Funerals And Fight-Backs: Despair And Hope In India’s Free Press

At a recent conference on Indian journalism in Jaipur, the mood was sombre, a reflection of the tough times facing the free press. “To a lot of people who want to become journalists, my advice is, don’t go in that direction,” Sankarshan Thakur, national affairs editor of The Telegraph newspaper, said. He was addressing students at Talk Journalism, a non-profit initiative funded by the Vox Media Foundation.A senior editor who didn’t want to be named said he felt like he was “attending a funeral”. “It was very depressing,” he said, adding that he heard veterans other than Thakur give aspiring journalists similar advice..Obituaries for the free press have been written repeatedly during the last eight years. Most would agree that in 2022 the space for independent journalism is now largely confined to the digital media. Many of us who were mainstream journalists before 2014 are essentially unemployed or unemployable. We switched professions or now run digital platforms and write independently because our former workplaces are too scared to even publish fact-based commentary critical of the government.In Jaipur, the funeral analogy was also used at a session on political reporting by Aadesh Rawal, a consulting editor at Marathi newspaper Lokmat. “Hamari tehravi chal rahi hai,” (we are now at the 13th-day memorial-service stage) he said in a discussion, a video of which is not yet available online.Jairaj Singh, an editor with TOI Plus, who chaired the panel discussion, was taken aback by the fatalism expressed by political reporters from the Hindi media. “Each panellist launched into a soliloquy about how it was becoming next to impossible to report stories today,” he said..Every few weeks, India’s war on the free press hits a new low..We saw this most recently in July when Alt News fact-checker Mohammed Zubair was arrested for a Hindi-movie-linked meme he had tweeted in 2018. He spent three weeks in jail. Days before Zubair’s arrest, the Jharkhand Police arrested another independent journalist, Rupesh Kumar Singh.In 2020, the Free Speech Collective, an advocacy group, pointed to a “sharp rise in criminal cases lodged against journalists in India for their work” and said this had contributed to the “deterioration in the climate for free speech”. Since 2020, independent media have faced a rising spiral of arrests, death threats, and criminal cases. India’s ranking on the annual World Press Freedom Index fell eight points to 150 among 180 countries in 2022.“For me, it was a sharing of lessons, of what has worked and what hasn't worked, what strategies people could apply going forward,” said Scroll editor Naresh Fernandes, who had discussions with his colleagues on nuance in a polarised world, the subscription model and legal strategies. “What to do if you are arrested and they seize your phone, for example,” he said.“Journalism is more necessary than ever before in this time, and it was energising to meet people who keep practising it under very adverse circumstances,” added Fernandes..Participants discussed why audiences were moving away from the news; how to compete in an age when readers get news via Tik Tok and Instagram; how access to politicians rarely translates into relevant news for readers; how to restore faith in journalism; and how largely upper caste newsrooms are slowly upping Dalit representation..In a session on the impact of television news on contemporary politics, celebrity anchor Rajdeep Sardesai shredded news television. “I tell people to watch TV news in two situations: one, if someone’s blood pressure is low, and if you want to increase it; and, two, if someone in your house is in a coma and you want to wake them up.”“We have created a polarised society where you and I are enemies. There’s no scope for sanvaad (dialogue) on television, only vivaad (argument),” he added. “The TRPs (ratings) are highest of programmes that have the loudest noise.”Hope came from two journalists who were among the youngest speakers: Ismat Ara—who has been ‘auctioned’ on social media, targeted and harassed online by shady troll armies who use the TekFog app, and who has faced a case filed by the Uttar Pradesh Police—and Jyoti Yadav, a field reporter who said her work had gained importance in the era of prime time debates and the age of opinion.Yadav, a reporter with The Print, said she battled hostility on the ground because of polarised prime-time debates. “Your subject even Googles what your opinions are before deciding whether they will speak to you.” Yet rather than calling it the worst time for Indian journalism like she has heard many in her industry do, she preferred to look at it as a time when reporters must find the “most creative ways” to fight back. She gave the example of Uttar Pradesh’s underreported Covid deaths and how she spent three days counting bodies lining up outside crematoria so she could refute the state government’s data.Ara, who has been on the frontline of the war against the media, said she found hope in the fact that the conference made space for discussions about key subjects such as harassment of journalists..As journalists, we’re taught not to talk about ourselves. But I feel that it has become even more important to talk about what goes on behind the curtains of stories that we cover. In my session, I spoke about how there are hardly any mechanisms available to protect journalists, especially women, from dangers starting from physical threats to online trolling.Ismat Ara, Journalist.After her session, she was approached by many aspiring journalists, especially women. “On one hand, I thought I should just tell them all positive things about the profession, but I made it a point to tell them about the risks involved, as well as the mental stress that it induces,” she added. “There is no point in shying away from saying it how it is: journalism has become more dangerous and risky.”.Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.

Funerals And Fight-Backs: Despair And Hope In India’s Free Press

At a recent Indian journalism conference, the mood was sombre. Hope came from 2 journalists who were among the youngest speakers.

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