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Is Indian press independent?
Journalists have turned into politicians and newspapers into projectors of a particular point of view.
Kuldip Nayar
THE press in India has teased or even irritated the government but has enjoyed freedom. Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister, said that the government disliked the liberties taken by the press.
Yet, committed to democratic values as he was, he said: "I would have a completely free press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed or regulated press."
Unlike her father, Mrs Indira Gandhi was easily upset by press criticism. She was the one who clamped censorship for the first time in free India when she imposed the emergency (1975-77). Today, there is no emergency or censorship. But conformism has taken over the press. It is too nice, too afraid and ever ready to leave out.
The government, too, sees to it that the press, by and large, does not cross the line which the establishment has in view. The modus operandi generally involves pressure exerted on the proprietors.
I know of an influential English daily editor who is in the bad books of the government. He criticises the establishment too often for its liking and carries too many articles which are critical of it. The management is under pressure.
The BJP-led government of Atal Behari Vajpayee was no better. The residence and the business premises of a weekly's proprietor were raided after it had carried a photograph of "someone" in "certain company." The editor had to meet the high-ups to have the government off his proprietor's back.
The states are worse. They use all methods, including the denial of government advertisements, to force newspapers to fall in line. In some cases, a chief minister makes the paper's defiance a personal issue. Eenadu, a leading Telugu daily from Andhra Pradesh, had to suffer in the process.
The paper published a story about the chief minister's men buying at a pittance 376 acres of land belonging to farmers. The government first issued a land acquisition notification for building an outer Ring Road. Later, the land was de-notified to benefit the chief minister's men. What they bought at Rs15 lakh to Rs25 lakh an acre was sold at Rs10 crore.
Sensing that action against Eenadu could boomerang, the chief minister resorted to underhand methods. He had the Margadarshi Financers, an outfit connected with Eenadu, which accepted deposits from people, raided. The Reserve Bank of India had cleared the company. This did not matter to the chief minister. The Supreme Court stepped in and gave the financers a stay.
When the ruling party slips, it knows no bounds. Take the current instance of highhandedness in Kerala. The state CPI (M) is after a Malyalam daily, Mathrubhumi, and its editor. The paper published that the party's official organ, Deshabhimani, had received two crore rupees from two sons of a lottery king facing several criminal charges.At the behest of Prakash Karat, the CPI (M) secretary-general, the state committee decided to return the money. This only angered its functionaries who threatened the editor and the paper from public platforms.
The Editors' Guild condemned the harassment meted out to the paper and its editor. Yet, the party's central politburo did not utter a word of criticism. What use is the freedom of expression, which the constitution guarantees, when the establishment exerts pressure on the press? In a free society, the press has a duty to inform the public without fear or favour.
At times, it is an unpleasant job, but it has to perform because a free society is founded on free information. If the press were to publish only government handouts or official statements, there would be no one to pinpoint lapses, deficiencies, mistakes or frauds.
My feeling is that the press, like other institutions, has not regained the vigour and the dedication it reflected before the emergency. Till then, New Delhi would scrupulously avoid any measure which suggested even remotely restrictions on the press. Rajiv Gandhi's was the last effort to control the press in the name of the anti-defamation bill. There was such protest throughout India that he had to withdraw the measure.
Yet, the same journalists caved in during the emergency. I recall as many as 103 scribes turning up at the Press Club in New Delhi within three days of the imposition of the emergency to condemn censorship.
But, subsequently, they developed cold feet and literally danced to the tune of V.C. Shukla, Indira Gandhi's Goebbels. The Pakistani journalists, who faced martial law, proved to be of sterner mettle. They bore the punishment of lashes in their struggle to uphold the freedom of the press.
After the emergency, the Indian press were at hammer and tongs over the excesses committed by Indira Gandhi and her son, Sanjay Gandhi, an extra-constitutional authority. This was the catharsis of journalists for their cowardly silence at a time when they should have spoken out. Yet, nearly every journalist "claimed" to have "sabotaged" the emergency from within as he was a Trojan horse, not a collaborator.
This is when the management began to play a bigger role. It had seen through the courage of the paper tigers. The management took direct interest in the editorial side of the paper. What was once a profession changed into a business. The Working Journalists' Act, legislated by Nehru to give a permanent tenure to scribes, was substituted by a contract system. Journalists who had a poor record of standing up to challenges did not have the courage to oppose the measure.
Today, our print media is suffering from a mad disease which has played havoc with newspapers. I will call it the tabloid syndrome. You open any paper in the morning. The pages are full of pictures of young models, super models, actors and actresses and fashion designers - names you have not even heard of - garnished with "information" on what they love to eat, what kind of dress they like to wear, what they do when they relax, what they think of love and sex and such trivia.
This shallow, unthinking attitude gets reflected even in the news stories and articles that are printed in the papers. Reporters do not always cross-check the information they get. They often write one-sided versions of events and about people who do not matter - absolute non-entities.
Often good stories are not followed up properly. Planted stories make the front pages. Even factual information is often incorrect. Journalists have turned into politicians and newspapers into projectors of a particular point of view. News columns have come to be editorialised in the name of interpretative reporting. The press, no doubt, has clout, more than it ever had. It is free as well. But, is it independent?
The writer is a senior columnist based in New Delhi.
Courtesy: Internet
http://www.thebangladeshtoday.com/viewpoints.htm#view-02
Journalists have turned into politicians and newspapers into projectors of a particular point of view.
Kuldip Nayar
THE press in India has teased or even irritated the government but has enjoyed freedom. Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister, said that the government disliked the liberties taken by the press.
Yet, committed to democratic values as he was, he said: "I would have a completely free press with all the dangers involved in the wrong use of that freedom than a suppressed or regulated press."
Unlike her father, Mrs Indira Gandhi was easily upset by press criticism. She was the one who clamped censorship for the first time in free India when she imposed the emergency (1975-77). Today, there is no emergency or censorship. But conformism has taken over the press. It is too nice, too afraid and ever ready to leave out.
The government, too, sees to it that the press, by and large, does not cross the line which the establishment has in view. The modus operandi generally involves pressure exerted on the proprietors.
I know of an influential English daily editor who is in the bad books of the government. He criticises the establishment too often for its liking and carries too many articles which are critical of it. The management is under pressure.
The BJP-led government of Atal Behari Vajpayee was no better. The residence and the business premises of a weekly's proprietor were raided after it had carried a photograph of "someone" in "certain company." The editor had to meet the high-ups to have the government off his proprietor's back.
The states are worse. They use all methods, including the denial of government advertisements, to force newspapers to fall in line. In some cases, a chief minister makes the paper's defiance a personal issue. Eenadu, a leading Telugu daily from Andhra Pradesh, had to suffer in the process.
The paper published a story about the chief minister's men buying at a pittance 376 acres of land belonging to farmers. The government first issued a land acquisition notification for building an outer Ring Road. Later, the land was de-notified to benefit the chief minister's men. What they bought at Rs15 lakh to Rs25 lakh an acre was sold at Rs10 crore.
Sensing that action against Eenadu could boomerang, the chief minister resorted to underhand methods. He had the Margadarshi Financers, an outfit connected with Eenadu, which accepted deposits from people, raided. The Reserve Bank of India had cleared the company. This did not matter to the chief minister. The Supreme Court stepped in and gave the financers a stay.
When the ruling party slips, it knows no bounds. Take the current instance of highhandedness in Kerala. The state CPI (M) is after a Malyalam daily, Mathrubhumi, and its editor. The paper published that the party's official organ, Deshabhimani, had received two crore rupees from two sons of a lottery king facing several criminal charges.At the behest of Prakash Karat, the CPI (M) secretary-general, the state committee decided to return the money. This only angered its functionaries who threatened the editor and the paper from public platforms.
The Editors' Guild condemned the harassment meted out to the paper and its editor. Yet, the party's central politburo did not utter a word of criticism. What use is the freedom of expression, which the constitution guarantees, when the establishment exerts pressure on the press? In a free society, the press has a duty to inform the public without fear or favour.
At times, it is an unpleasant job, but it has to perform because a free society is founded on free information. If the press were to publish only government handouts or official statements, there would be no one to pinpoint lapses, deficiencies, mistakes or frauds.
My feeling is that the press, like other institutions, has not regained the vigour and the dedication it reflected before the emergency. Till then, New Delhi would scrupulously avoid any measure which suggested even remotely restrictions on the press. Rajiv Gandhi's was the last effort to control the press in the name of the anti-defamation bill. There was such protest throughout India that he had to withdraw the measure.
Yet, the same journalists caved in during the emergency. I recall as many as 103 scribes turning up at the Press Club in New Delhi within three days of the imposition of the emergency to condemn censorship.
But, subsequently, they developed cold feet and literally danced to the tune of V.C. Shukla, Indira Gandhi's Goebbels. The Pakistani journalists, who faced martial law, proved to be of sterner mettle. They bore the punishment of lashes in their struggle to uphold the freedom of the press.
After the emergency, the Indian press were at hammer and tongs over the excesses committed by Indira Gandhi and her son, Sanjay Gandhi, an extra-constitutional authority. This was the catharsis of journalists for their cowardly silence at a time when they should have spoken out. Yet, nearly every journalist "claimed" to have "sabotaged" the emergency from within as he was a Trojan horse, not a collaborator.
This is when the management began to play a bigger role. It had seen through the courage of the paper tigers. The management took direct interest in the editorial side of the paper. What was once a profession changed into a business. The Working Journalists' Act, legislated by Nehru to give a permanent tenure to scribes, was substituted by a contract system. Journalists who had a poor record of standing up to challenges did not have the courage to oppose the measure.
Today, our print media is suffering from a mad disease which has played havoc with newspapers. I will call it the tabloid syndrome. You open any paper in the morning. The pages are full of pictures of young models, super models, actors and actresses and fashion designers - names you have not even heard of - garnished with "information" on what they love to eat, what kind of dress they like to wear, what they do when they relax, what they think of love and sex and such trivia.
This shallow, unthinking attitude gets reflected even in the news stories and articles that are printed in the papers. Reporters do not always cross-check the information they get. They often write one-sided versions of events and about people who do not matter - absolute non-entities.
Often good stories are not followed up properly. Planted stories make the front pages. Even factual information is often incorrect. Journalists have turned into politicians and newspapers into projectors of a particular point of view. News columns have come to be editorialised in the name of interpretative reporting. The press, no doubt, has clout, more than it ever had. It is free as well. But, is it independent?
The writer is a senior columnist based in New Delhi.
Courtesy: Internet
http://www.thebangladeshtoday.com/viewpoints.htm#view-02
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