. That did not last long. It was only The Hindu that persisted and sent correspondents to report from our neighbouring countries.

For decades, Haroon Habib, a veteran Bangladeshi journalist, reported for The Hindu from Dhaka. His reports were nuanced. They had context, and for anyone wanting to understand the developments in that country, Habib’s reports were a must. He stopped reporting some years ago. And since then, despite the recent tumultuous developments in that country, neither The Hindu nor any other paper has had a full-time correspondent in Dhaka.

In Sri Lanka too, The Hindu has always had a correspondent, and today, it is the only one that has one in Colombo. In fact, with the election of President Anura Kumar Dissanayake last month, it was The Hindu’s reporting that provided important insights into the impact of this change on relations between Sri Lanka and India. This comes through in this podcast featuring Amit Barua, who worked with The Hindu till recently, Nirupama Subramanian, a former Sri Lanka correspondent of the publication, and Meera Srinivasan, who is currently based there.

The Hindu also had a presence in Pakistan for decades. But in 2014, its correspondent and the journalist representing PTI were asked to leave by the Pakistani government. Since then, there has been no Indian reporter in the country, although PTI has a local journalist who files stories. As a result, all we read is agency copy, usually on statements by politicians, unlike in the past when at least The Hindu carried stories on the different aspects of life in Pakistan, including arts and culture. 

Even in Nepal, which is easily accessible to Indians, no Indian newspaper has had a full-time correspondent stationed there. We get news of disasters and changes of government, but little else.

The result is that even when there are dramatic developments, as in Sri Lanka two years ago and last month in the presidential elections, and more recently in Bangladesh, the news coverage is at best perfunctory. Agency copy gives us the bare facts. Rarely does it have adequate background or context that a correspondent based there can provide.

Apart from our immediate neighbours, Indian newspapers don’t at present have anyone reporting from China, a country that is constantly in the news on various counts. Again, in the past, most major newspapers stationed journalists in Beijing. The reason was obvious. An Indian journalist would be able to sift what news would interest Indian readers. 

Coming back to West Asia, for years The Hindu had a correspondent based in Dubai whose remit was to cover the region. He had the resources to travel and report. The bylines of journalists like Kesava Menon and Atul Aneja were known to the readers of The Hindu. Today, you will not find an Indian byline for any story on the Israel-Palestine conflict or even from Iran that has now been drawn into this rapidly escalating conflict.

A major reason for this drastic reduction in people reporting from around the world is economics. Print media has faced drastic cuts in advertising revenue. As a result, barring those media houses that dominate a particular market, most have had to scale down news coverage.

Context, of course, is needed in all news coverage. Take, for instance, the dramatic developments before Gandhi Jayanti, October 2, in Delhi, when the march led by Sonam Wangchuk from Ladakh was stopped at the Delhi border. Wangchuk has been leading the demand for full statehood for Ladakh ever since it was reduced to a Union Territory in 2019 along with Jammu and Kashmir with the reading down of Article 370. His latest demand is for Ladakh to be included in Schedule 6 of the Constitution, which will give the people of Ladakh the right to decide how their natural resources will be used. While the political demand has featured in the reports, not enough is known about the latter.

This article in Scroll explains why pastoralists in Ladakh are objecting to the plan to set up a 13-gigawatt integrated renewable energy project with solar farms and windmills. The energy generated will be used not in Ladakh but outside the region. Setting up this kind of project, which will occupy vast tracts of land, will deny these people access to their traditional pasture lands and affect their migration routes. This is one of the reasons the people of Ladakh want the right to decide whether they want or need these kinds of projects. 

Such stories illustrate how essential it is for the media to have feet on the ground, in India, and in our neighbourhood.

The paradox of India’s woman politician

 Article in The Hindu Sunday Magazine

Published on September 29, 2024

Link: https://www.thehindu.com/society/india-woman-politician-balance-ambitions-identity-expectations-mamata-banerjee-atishi-vinesh-phogat/article68676929.ece

Three women in politics have grabbed headlines in recent weeks. One is a veteran politician, now facing flak for her actions, or rather inaction. The other is a highly qualified woman who chose to go into politics, and did some things that made her stand out as different but is now falling into the expected stereotype of a woman politician beholden to a male mentor. And the third, known for her physical strength and spirit of defiance, has taken the risk of entering the political circus where she will need more than these two qualities.

The three are Mamata Banerjee, Atishi and Vinesh Phogat. The first has been tested, the second has challenges hovering above her, and the third is still finding her feet.

What is common in all three cases is the expectation that somehow, because they are women, their actions will be different from their male counterparts’ if faced with similar challenges.

Indeed, for decades, those who believe more women should be in politics, and hold office, have argued that not only is this just, given that women represent half the population, but that their presence in numbers would make a qualitative difference to the nature of politics and governance. As Ranjana Kumari, an early and strong advocate for increasing women’s participation in politics in India, reiterated in one of her articles: “Women’s participation in politics is their human right as much as it is the cornerstone of their right to equal citizenship. Across the country, and throughout the world, men’s dominance in politics must be made a thing of the past.”

Unfortunately, men’s dominance in politics prevails. In India, despite several women being elected to power in the states, and at the Centre, one cannot draw any generalised conclusions about their style of governance and whether it differs from that of men in the same position. The women who can assert their individual style are those who also control their political party, as did Indira Gandhi. Others inevitably must fall in line.

Take, for instance, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Here is a woman who has made her way in the tough arena of politics without a male mentor. She has earned a reputation as a street fighter and has built a formidable political presence in her state. And she controls her party, much as Indira Gandhi did.

However, the events that followed the rape and murder of a young junior doctor at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9 have raised serious questions about her leadership style, with critics calling out her insensitivity to an issue that concerns all women.

It was assumed that Banerjee’s response to the protests after August 9 would be sympathetic to the young people on the streets because as a woman, she understood the dangers women face in the public space. Instead, what we saw was a politician at work, trying to ensure that her chief political opponents did not take advantage of the situation. Not only did this push back the central issue, that of women’s safety, but it also disappointed those who expected a humane response from Banerjee.

Although the protests have subsided after the Chief Minister finally agreed to meet the agitating junior doctors, her response to the incidents over the past few weeks has raised several questions about women in politics. Why are only women politicians expected to prioritise women’s concerns even at the cost of political survival? Is it realistic to expect someone politically strong like Banerjee to respond differently to the events around August 9 just because she is a woman?

Besides, what about the 11 feisty and articulate women MPs from the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the Lok Sabha? Their silence since August 9 has been deafening. Perhaps they were ordered to be silent. Or they tried to intervene behind the scenes. We will never know.

Only one TMC senior member has spoken out and resigned, and that is a man — Rajya Sabha member Jawhar Sircar. In his letter of resignation, not only does he call out the culture of corruption and authoritarianism in the party but also criticises the “faulty handling” of the protests by the West Bengal government.

After Sircar’s resignation, some of the 35 TMC women MLAs in West Bengal were approached by media houses and asked what they thought. Only a handful spoke on the record. While some blamed the police, all of them reiterated that they did not think “Didi” did anything wrong. Their response is not surprising given that no political party permits its members to state their opinions freely, especially if they run counter to the party line. Therefore, to expect women members to speak out just because they are women is probably unrealistic.

There are other examples, cutting across the political spectrum, where you see the same scenario playing out. For instance, look at the record of two prominent women from the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party — Smriti Irani and Nirmala Sitharaman. Neither distinguished themselves with a pro-women stance when given the chance.

As Minister for Women and Child Development in the BJP’s second term, Irani strongly condemned atrocities against women, but only if they occurred in Opposition-ruled states. The condition of women in states run by her own party did not move her. The most egregious example of that was her silence, and indeed that of her party, on the gang rapes in Manipur last year. Recently, Sitharaman, who continues as Finance Minister, made some shockingly insensitive remarks following the death of a young woman employee of a leading accounting firm. Although she later backtracked, her instinctive response tells the story.

Until September 21, Banerjee was the only woman chief minister of a state. Today, one more has joined the ranks — Atishi from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) who has taken over as the Chief Minister of Delhi after the incumbent, Arvind Kejriwal, resigned on September 17.

Can a woman, who on her own admission is simply a seat warmer, make any difference as the chief minister of a state like Delhi? Although she is not related to Kejriwal, is her appointment any different from that of Rabri Devi, who became Bihar’s chief minister when her husband Lalu Prasad Yadav was imprisoned in the fodder scam case in 1997?

Atishi is highly qualified, with two Master’s degrees from Oxford University. She need not have entered politics. But she did, first as an adviser to AAP for their programme to improve government schools in Delhi and then, after getting elected, as a minister handling multiple portfolios.

Kejriwal obviously chose Atishi because she is seen as someone who would not threaten his primary position in the party. That said, for Atishi to bend over backwards to underline that she’s just filling in for the man who has the right to that chair — to the point that she has kept an empty chair in her office — is disappointing and reflects the way women internalise the need to appear subservient to male power. One wonders, if instead of Atishi, Kejriwal had chosen a man, would he have done this?

What about the third woman in the news: Vinesh Phogat? These are early days. She is still a work in progress as a politician but has already created a buzz amongst young women in the ultra-conservative Haryana society. She has become a role model not only as an athlete, and as a young woman who took to the streets to raise her voice against a powerful man, but also for taking a risk by entering the political arena. Whether her training as a wrestler prepares her for the fights ahead in the political field, including the misogyny she has already encountered, remains to be seen.

Neither Banerjee, nor the women MPs from her party, nor Atishi, have so far convincingly demonstrated a different type of politics from the male-dominated political culture. As in other professions, women manoeuvre within existing structures and societal expectations of how they should behave.

Referring to these expectations, former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, who served in the first Clinton administration and was the first woman to hold that position, writes in her engaging 2008 book, Why Women Should Rule The World: “Women are caught in a double bind: expected to act like men — and punished for doing just that…When women in positions of authority, conform to traditional female stereotypes, they are too often perceived as ‘too soft’ to be effective. And when they defy those norms, they are considered ‘too tough’, unnaturally masculine, out of sync. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.”

Clearly, the Indian women in politics are caught in the same double bind. Their actions are scrutinised far more closely than that of their male counterparts and their numbers in politics are still too small to overturn the dominant political culture.

The Blank Editorials Of Emergency: When Silence Speaks

Published in Outlook magazine on September 19, 2024

Link: https://www.outlookindia.com/national/the-blank-editorials-of-emergency-when-silence-speaks

Ironic is it not, that a film on the Emergency was held up by what we call the Censor Board (officially the Central Board of Film Certification)? For it was during this infamous Emergency from 1975-77 that the Indian media, at that time essentially the print media, faced direct censorship for the first, and only time, since Independence.

On June 26, 1975, when the Indira Gandhi-led government declared a state of Emergency and announced that there would be press censorship, none of us knew what this meant. Censorship? How? Who would execute the policy? What were we as journalists supposed to do?

At the time, I was working with a small independent news magazine called Himmat Weekly, founded by Rajmohan Gandhi who was also the editor-in-chief. I had joined as an assistant editor, and as the name suggests, our remit was to have the courage to call out the powerful and write about the powerless. Within six months of the declaration of the Emergency, I became the magazine’s editor as R M Lala, one of the founding editors, stepped down.

On that first day, our small team of mostly young journalists had to decide what to do. Should we submit to censorship? Or shut shop? Or should we find a way around it, even if it meant taking considerable risks given that practically all the Opposition leaders had been swept up and thrown in jail and even journalists and other critics were not spared. Perhaps it was our youth, our ignorance or sheer bravado that made most of us feel we should fight censorship and continue to publish as long as we could.

Much like the other, and better-known instances of defiance, such as the The Indian Express printing a blank front page to inform its readers about censorship, Himmat Weekly too ran blank editorials in its first two issues. Only to be told that even leaving a blank space violated the censorship guidelines.

These “guidelines” trickled down to the press during the days we were not informed that we had to clear all our copy with an official. As a result, in those initial weeks, publications took chances to see how far they could stretch the meaning of these guidelines.

The guidelines were vague. The first one, for instance, stated: “Where news is plainly dangerous, newspapers will assist the Chief Press Adviser by suppressing it themselves. Where doubts exist, reference may and should be made to the nearest Press Adviser.” In other words, we were left to decide what was “dangerous”.

But that window closed quite rapidly. The bigger newspapers were sent a representative from the censor’s office who sat in the newsroom in the evening and checked copy. We, who were small, and one had hoped so insignificant, that we could escape the eye of the censor, had to physically go each day with our typed copy to the censor’s office, wait till he decided what could and could not be printed, and scramble back to find enough copy to fill the magazine.

The guidelines were not set in stone. They morphed and changed as new advisories were sent from the centre through the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, then headed by V C Shukla. The nature and volume of these guidelines came to be known only after the Emergency when a commission of inquiry under Justice J C Shah was established. The Shah Commission report revealed that new guidelines were sometimes issued verbally and a phone call from the ministry in Delhi to the censor could lead to action against a publication deemed to be defiant or running material that was “prejudicial”.

For instance, Himmat Weekly was hauled over the coals for printing this quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole of Swaraj.” We were informed that this was “prejudicial” and asked to pay a fine of Rs 20,000—a huge amount in those days for a small magazine that could barely break even. Instead of paying it, we went to court. Another story that got us into trouble was for reporting that on October 2, 1976, Acharya Kripalani and others, including Rajmohan Gandhi, had been detained for going to Raj Ghat on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary.

On that first day, our small team of mostly young journalists had to decide what to do. Should we submit to censorship? Or shut shop? Or should we find a way around it, even if it meant taking considerable risks.

I give these examples to explain the arbitrary nature of censorship and how power is wielded during times when no one can ask questions. The person in-charge of censoring the press in Maharashtra was a senior journalist, a former editor of The Indian Express. Many of us had known him in his earlier avatar. Yet, as fellow journalists, we could not argue with him or demand an explanation for why he decided what was “prejudicial” or violated the ever-expanding list of censorship guidelines. He knew he had the power, and we knew the price of defiance.

Despite this, small journals like Himmat Weekly, Freedom First edited by Minoo Masani, Janata Weekly, whose publisher Dr G G Parikh is now 99 years old and still as feisty as ever, and others found ways to get around censorship by taking calculated risks.

In spite of our limited reach, these journals remained under scrutiny during the entire period. Himmat Weekly was forced to find another printer as the place where we had printed the magazine from its inception was told that it risked being shut down if it continued to print magazines like ours. We survived, just about, by raising money from our readers to buy a small printing press. By shouldering the legal risk of any fallout from the content we carried, we were somehow able to persuade another printer to print the bulk of the magazine.

Censorship worked in other ways too. The government had divided publications into the following categories: positively friendly, hostile, and continuously hostile. This determined who would receive government or public sector advertising. For journals like Himmat Weekly, obviously in the third category, this meant that the few advertisements we did get from some public sector companies and banks stopped. Given our precarious financial situation, which fluctuated each week depending on the advertisements we received, this was a virtual death blow. Yet, the magazine managed to survive for the entire period.

This form of indirect control on the media did not disappear once the Emergency ended in 1977. Even today, governments, at the Centre and particularly in the states, leverage advertising to exert editorial control. The only difference now, as compared to the 1970s, is that the private sector has grown and is a substantial source of revenue for the media. But then that leads to another kind of editorial control evident in the virtual absence of rigorous investigative reporting in Indian media on the many transgressions of big business.

Furthermore, efforts to exert direct control on the media have accelerated in the last decade under the Modi government. The pressure on independent digital news platforms is especially apparent. Even if their reach is much smaller than the bigger media houses, they are under scrutiny, much as small magazines like Himmat Weekly were during the Emergency. Although the current government has backtracked on some of the regulations it had planned to introduce to control independent media, such as provisions in the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill 2023, the desire to control is evident.

Censorship during the Emergency blocked out the voices of dissidents. But it also silenced the voices of the poor and the powerless. Today, almost five decades later, we must ask ourselves: is the Indian media, bigger and more diverse than during the Emergency, really all that different?

 

Window of hope, yet little changed in media accountability in Modi 3.0

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 19, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/09/19/window-of-hope-yet-little-changed-in-media-accountability-in-modi-30

Since June this year, when the general election results significantly reduced the strength of the BJP in the Lok Sabha, the optimists believed that a party dependent on its coalition partners, even if it continues to be led by Narendra Modi, would be different. That the visible authoritarian tendencies of the last decade under Modi would be tamed somewhat.

How wrong they were. After 100 days in power, there is little to indicate that there is any change in direction, even if there has been some backtracking in the face of opposition. Even if some laws, like the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, have been put on the backburner, there is little to suggest that the desire to control the media by this government has been set aside.

Still, these last months since June have given both the independent and mainstream media a window to pursue the kind of journalism that is so central to democracy, one that questions the powerful, that independently checks and assesses claims by those in power, and that seeks out the voices of the many who are otherwise never heard. While independent media continues to report as the media should, there is little visible change in mainstream media.

Take, for instance, the controversy over a private function at the residence of the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud. It was a Ganesh pooja. Families that follow this custom invite close family members and friends. They usually keep the idol only for a couple of days, or five to six days at most, before they submerge it. 

Questions were rightly raised, not just by the opposition but by members of the legal fraternity about the propriety of the head of the highest court inviting the head of the executive to such a private function.

While the national newspapers gave space to differing opinions about whether the CJI ought to have invited the Prime Minister, none, barring Deccan Herald, took an editorial stand. It pointed out that “such a controversy hurts the judiciary more than the executive and could certainly have been avoided. The judiciary should not only be independent and above the fray but also seen to be so”. A reasonably mild comment, but even this was missing from the other major English-language newspapers.

Indian Express gave space for two differing points of view on its editorial pages. Senior Supreme Court lawyer Indira Jaising, in her article, asked “whether the CJI has been true to his oath of office”. Few speculated on why the Prime Minister had chosen to publicise the private event given his record of using every opportunity to be heard and seen in the media.

The criticism by the opposition did not go unnoticed. In response, the Prime Minister, as is his wont, twisted the issue and made it one of bigotry by the other side. Here is what he said, as reported in Hindustan Times:

“The Britishers followed the policy of divide and rule. They used to hate Ganesh Utsav. Ganesh Utsav is not just a festival of faith, but it played an important role in the freedom struggle. Dividing us in the name of castes was a weapon of the British. Bal Gangadhar Tilak used community celebrations to awaken the collective conscience of the country. Today, everyone participates in Ganesh Utsav without any discrimination. But its celebration has once again become a point of contention, much like it did during the British colonial era. Even today, the power-hungry people of India who are busy dividing and breaking society are having trouble with Ganesh Puja. You must have seen that the people of Congress and its ecosystem have been angry for the last few days because I participated in Ganpati Pooja.”

This ought to have been questioned by the media because Modi has cleverly confused two separate issues. The Ganesh festival is celebrated at home by many families. But during the Independence struggle, the concept of communities jointly and publicly celebrating it became a way to confront the British authorities. Today, this custom continues, and public Ganesh pandals are visited by common people and public figures, including politicians. There is nothing wrong with a prime minister and a judge visiting the same pandal. But when a prime minister visits the home of a judge, it suggests a closer relationship, one that crosses the line of propriety given the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive in a democracy. 

Perhaps the Indian media has now become so used to not questioning that it is unrealistic to expect a change even if the June results do provide a small window. The burden for such rigorous questioning continues to fall on the small independent digital platforms that, despite their tenuous finances, turn out incisive investigative stories. An excellent example is this one by Scroll on how Indian diplomacy and the growth of Gautam Adani’s investments in countries around the world have coincided.

The state of our media has not been pinned as a major concern by any political party, whether it is in power or in the opposition. Yet, it continues to draw attention outside India.

A recent reminder is an article by the publisher of the New York Times, AD Sulzberger, in what would be considered its rival newspaper, The Washington Post. 

In a guest essay headlined “How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America”, Sulzberger writes about one political leader outside his country in these words:

“His country is a democracy, so he can’t simply close newspapers or imprison journalists. Instead, he sets about undermining independent news organisations in subtler ways – using bureaucratic tools such as tax law, broadcast licensing and government contracting. Meanwhile, he rewards news outlets that toe the party line – shoring them up with state advertising revenue, tax exemptions and other government subsidies – and helps friendly business people buy up other weakened news outlets at cut rates to turn them into government mouthpieces.”

You would not be wrong if you surmised that he was referring to Narendra Modi. In fact, this is how he described Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary. However, later in the piece, he does mention Modi, as well as the recently defeated former President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and draws parallels between these three men and how they have curbed the media but continue to claim that they are elected leaders in a democracy.

About India, Sulzberger writes:

“In India, Modi has so successfully subverted independent reporting – blocking reports on everything from mass protests against his economic policy to mistreatment of the country’s Muslim minority – that much of the mainstream press is now derided as “godi media,” generally translated as “lapdog media.” It is wrong to imagine that this is a problem for journalists alone. The repercussions of a weakened media reverberate throughout society, masking corruption, obscuring risks to public health and safety, restricting minority rights and distorting the electoral process. Democracy itself, though still intact – as gains by opposition parties in the recent Indian election underscored – is viewed as more tenuous and conditional”.

He also speculates on what would happen to press freedom if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States on November 5. The picture he paints is dire.

I have quoted from his piece at length as it is behind a paywall and might not be accessible to readers.

The gradual degradation of press freedom acts like an anaesthetic. It numbs us to a point where what would have once been unacceptable becomes the norm. Can we still turn the clock back? This is the challenge that the Indian media faces. 

Same formats, few deep-dives: The media misses the women safety news peg again

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on September 5, 2024

Rape, sexual assault, harassment, women’s safety – these words have found their way to the front pages of many newspapers in the last several weeks. 

The trigger was not just the August 9 brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. Even as the outrage and demonstrations continued in Kolkata, a path-breaking report on women working in a very different environment from that of a medical college reminded us of the challenges and dangers facing women everywhere. 

On August 19, the Justice K Hema Committee report on the Malayalam film industry, finally released after a four-year battle through courts, gives us insights into what was known in whispers but is now substantiated by hard facts and testimonies by women in the industry. It paints a dire picture of the working environment of women in this industry, where they are sexually targeted by men at every level, as actresses, as assistant directors, as make-up artists or as technicians.  The report also confirms the reasons that women do not speak up as they fear losing their jobs and see no way to get justice.

The impact of the report is still being felt, not just in Kerala but across south India. Since its release, women in the Telugu, Tamil and Kannada film industry are also demanding a similar inquiry. 

 

The impact of the report is unfolding even as I write this. Within a fortnight, several prominent men from the Malayalam film industry have resigned from their film association – the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists or AMMA. Other actors have issued strong denials after some of the women who spoke to the committee followed up by filing police complaints against specific men. 

Predictably, given the nature of the accusations, and the prominence of the men involved, the media’s response, by and large, has been to report everything stated by these men in the Malayalam film industry, including their vociferous denials as well as the charges against them.

If the reporting by the media remains at this level, the storm following the release of the report could well die down after a while. Fortunately, at least some media platforms have gone beyond the usual “he said she said” style of reporting and used the peg of the report to dive deeper into the sickness that afflicts the film world.

Here, we must appreciate the consistent reporting by an independent media platform which has reported on stories of sexual assault and harassment in the Malayalam industry for many years. The News Minute has followed the story from 2017, when a prominent actor, Dileep, was charged with having organised the kidnapping and rape of a well-known woman actor. Today, if you want details about the past, and the contents of the Hema Committee report as well as the ongoing fallout, you need look no further than The News Minute.

Apart from The News Minute, at least two mainstream English newspapers have given prominence to the report and its contents, written strong editorials, and done some follow-up stories – Indian Express and The Hindu. 

In its editorial of August 26, The Hindu argued that the Hema Committee report could be a catalyst that could encourage many more women to speak out. Indian Express placed the report within the context of sexual assaults against women over time, and rightly pointed out that the road ahead is “rutted with deep power asymmetries”. 

Apart from the editorial, Indian Express has carried several follow-up stories on the Malayalam film industry such as this one by Nikhila Henry on make-up artists.  Many of these women are faced with the hard choice of either speaking up and complaining about harassment or quitting. If they complain, they are singled out and denied work. Despite years of experience, women make-up artists have had to struggle to get recognition even from their union. 

 

Another story in Indian Express brings out the caste angle, where women from the marginalised castes face a double challenge, of their gender and their caste. 

What we cannot overlook while discussing the Hema Committee report and its impact on the film industry is that it would never have come about had it not been for the relentless campaign by a group called the Women in Cinema Collective. Comprising actors, directors, editors and others in the film industry, the WCC petitioned the Kerala state government to set up an inquiry into the working conditions of women in the industry. 

Even after the government responded and set up the committee, it took WCC more than four years through courts to finally get a redacted version of the Hema Committee report released. And as Beena Paul, the convenor of the WCC points out in this interview to Scroll, the story is not yet over. “What the report has achieved is to point out that the film industry is an unorganised, almost feudal kind of structure.”

As far as the media is concerned, this report challenges us to dig deeper into the reality of not just the film industry, but all professions where women are employed. The Kolkata rape has already led to an inquiry into the conditions under which women in medicine work – doctors, nurses and others. What about other professions, including the media?

Also, as the Hema Committee report has exposed, the problem is not restricted to the physical work conditions, and the solution does not lie in just fixing these – better toilets, surveillance cameras, transport after night shifts etc. 

The challenge is much deeper. It is the systemic misogyny that prevails in many industries which is compounded by the absence of effective redressal avenues. The Hema Committee report has broken, at least for the moment, the silence that has enveloped the treatment of women in many professions in India.