The bigger story in Kashmir is the media’s silence on action against its own

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on January 23, 2026

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2026/01/23/the-bigger-story-in-kashmir-is-the-medias-silence-on-action-against-its-own

The job of a journalist, in any part of India, is to observe, investigate, verify and report. But if you do precisely that in Kashmir, you are in big trouble. That is what journalists associated with major English language newspapers – Indian Express, Hindustan Times and The Hindu – found out recently.

They have now experienced what journalists not attached to such prominent media houses have been through since August 2019 when the Modi government abrogated Article 370 and converted the state of Jammu and Kashmir into a union territory. With that change came control and coercion of the local press that included arrests, closing offices of publications like Kashmir Times, shutting the Press Club in Srinagar, and daily harassment of journalists and photographers.

You would think that now that this routine has touched mainstream print media, it would make for front page news. It did not. 

 

Bashaarat Masood, Assistant Editor with Indian Express who has been reporting for the paper since 2006 was first summoned on January 14 for this report that appeared on January 13.  The story was billed as an exclusive.  

Masood reported that the J&K police were conducting a survey of all mosques in Kashmir collecting information about the personnel in these mosques like imams and muezzins, members of their managing committee and their charitable wings. He followed this up with another report that quoted people who were concerned about these actions of the police, which they said had never happened before. Both stories are straight-forward reportage.  Yet, for reasons not made clear to Masood when he was summoned, they caught the attention of the police.

The response from his newspaper should have been immediate, the very next day. However, it took Indian Express a week before it ran a front-page story about what their own correspondent had been subjected to by the police, including being asked to sign a bond under Section 126 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, to prevent “breach of peace” or anything that could disturb “public tranquillity”. A day before the belated Indian Express story, the Wire had already filed a report. 

Also, although the correspondent of Hindustan Times, Ashiq Hussain had also been summoned, his paper buried the report on an inside page on January 21. As if to compensate for this lapse, the paper published an editorial the next day saying the police had crossed a “red line”.  The editors of the paper should be aware that this line had been crossed a long time back.

Altogether four journalists, including Peerzada Ashiq from The Hindu, have been summoned for reporting on what in all respects is a routine story. 

Why should we be shocked or concerned that finally the daily harassment faced by so many Kashmiri journalists has now reached these well-known bylines?

Because, as I have argued in previous columns, what happens in Kashmir is a litmus test for what could happen anywhere in India. If a government does not respect the right of journalists in one part of the country to report without constantly watching their backs, what is to stop it from doing the same elsewhere?  

Furthermore, asking journalists to sign a bond under a provision of the law that anticipates that what you write might disturb “public tranquillity” is particularly dangerous and runs counter to any concept of freedom of expression. If such a precedent is set in Kashmir, it will give police the right anywhere in India to use this provision to stop journalists from doing their work.  

The message from these recent developments in Kashmir is that even what we in the media consider routine reporting can be unacceptable to the current dispensation. As a Kashmiri journalist told Scroll, “If there is no tolerance for even this kind of journalism, then what is the future of journalism here?”

Indeed, that is a question that all journalists and media houses, not just those based in Kashmir, should be asking.

Also, after these developments in Kashmir, will media houses ask their correspondents there, and elsewhere, to tread carefully, or will they encourage them to continue to report as journalists are supposed to do? 

While content even vaguely critical of the government is becoming scarce in most mainstream print media, although occasionally an in-depth report on an issue will pop up, this virtual flattening of the media undermines its credibility. Why should readers/viewers believe anything that is reported when most people with access to the internet have their own channels of information? Some of these peddle fake news but there are an equal number that provide coverage of issues that the mainstream ignores. 

As an illustration, here’s a story that the media in Maharashtra should have covered and used it to question the government when it insists that India is forging ahead as a growing economy. Hidden from view, because the media does not pay attention to the dark invisible corners of perpetually deprived areas in India, are stories like this one about the Melghat region in Maharashtra.

While reports on the region’s abundant wildlife in sanctuaries like the one in Tadoba make it to the news pages, the people who have lived in its forests do not. The Adivasi communities living in Melghat have suffered decades of neglect with patchy roads, poor health care facilities and abject poverty. 

Recently the Bombay High Court came down hard on the Maharashtra government in response to several writ petitions about the conditions in Melghat. It chastised the government for doing “too little” and said there should be “zero tolerance” of such neglect.

Those journalists who have covered Maharashtra since the 1980s are familiar with the Melghat story.  This has been a region of chronic developmental neglect that successive governments have addressed only when pushed.  The fact that in 2026 we are reading stories about Melghat that echo those reported four decades back is an indictment of India’s development story, as well as the indifference of its media.

According to this story in The Hindu, between April and October 2025, that is in six months, 97 children below six years died in the Melghat region either due to stillbirths or because the infants were low birth weight, born to severely malnourished women. In the same period, of the 4,437 pregnant women, 4,170 were anaemic. Let these facts sink in.  This is Maharashtra, one of the better off states in India.

Malnutrition and maternal deaths, in any part of India, rarely qualify as “breaking news”. But surely the detection of  “infiltrators” that the prime minister continues to mention at every opportunity, ought to find space in the news? It does not. 

By way of contrast, in the US, the actions of masked and fully armed ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents are top of the news. They are filmed pushing, shoving, chasing and even shooting down people presumed “illegal aliens” even before they have a chance to present their credentials. But in India, our equivalent of ICE, the police in a state like Assam have been literally pushing so-called “foreign nationals” into neighbouring Bangladesh and yet we read little about this in our newspapers.

Thanks to the consistent work of some independent journalists and platforms we get to read some stories about this. Stories like this worrying report by Rokibuz Zaman in Scroll about two men from Nagaon in Assam who were pushed into the no man’s land between India and Bangladesh not once but three times.

Hasan Ali, whose father was a “declared foreigner” and pushed out, told Scroll: “My country has declared my father a foreigner from Bangladesh. But Bangladesh has returned him twice. Taile amader desh kunda? Amader desh ase ki?” (Then, which is our country? Do we have any country at all?)

Who will answer Hasan Ali’s question? 

 

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.