From protests to Parliament: The fall of mainstream media – and why 2024 doesn’t bode well

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 28, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/12/28/from-protests-to-parliament-the-fall-of-mainstream-media-and-why-2024-doesnt-bode-well

2023 IN REVIEW

We end this year by being reminded again that there are no clean endings when the issue of sexual harassment is raised. The face of champion wrestler Sakshi Malik, as she broke down in front of the media, could not be a more heart-rending reminder of this ugly truth.

Malik wept because little has changed. 

Twelve months ago, the struggle began to draw attention to sexual harassment charges by women wrestlers against BJP MP and former Wrestling Federation of India head Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. But not only has Singh remained untouched, his proxy Sanjay Singh won the WFI election on December 21. Newspapers carried photos of a smiling Brij Bhushan wearing garlands as if he himself had been re-elected while Sanjay, the new WFI president, stood demurely by his side.

Soon after, Malik announced that she would quit wrestling. Bajrang Punia and Virender Singh Yadav announced they would return their Padma Shri awards in solidarity. Vinesh Phogat returned her Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna award and Arjuna award.

Their actions remind us that, despite media attention on their struggle in the early part of the year, the government dragged its feet after persuading them to call off their agitation. It filed a case against Singh only after directions from the Supreme Court. Till date, it hasn’t reprimanded Brij Bhushan. The case against him filed by the Delhi police, which comes directly under the union home ministry, has gone nowhere. 

With the issue refusing to die down, the sports ministry finally moved and suspended the newly elected WFI and Brij Bhushan said he was no longer involved in wrestling. 

For the media, there are lessons to be drawn from the trajectory of this high-visibility campaign. Media attention did help the wrestlers put pressure on the government. But given the nature of the complaint (sexual harassment) and the person at the centre of it (a powerful politician), there were no tidy endings. More reason then for the media to continue to follow the story rather than wait for another dramatic event to remind us that, in under a year, precious little progress has been made on the wrestlers’ demands.

In many ways, the story of the wrestlers’ struggle for justice is the story of much of India. Dramatic public protests catch the eye of mainstream media. But once these end, or are forced to end, media attention moves on. And on issues where the people affected do not possess the social capital to launch eye-catching campaigns, there is little to no media attention.

The wrestlers’ protests ought to have reminded us in the media that despite the MeToo campaigns of 2019, the problem of sexual harassment remains an unfaltering reality that women face every day. But there is an even more dramatic example of what we don’t find in the media – or at least not enough of it.

The dramatic “attack” on Parliament by six young people trying to draw attention to unemployment and lack of freedom is another example.  On the anniversary of the December 13, 2001 terror attack, two of them got into the building, jumped into the chamber where the Lok Sabha was meeting, and released canisters of some kind of coloured gas. It was front-page news, but the issues they raised have not been addressed.

Why would young people, who surely knew the consequences of this kind of protest, take such risks if they were not desperate? How representative are they of the thousands of unemployed men and women who see no future, despite the government’s boasts that the Indian economy is growing by leaps and bounds?

Although some mainstream newspapers profiled the youth and their families and wrote about their motives for undertaking such a daring form of protest, television news, as expected, continued to refer to them as “terrorists”.

Unemployment is one of the biggest stories that mainstream media has chosen not to report. The reason is obvious. A government that refuses to accept anything in the media that is even slightly critical of its policies, and has clearly indicated what it will do to tame its critics, is unlikely to look kindly at media that investigates the darker side of an ostensibly growing economy that leaves so many millions behind.

Senior journalist Ajaz Ashraf, in his column in Mid-day, is one of the few to point out why this action by the six has not got the support of even the opposition. No one wants to be seen to be sympathetic to persons charged under terror laws. Perhaps the media too has held back from taking forward the demands raised by the six.

In any case, the taming of our mainstream media by this government is almost complete.  A few voices remain, principally in print. But the rest literally “follow the leader”. 

The road ahead

As we now head into an election year, will we see any change in the media sphere? That is the question any journalist who believes that the job of a free media in a functioning democracy is to question the powerful must be asking as 2023 comes to an end.

The answer to that could lie in asking how many journalists have managed to continue questioning the powerful despite the current government and the threats to press freedom.

The spaces that have remained open for such questioning are mostly on independent digital platforms.  Through this year, this is where we have seen some of the best investigative stories: coverage of the ongoing conflict in Manipur about which the prime minister continues to remain silent, stories on displacement, disasters, and disease, and on the despair felt by those whose stories are rarely told. 

In early December, when the Mumbai Press Club announced the Red Ink awards for journalism, there was little surprise that the majority of awardees in several categories were from these small, spunky digital platforms. When the future history of these times is written, the record of what really happened will be found on these independent spaces as the traditional media, that is supposed to play the role of the recorder of history, is falling woefully short.

That said, the 2024 general elections, or even before they are held, could mean the beginning of the end of these little islands of freedom that still exist in the media sphere. 

The winter session of Parliament rushed through the Telecommunications Bill 2023 even as 146 opposition MPs were suspended. The law was brought in ostensibly to regulate the telecom industry, but serious concerns have been raised about privacy of users as this article by Apar Gupta in The Wire explains. 

More worrying is the draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill 2023 which was open for public comments. Designed to regulate what it terms “content creation”, the law will bring under its ambit all digital news platforms like Scroll, The Wire, The News Minute, NewsClick, Article14, Newslaundry and scores more in other languages as well as hundreds of news-related programmes on YouTube such as the one by Ravish Kumar. 

These comments, made by the Internet Freedom Foundation, make it clear that if passed, this law will most certainly curtail the freedom presently enjoyed by those using the digital space for news. Let me quote this paragraph to illustrate: 

“The bill extends the Ministry’s regulatory ambit to any person who broadcasts news and current affairs programs through a digital medium (such as online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or other similar medium). This provision will apply to any individual, and not just media companies or journalists, who chooses to share news as part of a ‘systematic business, professional, or commercial activity’. Concerns over how “news and current affairs” is currently defined under the bill and uncertainty over the scope of application of this Clause augment concerns around erosion of democratic principles of online free speech. This will threaten journalistic expression as well as a users’ right to access multiple, diverse points of view, especially given the high penalties prescribed in the draft bill for failing to comply with ethical codes and government orders.”

I had hoped to end this on a more optimistic note. Unfortunately, given the way laws are being bulldozed through our Parliament, it is difficult to hope that this government will heed comments such as the one quoted above and many more that have been sent to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. 

Does this government really need such a law, given that most of the mainstream media in the country rarely questions and is always ready to distract from the real issues? The fact that it has even devised such a law should tell us that this is a government that wants to paper over all the cracks, even the smallest ones that will allow for free “journalistic expression”. 

What media coverage of wrestler protests, Malik’s remarks and Mann Ki Baat tells us about press freedom

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 4, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/05/04/what-media-coverage-of-wrestler-protests-maliks-remarks-and-mann-ki-baat-tells-us-about-press-freedom

The ongoing protest by Indian wrestling champions Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia demanding action against the head of the Wrestling Federation of India, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, on charges of sexual harassment, has held up a mirror not just to Indian society but also to the media.

National English language newspapers have given the protests prominent coverage, not just on the sports page, but also on the front page. On April 26, for instance, after the wrestlers decided to resume their protest at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, most papers carried stories on both pages simultaneously and strong editorial comments (read here, here, here and here). 

It is likely that a combination of this kind of persistent coverage, allowing the voices of the women and men involved to be heard, as well as the intervention of the Supreme Court in admitting the protesters’ petition demanding that the Delhi police file an FIR against Singh, finally shamed the latter into doing so. 

But the coverage also threw up other questions that need to be answered. The most glaring one was whether other women in sports have also experienced what these women wrestlers have brought out in the open. Can other sportswomen also speak up? If not, why?

Finally, one newspaper has begun the process that needs to be pursued in greater depth by the media. An investigation by the Indian Express, published on May 4, reveals that 16 out of 30 sports federations have not set up the very minimum that is needed to deal with sexual harassment, that is an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) as mandated by the 2013 Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act. If some have, then the process is incomplete even though the law lays down very clearly the composition of these committees.

We must remember that in most sports, especially in athletics, the women who do well often come from smaller towns, even villages. Their families cannot send them to the kind of private schools that would give them an opportunity to explore a career in sports. Often such families choose to invest what little they have to give their talented daughters a chance. For every girl who succeeds, there must be thousands who never get a chance. That is why the story of women in sports in India is one that needs greater focus in the media.

Many of these young women and girls, who overcome dominant conservative and patriarchal norms, and make their way to training camps to prepare for their lives in sports, do not possess the social capital to question or confront the powerful men in control. They also cannot risk losing the chance to get ahead in their sporting careers. Hence the silence that has now been broken by the women wrestlers.

This is a story that must be investigated at many levels. The absence of the ICCs is the first step.  The sub-par conditions in the training facilities have sometimes been highlighted but they need more exposure. And we need to know more about these young women and girls who are dreaming of making it big in sports. Only then can readers and viewers understand the significance of this protest by the women wrestlers.

The fact that at least some media have followed up on this protest also reminds us of recent stories that continue to be ignored. For instance, the revelations of the former governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Satyapal Malik, in various interviews he gave last month about the Pulwama tragedy of February 2019. Many questions remain unanswered and despite Malik’s controversial statements, the government has chosen to remain silent. Some of the media did report what he said, but there has been little to nothing in mainstream media by way of a follow-up so far. The silence is telling.

In contrast, it was interesting to see the almost uniform, and uncritical coverage of the hundredth episode of the Prime Minister’s monthly monologue, Mann Ki Baat. Every newspaper front-paged it. All the praises by various people, including film stars, were reported. The narrative set out for this occasion, that this was a way Modi connected to the people in India, was repeated uncritically throughout.

Curiously, the media did not ask why a programme by a prime minister – on government media and further amplified by a virtual diktat to private channels to also relay it – needed to be celebrated when it crossed a particular number? Was there any doubt that it would not cross this milestone? Furthermore, were millions of people really stopping in their tracks to listen when the prime minister’s voice came through the airwaves? 

Only some independent digital platforms like The Wire had the temerity to tell us something else, that in fact a majority of those surveyed had never listened to even one of the 100 episodes of Mann Ki Baat. A little scepticism is the norm in any country that boasts of having a free press.  

So how free is the media in India? Not much, according to the World Press Freedom Index 2023 released on May 3, World Press Freedom Day.

India has slipped 11 points on the World Press Freedom Index, from 150 out of 180 countries last year to 161 this time. 

This news was not greeted with concern, or disbelief. While digital news platforms and social media did take note and comment, most newspapers carried routine reports. So far, there has been nothing either expressing concern or scepticism about India’s ranking on this index. The government, predictably, has chosen to ignore it completely. If it does comment, it will probably dismiss it as a Western conspiracy to attack India’s “vibrant democracy”. 

Yet, this precipitous fall in the press freedom ranking in just one year calls for further investigation. 

According to the report by Reporters Without Borders that puts together this index each year, India is one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist, given that on an average, three to four journalists are killed every year. Additionally, the report notes, “Journalists are exposed to all kinds of physical violence including police violence, ambushes by political activists, and deadly reprisals by criminal groups or corrupt local officials. Supporters of Hindutva, the ideology that spawned the Hindu far right, wage all-out online attacks on any views that conflict with their thinking.”

The report points out that although there are laws in place that should protect journalists, provisions of defamation, sedition, contempt of court and endangering national security are in fact being used against journalists who are critical. Proof of this is evident if one looks at what’s happening in Kashmir, where a combination of threats, intimidation and arrests have silenced what was once a vibrant media scene.  

The report concludes, “The old Indian model of a pluralist press is therefore being seriously challenged by a combination of harassment and influence.”

The real story about the deterioration in press freedom lies away from the big cities where mainstream media is concentrated. We need to focus on the stringer, the rural journalists, the district level papers and local channels and assess how they survive financially, what are the challenges they face from local authorities, and if they have survived, how have they changed. This would give us a better understanding of why the World Press Freedom Index has ranked India so low.  

In any case, press freedom as a concept has been slowly and steadily hollowed out, especially in the last nine years since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in Delhi. As a result, readers and viewers of the media are gradually accepting that what we see today is the norm, that the job of the media is to support the powerful in politics and business, not to question and expose them. 

In India, press freedom is unlikely to ever be a burning election issue. It will not reflect in commitments in election manifestos, whatever such promises are worth. Nor will it get people out on the streets defending it.

One reason for this is the gradual loss of trust in the media, particularly by those who are already marginalised in our society.  

The Reuters Institute conducted an interesting study recently on trust in the media in four countries – United States, United Kingdom, India, and Brazil. 

Through discussions in focus groups in these countries, comprising representatives from marginalised communities, the study found that many such groups felt that the media either misrepresented them, or under-represented their concerns, or put out inaccurate news about them. This has resulted in not just lack of trust but in some instances even harmed such communities. 

I will leave readers with this observation in the report which I think is prescient and reflects accurately the real condition of the media in India. 

“The news media as an institution, especially in the UK, the US, and India, was often viewed as an extension of systems aligned to serve those in power – systems many felt excluded from… News media were rarely seen as catering to the entire public so much as reinforcing the interests of those already most privileged and powerful.”