The text below is a slightly edited version of the author’s remarks to the M20 Media Freedom Summit held online in Delhi on September 6, 2023 by the M20 Organising Committee, which comprises 11 editors from India and a former judge of the Supreme Court.
Thank you, Siddharth, and thank you for doing this. It’s a good start that you’ve been able, in a short time, to get so many people, so many voices and viewpoints together in the cause of defending media freedom. Of course, in the context of the G20 meeting.
Where do I start? India has a 250-year-old history of press. Its role in the freedom struggle has been important. Today, it is still quite diverse and pluralistic in terms of numbers. I read from a report by Reporters Without Borders that India has about 100,000 newspapers (perhaps an exaggeration because many of them will exist only on paper), 380 TV channels and a number of independent players.
There are vast spaces for the media in India.
It’s very hard to generalise but taking my cue from the report of Reporters Without Borders 2023 ‘World Press Freedom’ – look at the overall situation. They say it’s very serious. In seven out of ten countries, the environment for journalism is bad and it’s satisfactory in only three out of ten. It is very serious in 31 countries and territories, difficult in 42, problematic in 55 and good or satisfactory in 52 countries. I suppose India would fall in the ‘difficult’ category. I hope it is not in a ‘very serious’ category yet. Although it’ll fall. With the media as a whole, with independent journalists, in the Union territory now (used to be a state) of Jammu and Kashmir it is certainly in a serious situation.
Coming to recent developments. The Editors Guild of India, a very representative and sober body representing many interests, sent a fact-finding team to the little northeastern state of Manipur where fierce, deadly, murderous, ethnic violence has been witnessed. Attacks particularly on the minority. A press statement by the Editor’s Guild released yesterday, clearly points out its mission. Which was to look into the media’s coverage of ethnic violence in the state and the performance of the media. In doing this, they met a cross-section of reporters, editors, civil society activists, public intellectuals, women affected by the violence, and tribal spokespersons affected by the violence. They also met, it’s important to add, representatives of security forces operating there.
Criminal cases have been launched against them by the police. The chief minister of the state who’s clearly playing on one side has made a fierce attack on this journalistic body, this highly respected body as “anti-state” and “anti-national”, when they issued a statement. A criminal case has also been launched. Nothing will come out of it perhaps. But the “process is the punishment,” as they say.
I refer to Kashmir. Some of you would have read about what happened to the Kashmir Walla, an independent voice. Their access through its website has been shut down, its social media accounts have been blocked, and its founder, [Fahad Shah], has been in jail for two years. Several Kashmiri journalists – Asif Sultan, Sajad Gul, Irfan Mehraj and others – have been arrested. You don’t exactly know the number of journalists arrested in India. They were being tracked because some of them applied for bail. They get bail and immediately another case is registered against them.
Coming to the rest of India. I think there was a time when I believed that India was in an enviable position, certainly in the ranks of developing countries, with respect to freedom of speech and expression, of which freedom of the press is an indispensable part. That was 40 years ago. We had an Emergency between 1975 and 1977 when there was total censorship. We came out of it. I think the press, particularly the Indian language press, (there was no news TV those days in India) came out in a very vigorous, energetic way; relishing its independence after the Emergency regime, which lasted two and a half years, was defeated in a general election. There was a complete rejection of what it stood for.
The press was independent. There was investigative journalism, there were many voices and we really rejoiced in freedom of the press at that time. Over the years, the situation has been up and down but after the Emergency, I cannot think of any time where the situation has been so difficult for the news media as a whole.
Now, of course you have daily newspapers – some of them with vast circulations and readerships, particularly the Indian language newspapers in print as well as on the digital platforms. The trend is that print circulation has been gradually coming down but it’s still a very considerable force. It is still the leading factor for revenues – newspaper advertising, although the share of advertising revenue is coming down. Then, you have a large number of news television channels and there I think there is a lot of bad news. All the major channels in English have been taken over by big businesses, usually supporting the BJP government, the Narendra Modi government.
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The most shocking thing in recent times was the takeover of an independent news channel in English called NDTV, taken over by Gautam Adani’s Adani Group and the whole thing has changed. There are a couple of channels which are notorious for playing a propaganda role. They really do hit jobs. They play along with disinformation on social media and do hit jobs on those who are independent and speak out.
This is a clear trend in India today but of course we don’t know enough about the performance of the TV channels in various Indian languages because that’s a vast space. We need to do research to discover that. I know that the state where I live and work, Tamil Nadu, I think, has a much better situation on the TV news channels. There are other states where perhaps a similar situation prevails.
I don’t want to sound too pessimistic about this, paint too dark a picture, but if you look at the English channels, the so-called national channels, I think, we have some of the worst TV news media in the world. I would say comparable perhaps to some of the worst British tabloids – but this is on television.
If you look at the overall picture, India’s ranking with respect to media freedom globally has been coming down steadily in an uninterrupted fashion over the last nine years or so, since when this government has been in power. For very good reasons. The RSF reports and the index clearly explained their methodology – they look at the political context, they look at the legal situation, they look at the economic situation and also with regard to journalist safety. The Committee to Protect Journalists justifiably called India one of the most “dangerous” places for journalists to work.
This is not for all journalists, these are selected hits and we have the data which speak for themselves. There’s no time to go into the details but for those interested, just look at the data on the number of work-related killings of journalists and media workers. It says of the 1,596 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in connection with their work, 62 are from India. That’s from 1992 when the data began to be gathered. These journalists were invariably reporting either corruption, political misconduct, crime or human rights violations. They were doing serious reporting.
Most of them were small-time journalists, and independent journalists in remote areas. Not all of them but some prominent journalists including editors have been targeted and knocked out and taken out. The whole list is quite depressing if you look at it. it continues and the situation, if you look at the numbers, has got worse. Ten journalists were murdered across India over the decade beginning May 2004 but in the nine years beginning May 2014, when the present BJP government has been in office, the number is already the toll has risen to 19.
Well, that’s not the worst part of it. The CPJ also looks at what it calls “impunity.” In the Global Impunity Index, unfortunately, India figures in all 15 of the indices, since the time they began to be compiled. As unfortunate as it is, India is a founding and permanent member, it appears, of this cloud of shame where journalists get killed in connection with their work and no final justice is rendered. In fact, CPJ has found that globally 80% of such cases, the killers go scot-free. Something is deeply wrong with the system that allows this to go on and on.
In India, not everybody is targeted but journalists who are considered inconvenient or dangerous are targeted. Although even worse than the killing perhaps is the fact that the killers know that they enjoy impunity under the law. We also have other cases. Independent media players, digital players, and news publishers like The Wire were raided by the police on completely ridiculous charges, based on a complaint given by the ‘IT’ head of the ruling party.
Recently Newsclick, another independent player who did a good job in reporting on the farmers’ agitation has been targeted. Ironically, it’s a story done by the New York Times about the former businessman and now philanthropist Neville Roy Singham. They did a major story which included a couple of lazy references to Newsclick, saying that they were putting out Chinese talking points. Then, and I say this without exaggeration, a McCarthyite campaign has been unleashed on social media supported by some of the TV channels I referred to, targeting this and the founder and editor of this very small digital venture – progressive digital venture – is now at risk of being arrested on unspecified charges.
Journalists are being arrested on the laws relating to terrorism – the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and also the [equivalent] state Acts, which are draconian – in a targeted way. But it’s the fate of the Editors Guild of India, which in recent months has issued a number of statements raising concerns, [which is alarming].
One other thing that is happening is the censorship of the internet. Internet shutdowns have become extremely frequent in the world, with perhaps the largest number taking place in India. We are also concerned about a set of rules framed under the IT Act of 2000 which permits the executive, the central government, to block and take down any content that they deem to be inimical to National Security and there seems to be no redress.
The Information Technology (IT) Rules 2021, within brackets Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, as they call it, is an important part of this internet censorship that is underway. I am sad that some high courts have given stay orders interim stay orders against it but the government is bent on going ahead. Under the proposed amendment, there’ll be a new category of takedown where any information identified as ‘true’ or ‘false’ by the new enforcers of the factual unit of the Press Information Bureau – the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, could be taken down.
Finally, I must add that we have one of the world’s largest disinformation industries, mostly operated by the followers of the present dispensation. They’re known as bhakts. We have the largest number of Facebook users in the world, the largest number of WhatsApp users in the world, the largest number, perhaps, of Instagram users and so on. They really descend on journalism that they don’t like.
It’s a difficult situation and I don’t want it to end on a sad note. I think there are many voices and there are many spaces where people are speaking up. After the attack on Newsclick… there has been an impressive movement of solidarity with a large number of academics, journalists and even former judges coming forward. So the battle lines are drawn and we hope we’ll be able to stop this repression against the media which Siddharth referred to at the outset in India. Thank you.
N. Ram is former editor-in-chief, The Hindu, India.