The stories the media sees only in a crisis are now being told by schoolchildren

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on August 28, 2026

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2026/08/28/the-stories-the-media-sees-only-in-a-crisis-are-now-being-told-by-schoolchildren

The fallout of the student protests at Jantar Mantar last month, culminating in the police crackdown on July 20, and the ripples created throughout the country have yet to settle.

One of the significant outcomes has been the way people across the country have understood the power of telling their own stories through reels uploaded on various social media platforms. In fact, July 20 illustrated how the absence of established media now makes no difference as participants themselves record and tell their own story.

The camera has now moved from the hands of the students in Jantar Mantar and other cities, to students in rural schools across the country. They are the ones now recording and complaining about pot-holed roads making the journey to school difficult, the virtual absence of toilets, or showing how those that exist are stinking unfinished structures, and that many schools have one teacher, who is also designated the principal, taking multiple classes.

These are stories that mainstream media ought to have been recording. It did so in the past. There was a time when television channels did longform stories on such issues. The visual format is always more powerful than the written word, and even more so now. But in those days, even newspapers had designated “development” and “education” correspondents who were assigned to investigate the reality behind government statistics. 

 

The gaze of mainstream media has now moved elsewhere. And as a result, the entrenched neglect of government schools, and health facilities is reported only sporadically, when there is a disaster. The event is covered; the process that led to the disaster is ignored.

Although the response of some state governments to these self-generated stories by rural children is a promising start, it addresses only a small part of a much larger problem of developmental neglect.

Take Maharashtra, one of the better-off states in India. There are tribal-dominated areas within driving distance of its capital, Mumbai, and some further afield that have remained virtual islands of neglect. For decades, journalists have reported on the Melghat area, for instance, where many tribal villages are virtually inaccessible.  They are in the news when one hears of a pregnant woman, carried in a hammock, who could not be taken to a hospital in time to survive. Pregnancy is not an incurable disease; and women in India of 2026 should not die in the process of giving birth.  Yet they do, and we know only when a media house bothers to invest in reporting on such regions.

In recent weeks, the pressure on the state government has built up as tribal students from these areas have spoken on camera about their schools, about the roads, about the state of their hostels (in one hostel three girls died of snake bite), and of the humiliation older girls go through when they are asked to do pregnancy tests if they are away from the hostel for some months.

The Maharashtra government has finally moved and set up a committee to investigate the entrenched problems of developmental neglect in these areas (there are 10.5 million tribal people in Maharashtra), particularly of health care. It has also decided to conduct an audit of ashram schools established for tribal children. It would be a shame if the media now steps back because this is precisely the time that the focus must remain on these islands of neglect to ensure that the promises made today are being implemented. That is our job as media in a democracy.

Then take Rajasthan, where the team from the Cockroach Janta Party, as part of its “School Theek Karo” campaign, was beaten up when it went to check on government schools. But the attention this has brought to the school system in the state has resulted in the state government allocating Rs 12,500 crore to set things right. Clearly, unless governments are pushed, they do not act. That is the lesson that the protests of these last months have reiterated once again. 

The process set in motion by the protests in Delhi will continue to unravel. But so will another story that has yet to be concluded.

On August 6, the Bombay High Court overturned the ruling of a trial court in Goa acquitting the well-known journalist and founder-editor of Tehelka magazine, Tarun Tejpal, of sexually assaulting his colleague. Tejpal has now appealed to the Supreme Court. Here are links to three articles out of several published after the judgement (here, here, here).

The ruling set off once again the debate on the incident that occurred in November 2013 in Goa, where Tejpal was accused by a young reporter working for the magazine, of sexual assault. The Goa police registered a case against him. But typical of the glacial pace of the Indian judicial system, the trial began in 2017 and the judgement exonerating him was delivered in 2021. 

But even before the judicial process had been set in motion, the media trial had begun. The accused was a well-known personality; the survivor was a young journalist at the start of her career. Even though she was entitled to her privacy and her name was not used publicly, in fact people knew. This is because her emails, phone chats, and videos were liberally shared with select members of the media and others who believed that Tejpal was being falsely accused because his journal had exposed many powerful people in the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Based on this material that was circulated, opinion pieces appeared in newspapers and on digital platforms that seemed to have already concluded that the survivor was guilty. One such piece appeared on this platform in 2014 (since taken down).  

As a media commentator, I have been asked what I thought about the opinion piece that appeared in Newslaundry. In my view, on any objective journalistic criteria, it should not have been accepted. It was the kind of writing that appears on personal blogs, or on social media platforms like Facebook. But any digital platform, attempting to be credible and independent, ought not to have used it.

That article, and many others that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the case against Tejpal need to be seen in the context of how the media conducts its own trials even before the justice system gets going and the bias that is often evident in the coverage of rape cases when the individual accused is a prominent man, and in this case one of their own, a journalist.

There are many instances from the past where the media has covered in detail high profile rape cases while those cases involving poor women get barely any coverage.  There is a considerable body of work documenting this inbuilt bias in the media on its coverage of crime in general, and sexual assault in particular, when the extent of coverage is determined by proximity and “the market” which is interested in news about “people like us”.  

The insensitivity towards the survivor begins with her identity. According to the law, we are not permitted to name her. In 2012, in the coverage of the gang rape in Delhi that led to protests, and important changes in the rape law, media houses decided to make up names for the survivor. The one that stuck was Nirbhaya. 

In less high-profile cases, such as the rape of a woman journalist in Mumbai just six months after the Delhi gang rape case, where a group of men accosted her and the photographer accompanying her in an abandoned textile mill estate and gang raped her, everything short of actually using her name was fair game for some newspapers. One sent a reporter to the building where she lived and asked the watchman whether the woman who had been raped lived there.

In another case, documented in the book “Missing half the story, Journalism as if gender matters” (Zubaan books), Sameera Khan – in the chapter “When survivors become victims” – writes about the 2009 case of an international student at the Tata Institute of Social Studies who was gang-raped by six men. The headline of the news item the day after the case was filed was: “Why was she with six men that night?” Typically, the story quoted parents saying how the men charged were “good” boys. Worse still, one newspaper ran sections of the FIR filed by the student giving intimate details of how the assault took place. All this before the charge sheet had been filed by the police. 

In an age where information gets out before it is vetted and verified, the plight of women who pick up the courage to go to the police and report sexual assault is now even more fraught. 

Let me end with this quote from Sameera Khan’s chapter by feminist Bishakha Datta, words that are worth heeding today:

“Rape is coerced sex; a crime. Only perpetrators can be held responsible for the crimes they commit – not victims. How is it that victims of any other crime are never blamed, but rape victims are always suspected of triggering rape? People who are robbed, murdered or otherwise assaulted are never held responsible…One can debate opinion; one cannot debate fact. Rape is, in fact a crime. Period. There are no two opinions around this.” 

Freedom of speech in India is slipping down a slippery slope

 

Broken News 

 

Published in Newslaundry on January 21, 2021

 

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/01/21/freedom-of-speech-in-india-is-slipping-down-a-slippery-slope

 

The good news we were all waiting for in these bleak times came with India's sensational win in the cricket Test series against Australia in Brisbane on January 19. But even as we celebrated good times for Indian cricket, the bad times for Indian journalism and freedom of speech and expression continued.

 

On the very day we celebrated India's cricket victory, a court in Kutch, Gujarat issued a non-bailable warrant against senior journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.  He was reportedly charged under Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code relating to defamation.

 

Other journalists, most notably in Kashmir, continue to face arrest and harassment and have been charged under various laws.  So why should we take note of this particular warrant against Guha Thakurta?

 

As this piece in Newslaundry explains, Guha Thakurta had been slapped with a defamation suit by the Adani group for an article he wrote in Economic and Political Weekly in 2017 alleging that the Adani group had benefitted to the tune of Rs 500 crores because the Modi government had altered special economic zone rules.

 

Earlier in the year, he had co-written another article on the Adani group which had raised questions about the group evading taxes of up to Rs 1000 crores.  It is the second article that invited legal action. The governing board of the journal chose to have the article pulled down from the website.  This led to Guha Thakurta's resignation after a short two-year stint as editor.

 

The same article had also appeared in The Wire, which was also charged but chose to contest it. The case was finally dismissed in 2019 after Adani unconditionally withdrew proceedings. Although the case against  The Wire, its editors and his two co-authors were withdrawn, those against Guha Thakurta remained.

 

A case that lay dormant since 2017 has suddenly found a new life in 2021 and the question everyone is asking is, why now?  There could be a simple explanation. On the other hand, this case could be something like a warning being sent out to other journalists digging into the functioning of a powerful industrialist who also happens to be a close ally of the prime minister. A few months ago, some questions were raised in the media about the Adani group taking over the Mumbai airport after it also acquired six other airports in India.  But nothing more has emerged about these acquisitions.

 

We also cannot forget the continuing incarceration of the young stand-up comic Munawar Faruqui. Picked up by the Indore police on January 1 for allegedly hurting religious sentiments (although the police admit they have no evidence to support this), he continues to be in jail along with five other friends. Each application for bail is turned down despite the lack of evidence as this story on the portal Article 14 sets out. And as if that was not enough, he now faces another case from Uttar Pradesh, for allegedly hurting religious sentiments. These are virtually copycat complaints, filed by members of the Sangh Parivar in states run by the BJP.

 

It is not hard to figure out why Faruqui is being targeted.  Had his name been Suresh or Ramesh or Surinder, would he have received the same treatment? Clearly not.  States like UP and now MP make no bones about sending out a message to all Muslims that they must behave, or else.  They cannot marry or even be seen out with a Hindu girl, and they must not be even suspected of cracking jokes about religion, lack of evidence notwithstanding. Freedom of expression, or freedom of choice, are clearly rights that are available only to some, not all, under these governments.

 

These two cases, especially that of Faruqui, should have set off alarm bells in this country amongst people who believe that the right to freedom of expression is central to our democratic values.  But sadly, with all else that is happening, this could be one more case that will be forgotten.  And who knows how long Faruqui and friends will languish in jail for a crime they did not commit. They are joining a galaxy of such individuals across India.

 

Freedom of expression, and freedom of the press, were also the subjects that featured in an important judgement delivered by the Bombay High Court just a day before the warrant against Guha Thakurta.  This was in response to a slew of public interest litigations by a group of former police officers and activists against the "media trial" conducted by some television channels on the Sushant Singh Rajput case.

 

The 251-page judgement contains much that ought to be debated within the media. It raises important questions about the importance of freedom of expression and how far it can be stretched. It discusses whether the media, particularly the electronic media, has been able to self-regulate as expected.  And it sets out some guidelines for media coverage, especially of cases involving death by suicide as in the Rajput case.

 

The court singled out two channels, Times Now and Republic, finding their coverage of the case, "prima facie contemptuous" and stated that they played the role of "investigator, prosecutor as well as the judge".  The judgement is scathing when it writes:

 

"In an attempt to out-smart each other (for reasons which we need not discuss here), these two TV channels started a vicious campaign of masquerading as the crusaders of truth and justice and the saviours of the situation thereby exposing, what in their perception, Mumbai Police had suppressed, caring less for the rights of other stakeholders and throwing the commands of the CrPC and all sense of propriety to the winds."

 

But that said, the court held that it would not be useful to pursue contempt proceedings against the two channels. Instead it discussed why the guidelines that had already been laid down by the Press Council of India (PCI), on coverage of death by suicide (which apply only to the print media), and the advisory sent out by the News Broadcasters Authority (NBA) last year, were not being followed.

 

The judgement concludes that the self-regulatory authority set up by the NBA has failed to check the channels that violate these guidelines. It also faults the government for not stepping in despite complaints that clearly related to violations of the provisions of the Programme Code set out under the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act.

 

It recommends that until such time as a proper and effective way to regulate the electronic media is set up, the PCI guidelines on coverage of cases relating to death by suicide should also apply to the electronic media.  And it also outlines guidelines for the media and that violating these could invite contempt of court. 

 

It remains to be seen whether such a judgement will tone down the hysterical reportage in some channels on such cases.  However, the question that the media as a whole must discuss is whether courts should be laying down guidelines for media reporting.

 

In the light of the Faruqui case, I will leave readers with the following passage in the judgement, that quotes from the Supreme Court's ruling in the LIC vs. Manubhai D. Shah (Prof.), reported in (1992) 3 SCC 637.  I believe it has a particular relevance for these times:

 

"The words ‘freedom of speech and expression’ must, therefore, be broadly construed to include the freedom to circulate one’s views by words of mouth or in writing or through audio-visual instrumentalities. It, therefore, includes the right to propagate one’s views through the print media or through any other communication channel e.g. the radio and the television. Every citizen of this free country, therefore, has the right to air his or her views through the printing and/or the electronic media subject of course to permissible restrictions imposed under Article 19(2) of the Constitution. The print media, the radio and the tiny screen play the role of public educators, so vital to the growth of a healthy democracy. Freedom to air one’s views is the lifeline of any democratic institution and any attempt to stifle, suffocate or gag this right would sound a death-knell to democracy and would help usher in autocracy or dictatorship."