The 2024 election didn’t change the media much. But readers can hope for better this year

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on Jan 3, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/01/03/the-2024-election-didnt-change-the-media-much-but-readers-can-hope-for-better-this-year

New Year resolutions are made to be broken, we are told. And hopes and expectations for the New Year are also, probably, destined to lead to disappointment. But there’s no harm in hoping that some things will change, as far as the media is concerned, even if much remains the same in 2025.

Will Indian mainstream media, that has favoured the prostrate pose by and large, sit up even a little in 2025? Is that expecting too much after a decade of being mostly supine? Let me start with one example that holds out a sliver of hope that perhaps something is stirring. 

On New Year’s Eve, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh “apologised” to the people of Manipur. He said he wanted to say sorry to the people of the state for what had happened since May 3, 2023. “I really feel regret and would like to apologise to all natives,” he said. But he then went on to say, “Whatever happened has happened. We have to forgive and forget the past mistakes and make a new beginning.”

Manipuris on all sides cannot forget leave alone forgive a government that has looked the other way for 20 months as hundreds have been killed and thousands displaced in the ethnic conflict that has paralysed this northeastern state. 

Singh’s apology drew sharp editorials in leading English language newspapers, including Indian Express, The Hindu, Times of India, The Telegraph and Hindustan Times. However, while all said that the apology was “too little and too late”, it was The Hindu that called out the culpability of the central government.   

Referring to the annual home ministry report on the northeastern region, which attributed 77 percent of the increase in violence to Manipur, the paper reminded the government that while acknowledging this is a beginning, it is not enough. 

Furthermore, by declaring in the report that the Northeast was on the path to peace, the home ministry was effectively “burying its head in the sand”. 

Perhaps this is just a nuance, but it is interesting that while all the newspapers criticised Biren Singh, only a few underlined the role of the central government in the on-going strife in the state. 

The centre has not just failed to haul up the state government but has continued to treat the ethnic violence in the state as a law-and-order problem and refused to acknowledge the partisan policies of the state government. 

This hesitation to call out the centre and the prime minister, who has continued his silence even as a state in the union continues to burn, suggests that mainstream print media continues to tread carefully. One had hoped, given the results of the 2024 general elections and the BJP’s reduced numbers in the Lok Sabha, that national newspapers would have felt more confident to be critical of the central government and its policies. That they would have followed up and investigated how the content of the boastful advertisements from the central and state governments that they willingly carry does not reflect the reality on the ground. This has not happened and as of now, looks unlikely that it will.

Therefore, my new year hope that mainstream print media (in English) will develop something of a spine is probably misplaced.

The other hope is that the government will junk the Broadcasting Services Bill, which has now been pushed onto the backburner.

That too might be wishful thinking as the very fact that such a law was formulated in the first place indicated an intent – to curb the few independent spaces that exist online. There is no sign that this intent has changed so far. 

So, one can expect that in one form or the other, the pinpricks by independent digital media will be sought to be checked or squashed by the central government and some state governments.

Will independent journalists, those who dare to speak out or write critically, and the platforms that carry their reports and comments be spared the rod in the form of threats, arrests, income tax raids etc that have been the norm in the last years?

We can always wish and hope for a change of heart in the government but again, as with the broadcasting bill, there is no indication that the intent to hound critics has disappeared. It might be somnolent at this moment. But probably not for very long. 

As for journalists in jail, of the seven who are still in prison, the majority are from Jammu and Kashmir. I am thinking of Asif Sultan, former editor of Kashmir Narrator, who was rearrested after spending five years in jail. There is Sajad Gul of Kashmir Walla who was arrested in 2022 but released on bail in October last year and Majid Hyderi and Irfan Mehraj who are still in jail.

Despite elections having been held in the union territory, here too there is little to indicate that the elected government led by Omar Abdullah of the National Conference will make any difference to the future of these journalists. In fact, one of the few reports in a mainstream newspapers that tells us about the powerlessness of the Abdullah government is this report by Peerzada Ashiq in The Hindu where he writes: “It is becoming more and more evident that Raj Bhavan and the Chief Minister’s Office are not just two power centres but two different ideological forces.” And the power centre that remains dominant is controlled by the Centre. 

Despite all this, we can and should hope for better times. Not because we believe that there will be an unexpected change of heart in the men who run this country. That they will realise the importance of a free, critical and independent media in a democracy. But because despite intimidation and lack of resources, independent media still survives, and courageous journalists still go out and do stories that the government would prefer are never told.

Here are a couple of the many stories that are noteworthy from recent days. Take the time to read them to realise the vast difference between what is dished out to you every day in the newspaper that you read, that is if you read one at all, and the kind of journalism that is needed for democracy to survive in this country.

Omar Rashid, who was once The Hindu’s UP correspondent, has written this fascinating report in The Wire.  He exposes how the UP government is literally spoon-feeding the media on the kind of stories it ought to be doing in the lead up to the Maha Kumbh Mela. This includes suggesting who should be interviewed and the angles that ought to be explored. A letter from the publicity department of the state government to the media spells out no less than 70 story ideas, something even an experienced editor would be hard put to assemble. Having read this, it would be interesting to see what the media does report on Maha Kumbh Mela.

The other noteworthy story is this two-part series by Shreegireesh Jallihal of the Reporters’ Collective. It exposes how the Modi government has gone about “fixing” global indices such as the Global Hunger Index, in which India was ranked an unflattering 102 out of 171 countries. The strategy involves going beyond dismissing them as inaccurate or discrediting them, which the government does each time a global ranking is announced. Instead, it is developing its own ranking based on what it claims is accurate data.  

In the end, rankings are supposed to represent a ground reality that the media must explore. It rarely does. Here is one reality check provided by the digital platform Article 14 where three elderly women workers speak about the struggle to access security schemes announced with so much fanfare by the UP government, and amplified by the media.

Beyond PM’s front-page guarantees, silence on Ladakh, and threat to digital media

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on February 9, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/02/09/beyond-pms-front-page-guarantees-silence-on-ladakh-and-threat-to-digital-media

The prime minister has spoken. He speaks all the time, but when he decides to speak in Parliament, we are compelled to listen. It is an institution that he visits infrequently. However, given that the 17th Lok Sabha is winding down as we face a general election, we must pay heed to his words. 

Apart from the predictable rhetorical flourishes for which the PM is now well-known, what continues to amaze those who care to listen carefully is his skill at proclaiming half-truths, or even untruths, as unquestionable facts. 

Electoral politics is a battle of perception, and visibility. And we have seen in the last decade how Narendra Modi, and the Bharatiya Janata Party have mastered this. 

Given that Modi has been the prime minister for a decade, everything and anything he says or does is news. In addition, he has a dedicated space on radio for his Mann ki Baat monthly programme, and even a YouTube channel.

 

As if this was not enough, we have been deluged with daily front-page ads in leading national newspapers. Without fail, at least one national newspaper will display below its masthead on the front page an advertisement that has Modi’s face and the words “Modi Sarkar ki Guarantee”. The ad boasts of schemes launched by the government that have apparently been brilliantly successful. 

 

As these are advertisements, there is no space to question the so-called facts stated in them. But just below the advertisement is often a front-page story quoting the prime minister. Even as the media feels obliged to report everything he says, is there no space to do a fact check on what he says?

No one expects mainstream media, given its current state, to call out partial truths uttered by the most powerful person in this country. Fortunately, we still have space to do this on social media and on independent digital news platforms.

A video worth watching on YouTube is this one by former television anchor Abhisar Sharma. He dissects the prime minister’s speeches in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha made earlier this week. He looks specifically at some of the PM’s comments about India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and establishes the half-truths and sometimes outright lies that were spoken.

Sharma is one of several well-known television journalists who now run channels on YouTube as there is no space for their kind of plain speaking on mainstream television channels. Incidentally, the subscriber base for YouTube in India is an estimated 462 million.

In print media, fortunately, there is still space to expose some of this wrong information being sent out to the entire country. Apart from blaming the Nehru-Gandhi family for all the ills the country faces today, the prime minister also ticked off state governments in the south for raising their voices against what they perceive as inequity in allocation of central resources.  

There is no discrimination towards the southern states, the PM insisted. It is leaders from the southern states who are creating a “north-south divide”. 

The facts, in this case too, tell a different story. Some newspapers, like Hindustan Times, are using data to inform people, such as these charts by Roshan Kishore. Ideally, people ought to go through such data charts and see for themselves why the south has a legitimate grievance. However, in these distracted times, perhaps it is asking too much of the lay reader to spend time going through such data charts. As a result, in the battle of perception, the accusation that a north-south divide is being artificially created by the opposition wins, while the facts lose.

If you are someone who turns to social media for news, comment, and information, as an increasing number of people are doing in the country, you will come across much that escapes the eye of the established media. Sometimes when you watch videos on social media, you wonder whether the reports are really about the country we live in.

Take for instance, the recent developments in Ladakh. In the last week, tens of thousands of Ladakhis have been out on the streets demanding full statehoodfor what became a union territory on August 5, 2019, when the Modi government read down Article 370. 

Size matters and when thousands of people demonstrate, the media generally has to take note. Yet despite the size of the protests in Ladakh, you will find hardly any reports on them in print media, and next to nothing on television. As a result, most news consumers in this country would not have a clue about what is happening in Ladakh. 

Ladakhis are protesting because they say there is no one to represent them. While Jammu and Kashmir might have assembly elections later this year, Ladakh does not have an assembly. It had district councils when it was still a part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. When will they have elections, and who will they elect, they ask. 

The best-known environmentalist and civil society activist in Ladakh is Sonam Wangchuk. He has joined the protests and threatened to go on an indefinite fast. He wants the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which safeguards the rights of tribals on their land, to be extended to Ladakh. Yet although Wangchuk is a prominent personality, you do not hear his voice in mainstream media. For that, you need to make time to watch videos like this one in The Print.

The voices from Ladakh are not getting through, either to the rest of the country, or to the government, because the media is not amplifying them. This works in favour of a government that chooses to ignore protests like these and will say something, or do something, only when it suits its larger agenda.

The Ladakhis should pay heed to the way Manipur has been handled by this government. What began in May last year is still festering. It has the potential to blow up into a major conflagration that could affect all of the northeast. Yet, the prime minister has not found the words to say anything about Manipur. And the only solution that the home minister has devised is to say the border between India and Myanmar will be fenced! 

Meanwhile, mainstream media has switched off Manipur. Once again, the only news available of the ongoing violence in the state is on social media. 

This is why the small window of freedom that social media, and independent digital news platforms, provide must be protected. 

Irrespective of the outcome of the 2024 general elections, it is now clear that when political power and business are aligned, the space for free expression in the media gets restricted. 

Additionally, when a government brings in laws that will create more hurdles for independent media, as this government has done with changes in the IT Rules that will permit it to set up a “fact-checking unit” (currently challenged in courts) and the proposed Broadcasting Bill, the chances of it surviving are even dimmer. 

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”.