Last year's Nobel Peace Prize, which went to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, turned the world's attention on the state of press freedom in the Philippines and Russia. Ressa, founder and chief executive of the online news portal 'Rappler', who has fearlessly exposed the abuse of power by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his cohorts, faces multiple criminal suits for her pains. Muratov, editor-in-chief of the newspaper 'Novaya Gazeta', is considered to be one of the most prominent torchbearers of freedom of speech in President Vladimir Putin's Russia. Winners of the Peace Prize, both are in fact on the front lines of a war in their respective countries — the war to defend free speech, the battle to report the truth in a democracy teetering on the edge of authoritarianism.
The Philippines ranks 138 out of 180 countries on the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, Russia comes up at 150. And India, ranked 142, is firmly in the midst of this august company.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has trashed India's PFI ranking and said that it does not agree with it. The government maintains that journalists in this country are free to practise their profession without fear or favour. And yet, every day, there is fresh evidence of the growing pressure on the media to play the role of uncritical (read: adulatory) devotees of the powers that be.
The latest blow to India's freedom of the press has come in the form of the new guidelines for the accreditation of journalists. Issued by the Press Information Bureau, accreditation is needed to access and report from the government's buildings and offices. The new guidelines contain an array of conditions under which it can be revoked, such as if the journalist is "charged with a serious cognizable offence", or "acts in a manner which is prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence," and so on.
These conditions are, of course, open to subjective interpretation and have deliberately been left vague. Also, there is no word on who will decide if the journalist is guilty as charged or what amounts to "defamation". Incidentally, the charge of criminal defamation is routinely used by the powerful in India to slap multi-million rupee suits on journalists who have exposed their alleged misdeeds.
The point is that these charges, for which remedies are available under existing laws, are already being invoked to suppress free speech — whether that of a stand-up comic's or of journalists reporting from the ground. To include them in the accreditation guidelines is a further attempt to intimidate and constrain the media, to wave the stick about, as it were, and convey the message that journalists can be punished at will if they fall foul of the government while they go about their work.
Journalists' bodies such as the Editors' Guild of India have strongly deplored the guidelines and urged the government to revoke them. However, no one should be surprised by this fresh salvo against the independence of media persons. Freedom of the press, a crucial pillar of democracy, has been under an incremental attack in India in recent times. After the onset of the pandemic in 2020, restrictions were placed on journalists entering and reporting from Parliament. Those restrictions have still not been removed.
More importantly, a growing number of journalists has been arrested and had cases filed against them under grave charges like terror-related activities, sedition, criminal conspiracy, the spreading of communal disharmony, and so on. Last November, the Tripura police charged 102 people, including several journalists, with the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for their social media posts related to communally motivated incidents of arson and vandalism in the state.
In October 2020, Siddique Kappan, a journalist from Kerala who was on his way to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh to report on the rape and murder of a young girl, was picked up by the police and arrested under the UAPA. Eighteen months on, Kappan, who used to write on issues like communalism, and against whom the UP police have not been able to furnish any substantive evidence, still remains in jail. His bail application, vigorously opposed by the state government, has only just been admitted.
Kappan's case stands out for the impunity with which the state has begun to criminalise journalists who are simply doing their job. There are, however, hundreds of media persons who have been slapped with FIRs, arrested, hounded, harassed, or viciously trolled online because their reports have not matched the narratives put out by the ruling party, because their version of 'facts' and 'truth' have been felt to be inimical to the image and interests of the government of the day. And this while television channels and media sympathetic to the BJP-ruled government have got away with broadcasting the most noxious sorts of rhetoric, clearly meant to inflame passions and stoke divisive feelings amongst the people.
According to a study by the Free Speech Collective, between 2010 and 2020, 154 journalists in India were arrested, detained, interrogated or served show-cause notices for their professional work. Of these, 67 were recorded in 2020 alone. Interestingly, 73 of the 154 cases documented in the study took place in BJP-ruled states. Physical attacks on journalists have also been on the rise. The study mentions at least 198 cases of serious assault against media persons between 2014-19, with 36 of them taking place in 2019 alone.
The sustained attack on journalists in recent years is, of course, part of a larger strategy to stifle dissent and muzzle every voice of criticism — be it from activists, students, academics, artists, writers, or stand-up comics. However, it is of particular significance in the case of journalists, whose job it is to speak truth to power and hold the government accountable for its actions. Paralyse the media with threats, intimidation and attacks, bludgeon every part of it into submission and turn everyone into your cooing supporter, and you succeed in gouging out the very bedrock of a democracy.
In 2018, the information and broadcasting ministry had announced that journalists would be stripped of their accreditation if they were found to have spread "fake" news. A huge uproar led to that rule being scrapped. Don't bet on a similar rollback this time. The creeping onslaught on the media has gathered pace in the last four years, the animus against non-pliant journalists has hardened even more.
The silver lining in this bleak scenario is that in India, too, there will always be the Maria Ressas and Dmitry Muratovs who will fight for their independence and put the truth out there.
(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
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