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”. 

Wrestlers' Protest: It's Time To Reflect

 An Opinion piece I wrote in Outlook Magazine on the protest by women wrestlers against sexual harassment.

Link: https://www.outlookindia.com/sports/wrestlers-protest-it-s-time-to-reflect-magazine-293459

If mainstream media is to be believed, the protests by India’s award-winning wrestlers demanding action against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), have fizzled out. The reason being floated around is the late-night meeting on June 3 between the protesting wrestlers and Home Minister Amit Shah, India’s second most powerful man.

This is the kind of fake news perfected by some prominent television channels. Although the details of that meeting are still not known, Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik did reiterate that their protest would not end until Singh—accused of sexual harassment—is arrested.

That said, after the June 7 meeting with Sports Minister Anurag Thakur, the public phase of the protest has been suspended till June 15. The protestors were either persuaded, or bullied, into returning to their day jobs.

This, of course, suits this government perfectly. Its time-worn strategy to deal with protests that cause discomfort is to ignore them or use brute force to break them up. This was done in 2019-20 against those opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act. It was repeated during the protest by thousands of farmers demanding the withdrawal of the three farm acts. And it has been done now in the case of protesting women wrestlers.

This temporary pause, however, is an opportunity to reflect on what this particular protest, demanding action on charges of sexual harassment, tells us about our country, the current government, and the reality of violence against women in India.

First, it is evident that most people still do not understand that sexual harassment is a form of violence that impacts women deeply. It humiliates and scars the women at the receiving end of it. It is violence encased in silence. When some women dare to break the silence, they are ignored, disbelieved, belittled, and vilified.

Importantly, sexual harassment is about power, as in this case, where the alleged perpetrator is a politically powerful man, linked to the party in power. And even though the women accusing him are not powerless, they are still not heard.

Second, why has this protest failed to trigger a nationwide response and outrage on the scale we saw in 2012 after the gang rape of Jyoti Singh? After that incident, the protests spread in Delhi and beyond, to other cities. The difference between 2012 and 2023 is not just that then there was a different, more responsive government, but also a media that was critical of it and unafraid to amplify protests.

And finally, the main reason for a muted res­ponse this time is that our society fails to understand the nature of violence against women.

Rape, murder, dowry deaths—especially when these occur in big cities within the reach of the media—generate some interest and concern. This is especially so if the victim/survivor belongs to a higher class/caste and the perpetrators to a lower class/caste. Then there is public anger and demands for justice and exemplary punishment.

It is the other way around when the victim/survivor is of lower social status and the perpetrators are powerful by way of their class/caste, or political connections. In such cases, we hear a splutter of protest that soon subsides and disappears. Think of the rape and subsequent death of the Dalit woman in Hathras in 2020 and innumerable other similar cases that often go unreported.

The acts of violence that come into public view, and particularly those in a public space, loom larger than life. But the bigger arena of daily violence against women draws hardly any attention. These include acts of violence within the so-called “safe” spaces—homes, schools, colleges, workplaces. These go practically unnoticed, and unaddressed. Domestic violence, sexual harassment and child sexual abuse represent the largest percentage of incidents of sexual violence against women.

Looking back at the last month and more of the wrestlers’ protest, irrespective of whether this government finally acts against Singh or not, we must thank Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat and others for reminding us about this hidden violence. Despite immense personal cost, they have shown the courage to hold the powerful to account.

Manipur simmers, champions protest, but Modi's focus is on his new Parliament

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 2, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/06/02/manipur-simmers-champions-protest-but-modis-focus-is-on-his-new-parliament

We have witnessed a fortnight of high drama. The contrasting images – of the prime minister of a secular country walking into a new Parliament building accompanied by saffron-clad Hindu priests even as award-winning women wrestlers literally wrestled with the police to assert their right to protest – were riveting. 

One image told us that the concept of a secular state is now history. And the other, that in the new version of ‘democracy’, there is no room for protest or dissent. They also depicted where India is as a country today as captured by the Mumbai-based newspaper Mid-Day. 

The images also spoke to another reality: that one of India’s most voluble prime ministers cannot find a word to say to women demanding action against one of his powerful satraps on charges of sexual harassment.  

This even after widespread coverage of the protest in the international media, and the statement made by the International Olympic Committee which says: “The treatment of the Indian wrestling athletes over the weekend was very disturbing. The IOC insists that the allegations by the wrestlers are followed up on by an unbiased, criminal investigation in line with local law.” 

Ever since the wrestlers began their sit-in at Jantar Mantar, their protest has received widespread coverage, and strong comment in editorials and op-eds. In my view, one of the best commentaries is by leading sports journalist Sharda Ugra. It is a must read because it gives us a better sense of these women who have excelled in a non-traditional sport like wrestling. It also goes beyond the bare details of the protest to help us understand where these women are coming from, what they have endured, and why they know bad touch from good touch. 

Ugra writes that as “elite” athletes, “they have a far better knowledge of human anatomy and physiology than anyone pushing them around. They know how to exert pressure and use weight, maintain balance, use force, inflict and absorb pain. During their protest, the wrestlers have absorbed pain in many forms but chose not to inflict any.”

And she concludes with these powerful words: “India’s protesting women wrestlers have lived and worked with complex contradictions: their sport requires physical hyper-awareness, response and aggression from bodies policed through unyielding boundaries of honour and shame from a young age. At the very least, it should be through sport that these boundaries are crushed into the ground. Not by the police or by political policing.”

If after this you read the details in the FIRs that the Delhi police has finally filed on the basis of the complaints of sexual harassment by six adult women wrestlers and the father of a minor against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, you will understand better what they are saying. 

At the time of writing this column, there is a momentary pause in the protest as a five-day ultimatum has been served to the government by leaders of khap panchayats to move against Singh. Failing this, the protesting wrestlers will once again go to Haridwar, as they did on May 29, and immerse their hard-won medals and trophies in the Ganga river.

While these dramatic events were unfolding in Delhi, the seat of political power and the home of the national media, lurking in the shadows were the images of a state literally burning. The state of Manipur in northeast India has been caught in a cauldron on ethnic strife from May 3. Some of it has been reported. For the details you need to search independent platforms, especially those based in the region. 

Yet, it took India’s home minister Amit Shah 24 days before he finally made a statement, and that too from Guwahati, a short flight from Imphal, the capital of Manipur. What he said would have caused more grief than consolation to the troubled people of Manipur. He insisted that the trouble was due to the March 27 ruling of the Manipur High Court granting Scheduled Tribe status to the Meitei, who are the majority in the state. The ruling has since been challenged. 

The home minister should have known better. Nothing is so simple in the northeast or, for that matter, anywhere else in India. But especially in the northeast, a region where each state has a complex history, multiple cultures, tribes, dialects, and faiths. The heavy hand of Delhi has been a constant presence, in the form of the security forces backed by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. For decades, residents of these states have manoeuvred around this constant, and often ugly, reality. To dismiss the ongoing violence as the outcome of one court ruling indicates a serious deficit in Delhi’s understanding of the region. It reinforces the feeling of many ordinary people in the region that the “mainland” and Delhi do not care. 

As any journalist from the “mainland” who has reported from a northeastern state would know, there are few simple answers to be found to the problems or the conflicts in the region. The best that we can do is to listen to all sides, especially ordinary people instead of just the “authorities”, and report as honestly as we can without judgement. We can also use the chance to understand, at least a little bit, about the history and the distinctive culture of the region.

There have been several reports and articles that have attempted this kind of sensitivity. More often than not, these reports are written by someone from the region, and there are many excellent local journalists in every northeastern state. At times like this, the mainstream media ought to turn to this excellent, well-trained resource instead of parachuting journalists who may not have an adequate understanding of the region.

Take, for instance, this piece in Article-14 by Kimi Colney, a journalist based in Mizoram. It gives us a flavour of what ordinary people have suffered on both sides while at the same time placing in perspective the history of the tensions between the majority Meitei, who make up 53 percent of the population of 3.3 million, and the minority tribal groups that include the Kuki. It is worth taking the time to read this long article to get a fuller picture of the current conflagration in the state.

Interestingly, Colney also reports that people in Manipur are wondering why the prime minister is silent. She quotes Babloo Loitangbam, director of advocacy group Human Rights Alert: “What is most surprising is that till date the double engine government of Modiji (a reference to BJP governments in Imphal and New Delhi) has not made a statement on what is happening today...The honourable PM does not have five minutes to spare and make a statement, this is very strange.” 

In all conflicts, there is a trigger, but behind it is a long history that needs to be understood and acknowledged. Anyone with even a perfunctory understanding of the region would know that you cannot simply blame a high court ruling for the current violence in Manipur.   

Unfortunately, those in power at the centre, or even in the state, appear not to care about this, thereby aggravating the hurt and the frustration of the ordinary people of Manipur, both Meitei and Kuki, who are caught in the violence. An imposed peace from Delhi will not erase the history of mistrust that lies at the root of the current violence.

Update at 11.30 am, June 3: The FIRs contain allegations against Singh by seven wrestlers, including a minor, not 10 wrestlers. This has been corrected.