By Rita Joseph
New Delhi, April 6, 2020: Rights activists and media persons have decried a Supreme Court order that only government-approved news relating to pandemic COVID-19 be published.
The Editors Guild of India has condemned the government statement to the top court. It termed the Supreme Court March 31 directive as “gratuitous and unnecessary.”
The order follows a “false” statement to the court by the government that media had caused the panic among the workers which led to their mass movement out of big cities at the beginning of the lockdown, says senior Supreme Court advocate and rights activists Colin Gonsalves.
Everyone knows that hunger and homelessness was the reason for the migration. “Spread of fake news comes from the government itself,” he says.
It is well naive on the part of the government to blame the press, says Dominican Father Francis Arackal, professor of Mass Communication, Amity University. The mass exodus of migrants was the result of lack of planning and preparation for the lockdown and an absence of an effective assurance to their well-being.
Capuchin Father Suresh Mathew, editor of Indian Currents weekly, says this is nothing short of press censorship that was experienced during the Emergency. The only difference being that then it was enforced through coercion but now it is through persuasion.
The press censorship was imposed during 1975-1977 when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi invoked internal emergency.
Veteran journalist John Dayal says, “rather than pulling up the government for muzzling the press, violating the constitutional guarantees and the court’s own rulings in the past, it has supported the government. The apex court also warned media that non-publication of the ‘official version’ would tantamount to spreading fake news and be liable for prosecution.”
“Abject surrender” of judicial independence, the last bastion for democracy and of the common person, has been most tragic for the nation in recent times, Father Arackal says.
In terms of freedom of expression, India has ceased to be a democracy in the last six years due to the mighty hand of the regime forcing the press into submission by means of bribes, tax raids, regulations, and threats, he says.
India is ranked 140 out of 180 countries in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders.
“Asking people to rely on government information is unacceptable. Government information is often unreliable and downright false,” says Gonsalves, founder of the Human Rights Law Network.
The gag on the media, says media analyst Ashok Malhotra, follows the inability of the government to handle the current crisis caused by the pandemic.
“It has no answers to many questions. How to combat Coronavirus assuming menacing proportions. Lack of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), hospitals and ventilators. Given a fragile economy and recession looming large, how will the government handle problems like joblessness, migrants, the poor and the farmers already reeling under crop failure and poverty?
“The government’s media management has been at par with its mismanagement of the entire testing, quarantine and lockdown protocols to contain and defeat the Corona virus,” says Dayal.
The media policy seems to be one of denying the media any information other than a brief every evening, and a threat of punitive action against all forms of media that either show enterprise, or question the government, he says.
The public should be wary of government propaganda parading as news,” says Gonsalves.
Father Mathew notes that today, journalists, instead of exposing the government’s failures, are busy mouthing the latter’s version.
TV channels and newspapers, with some exceptions, have taken the role of an amplifier of the government propaganda. They have become cheerleaders of the ruling party and its leaders, he says.
“A major portion of the Indian media have surrendered to the regime, not so much out of endorsement of its ideology, policies, and programs, but for their own survival as a business,” says Father Arackal.
The reason for this is that big media is owned by big business and corporations who have to keep government happy for their vested interests, says Dayal.
Instead of truthful, balanced and objective reporting, people are fed with what the government wants them to read, hear and believe. Journalists who criticize those in power for their wrong doings are prosecuted, says Father Mathew.
On March 6 two Television channels – Media One and Asianet – were blocked by the government for 48 hours for their coverage of February 24-25 anti-Muslim riots in East Delhi. But it was later revoked following widespread criticism of the move.
News Editor of regional daily Jansandesh Time was served a notice by the police for a story stating that some members of Musahar (lower caste) community in Varanasi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh district were surviving on grass following the lockdown. The social media reaction to the story forced the administration to provide them food.
India desperately needs something like the American public funded non-partisan National Broadcasting Service and a trusted digital platform, self-regulated. “We really need a constitutional amendment to make Freedom of the Press a basic human right,” says Dayal.
Father Arackal says it is incumbent on a democratic government to trust its media and give it the freedom necessary to report happenings accurately (as they occur). Media is expected to be a watchdog and not a lapdog even in these trying times of a pandemic. A free media is a safer bet for the nation than an enslaved one, he says.