Why Disha Ravi’s arrest should worry independent media platforms

 Broken News     

Published in Newslaundry on Feb 18, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/02/18/why-disha-ravis-arrest-should-worry-independent-media-platforms

We should not have been surprised that the Delhi police arrested a young environmental activist, Disha Ravi, on February 13 for helping put together a “toolkit” in support of the farmers protesting against the Narendra Modi government’s new agriculture laws. An early warning that something like this might happen had been given by no less an authority than the prime minister himself.

Speaking in the parliament, Modi denounced “andolanjeevi” who spent their time protesting and agitating. The country needed to be protected from such “parjeevi”, or parasites, he declared. Narrowing the definition further he said it was the Foreign Destructive Ideology – FDI – to which such people adhered that posed a danger to the country.

As the columnist Sugata Srinivasaraju rightly observed, young Disha fits the definition perfectly. She is an “andolanjeevi”, in that she is known to participate in protests, particularly those connected to the environment and animal rights. As part of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for the Future movement in India, Disha has been active in campaigns around climate change. And her link to an international movement sets her up to be part of Modi’s version of FDI.

Given this statement by the prime minister, it is not surprising that the Delhi police went ahead with their far-fetched conspiracy theory. They were following the playbook, or should we say “toolkit”, that has now been publicly endorsed by Modi. Whenever there is dissent, agitation, protests against the government, seek out “andolanjeevi” and spin a conspiracy theory about what they had planned. It doesn’t matter if they were even present when the supposed crime took place. Moreover, in this era of “atmanirbharta”, or self-reliance, any association with a “foreign” organisation automatically makes you a suspect.

The international conspiracy theory, or the omnipresent “foreign hand” from Indira Gandhi’s days, is nothing new in India’s political discourse. What is new, and ominous, is the determination with which it is being pursued by the government. Even young environmentalists, expressing their concern for what ought to be non-controversial, that is the advent of climate change, have now come on the radar.

While the media has still to fully unravel how the Delhi police zeroed in on this “toolkit” to fashion its case over the January 26 violence at the Red Fort, the most remarkable story of the last fortnight has to be the investigation by Meghnad S and Shambavi Thakur of Newslaundry into the Hindutva toolkit. This is not a figment of the imagination. The two journalists successfully infiltrated chat groups set up by the BJP’s Kapil Mishra and exposed how that toolkit works. It comes as no surprise, but is worrying because it functions with impunity, confident that there will be no case against the perpetrators of this hate machine.

The media will also have to think about the real import of the 113-hour raid by the Enforcement Directorate against the digital news platform NewsClick. Was this a one-off action? Or is it a precursor to more such moves against the dozen or so other independent digital platforms?

In a media landscape where much of the mainstream media is either choosing to remain uncritical or believes wholeheartedly in this government, the few spaces left for dissenting voices, for reports that seek to present what ordinary people feel, and to raise critical questions are on a handful of digital news platforms.

Over the last decade, digital news organisations such as NewsClick, Newslaundry, Wire, Scroll, News Minute and others have carved out a space that’s different, and far more independent, than the mainstream media. Even with their relatively meagre resources, they are often ahead of their larger, older counterparts in print.

In some ways, these platforms have become the equivalent of the smaller newspapers and magazines that were able to question the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency of 1975-77 despite censorship. They could do so because of their ownerships. They were either run by small trusts or by individuals who were prepared to take risks. In some senses, they were islands of independence in an authoritarian sea. Today, that is what some of these digital platforms represent.

Their existence is always precarious because of their financial structures. Yet, so far, they have survived and even grown, suggesting that there is a demand for an independent and courageous media.

Although there have been hints that the government plans to bring in regulation that will restrict and control these outlets, so far this has not happened. In fact, it was this possibility that led some of them to come together to form the DIGIPUB News India Foundation last year with the aim to “help ensure the creation of a healthy and robust news ecosystem for the digital age”.

The challenge posed by these organisations is neither their size nor their reach. It is the fact that they can choose not to toe the government line, as much of the mainstream media is doing. And they can also report on matters that are ignored or overlooked by the legacy media.

As a result, these portals have created an invaluable digital record of recent people’s struggles such as the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act through late 2019 and early 2020, and the ongoing protests by farmers.

Furthermore, these reports and records are available to anyone outside the country looking for an independent account of such movements. Researchers as well as mainline media platforms abroad regularly cite work done by these digital platforms. That is something this government does not appreciate as currently anything critical written anywhere in the world about it is considered an international conspiracy to tarnish India’s image.

You would think that a party with such a comfortable majority in the parliament and with a leader who apparently remains popular despite disastrous policies – demonetisation, the new citizenship law, the manner in which the lockdown to check the spread of Covid was implemented – wouldn’t worry about these news outlets.

Yet, as the events since January 26 have shown, the government is rattled. Its totally illogical actions, culminating in the arrest of a 21-year-old climate activist for an imaginary “international conspiracy”, suggest precisely that.

This is why the few remaining independent spaces as well as independent journalists have something to worry about. For there is no doubt that this government has a clear strategy to silence or subvert independent and critical voices, as outlined by Kavitha Iyer in Article 14.

One way to rein them in would be by mounting the kind of attack that was used against NewsClick where, as the editor Prabir Purkayastha pointed out in an interview with Caravan, the very process is the punishment. Organisations with little to fall back on in terms of finances can be finished by protracted court cases. It’s the simplest way of dealing with them.

The last two weeks have made it clear that it is not just “andolanjeevi” that need to be worried. Any media platform that dares to interrogate, expose, or simply do the job of honest newsgathering is being closely watched. What NewsClick went through could be the precursor for more such actions given the heightened and visible paranoia of this powerful government.

Questioning the state’s version of events is not a crime. It’s the media’s job

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry.com on Feb 4, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/02/04/questioning-the-states-version-of-events-is-not-a-crime-its-the-medias-job

Even as the world of social media, and our ministry of external affairs, jumps through hoops over tweets by two "outsiders", the singer Rihanna and the climate activist Greta Thunberg, on the ongoing farmer protests in India, there are weightier issues that continue to confront this nation.

There is, of course, the continuing protest by farmers, not just a handful as the ministry would like the world to believe, but by thousands stretching across northwest India and supported by farmers' groups in other parts of the country. Talks between their representatives and the government have hit a roadblock, hopefully not as impregnable as the trenches that the Delhi police is busy digging on all roads leading into the national capital.

For the media, there remain several questions that have come into focus due to the farmer protests and the events that took place in Delhi on Republic Day.

The most recent issue being debated concerns FIRs filed by the police in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh against several prominent journalists and a member of parliament, invoking sedition, conspiracy, and promotion of enmity between different sections. All this for tweets and statements on TV relating to the death of one of the protesters, Navreet Singh, on January 26.

A video clip was circulated on social media showing Navreet Singh's tractor overturning after it hit a police barricade; his family and some eyewitnesses claim he was shot first and thereafter lost control, as this follow-up story in the Caravan reports. The people against whom these FIRs have been filed include Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, India Today anchor Rajdeep Sardesai, author and senior journalist Mrinal Pande, and Caravan editor Vinod Jose.

Their crime: tweeting the version about Navreet Singh being shot, or carrying stories that questioned the police version that it was an accident, as in the case of Siddharth Vardarajan of the Wire.

If inaccurate reporting deserves cases of sedition to be filed against journalists, there would be hundreds of candidates every single day. It is the nature of breaking news that sometimes leads to inaccuracies, or half-baked versions being transmitted. But more often than not, these are corrected, as happened in this case too. In any case, while the official version of what happened should be reported, it can also be questioned. Doing so is not a crime; it is the job of the media.

The problem of inaccurate news has been exacerbated in this time of social media and the pressure of the 24-hour news cycle. In the old, slow news days of print, journalists had a whole day to check and double-check before their stories were printed. They also had support from the desk, whose job it was to do such checking.

Although the structures still exist, the sheer volume of information coming in as well as versions floating around social media sites makes the job of the desk in media organisations even more challenging today.

These challenges were apparent on January 26 when what was expected to be an orderly tractor rally turned into a violent confrontation between some protesters and the Delhi police. The media does need to analyse where mistakes were made in the coverage. Inevitably, the dramatic trumped the more mundane. As a result, the memorable images from that day will remain the violence and drama at the Red Fort, whereas the "people's" Republic Day parade by the majority of the protesting farmers will be virtually erased from the record, except on some social media sites.

Yet, even if mistakes were made, surely this should not invite the charge of sedition. As also the assumption that the inaccuracy was deliberate.

The fallout of the 2021 Republic Day has been not just the FIRs against these prominent journalists, but against dozens of others including leaders of different organisations participating in the protests. These actions should remind us, yet again, that in the last few years, especially since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the centre and in several states, hundreds of journalists have been arrested, charged, harassed and intimidated.

In its report "Behind Bars, Arrest and detention of journalists in India" released in December 2020, the Free Speech Collective documents cases of 154 journalists against whom cases were lodged in the last decade. Of these, 67 were just in the last year and of the total, Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of cases, 29.

Should the media be especially worried following these latest developments?

A retired judge, writing in the Indian Express, does not think so. He accuses the media of "false martyrdom". Responding to an editorial in the newspaper that termed the FIRs against the journalists as "bizarre", SN Aggarwal suggests that the "profession at large must introspect, not stand by those spreading fake news".

Perhaps the media does need to introspect, as also suggested by the editorials in Indian Express and the Hindu. But there is a presumption in Aggarwal's argument, that errors and "spreading fake news" are the same. To be sure, some media can be charged with spreading fake news. Remember the doctored video telecast by Zee News during the agitation in JNU in 2016? No FIRs were filed against the channel.

So, what then is worrying about the latest police action against journalists? Are we speaking up only because these journalists are prominent? Or is this part of a larger pattern of undermining the credibility of the media, and especially of those sections of the media that continue to do their job of questioning and digging for the truth?

Several organisations have come out in support of the journalists. At a meeting at the Press Club in New Delhi, there were references to an "undeclared emergency", comparing what is happening today to the period between 1975-77 when Indira Gandhi had imposed pre-censorship on what was then mostly the print media and arrested journalists, including editors like Kuldip Nayar.

There is, in fact, no parallel. What is happening today is more insidious and far more dangerous. Without resorting to any overt actions, the government has succeeded in reining in criticism in the media. The handful of newspapers, TV channels, digital platforms, and journalists that continue to raise questions are constantly reminded that they are under watch.

Kanwardeep Singh, a journalist from the Times of India – hardly to be considered a constant critic of the government – told the Guardian that he was warned and received threats for reporting the allegations about Navreet Singh being shot. “Messages are being sent through senior journalists that either I stop writing and stay safe or be ready to live my remaining life behind the bars,” he said. “I am aware that the government may attempt to harm me or my family to any extent but I will continue to investigate.”

If this can happen to a journalist reporting for India's largest circulating English language newspaper, what about those working in Indian language media, or independent journalists like Mandeep Punia, who has been released on bail after being arrested while covering the farmer protests? On his release, he tweeted: "The police interfered with my work. That is my regret. Not the violence that I faced. This incident has strengthened my resolve to continue with my work, that is reporting from the ground the most dangerous and yet the most necessary part of journalism."

We should also not forget that lesser known journalists are being virtually forgotten as they languish in jail without trial for the crime of pursuing a story. Such as Siddique Kappan from Kerala, who was on his way to Hathras to report the gangrape and murder of a Dalit woman when he was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police.

This government does not need to declare an emergency or impose pre-censorship. The mainstream media is mostly pliant. Not only do they toe the line, a good number of them are uncritical and enthusiastic supporters of anything and everything this government does. Critical scrutiny of government actions, pronouncements or policies – as seen in most other functioning democracies – is becoming increasingly infrequent.

Also, as long as an outdated colonial law like sedition continues to be on the statute, any government can weaponise it to deal with those it finds inconvenient, as this government is doing. In its editorial on the FIRs, the Times of India points out, "Repurposing sedition against journalists negates our democracy’s founding tenets recognising the rights of news media to report without fear or favour."

A database compiled by the portal Article 14 reveals that there has been a 28 percent rise in sedition cases since 2014. For the long-term survival of any semblance of a free press, a prerequisite is the scrapping of this draconian colonial law, as Samar Harlankar points out in this fine piece in Open Democracy.