New Delhi, Sept 8, 2020: The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) says the freedom of press faces external threats from the state and its storm troopers and from the owners of private media within.

This was highlighted in a PUCL report on how the news media has functioned in the times of the Covid-19 pandemic and amid attempt to curb information dissemination.

The report titled “The Double Siege: News Media in the Time of COVID-19” is the second in a series of ‘Lockdown on Civil Liberties’ reports from the civil liberty group.

The report calls the double assault on news media as being worse than the dark days of National Emergency of 1975-1977. The government, throughout the lockdown, imparted information on a ‘need to know’ basis with the government itself deciding the contours of “need.” It further states that prime time on television channels has replaced serious debate with rabid and dangerously inflammatory talk shows, ratcheting up of public opinion to divert and disguise serious issues.

It points out how the news media has failed to scrutinize and debate upon pertinent incidents of national importance such as environmental regulations; the PM-CARES Fund; the Galwan crisis; the domicile law in Kashmir; the prolonged economic crisis; the crisis of neglect in public health care; the questionable awarding of contracts to pharma companies for Covid-19 related drugs; the foisting of cases against victims and rights activists in connection with the Delhi violence and the precarious condition of prisoners in jails, including those accused in the Bhima Koregaon cases.

The report points out that since 2014 the country has witnessed more than 200 serious attacks on journalists in India, targeted for their investigative work. Journalists have been killed, with culprits getting away with near-total impunity, it bemoans.

The country has also witnessed disregard for attacks on journalists, pay cuts and job losses during the pandemic as well as closing newspaper editions after the pandemic hit circulation. On the other hands, TV news media has been criticized for indulging in co-option and self-censorship while submitting to the ruling party’s agenda; also, for its superficial coverage of gender, caste atrocities, the minorities, farmers.

The control over information continued in several forms throughout the lockdown period, aided by the combination of judicial pronouncements, regulatory notifications and lack of access to official information, the report says.

Reportedly, a few hours before announcing the nation-wide lockdown, the Prime Minister approached around twenty select media owners to publish positive articles about the pandemic. The lack of information forced group of health reporters in India to issue ten questions to the government on issues ranging from community transmission, testing, health care access, safety equipment and health insurance for health workers, which remained unaddressed.

The government was so much in control of information that it blamed the migrant crisis on fake news and tried to shrug off its responsibility to manage the crisis. So much so that it even urged the Supreme Court to direct the media to publish nothing about the pandemic unless it was cleared by the government first.

While the apex court did not directly endorse the government’s suggestion of pre-censorship and stated that it did not want to interfere with the free discussion about the pandemic, it still directed the media ‘to refer and publish the official version about the developments’. The court even accepted the submission that the migrant crisis “was triggered by panic created by fake news that the lockdown would continue for more than three months”.

This was followed by various state governments issuing notifications to curb fake news such as Delhi, Assam, Haryana, Sikkim, and Maharashtra. While some tightened the noose around misleading information, others formed committees to keep a tab on the menace.

It was not just that information was being controlled by the government to disseminate via news media but even generally, people’s right to information was crippled due to non-functioning Information commissions, the PUCL report says.

It cites a report from the Satark Nagrik Sangathan (Organization of alert citizens) found that 21 out of a total of 29 commissions did not hold any hearing until May 15, and only 7 of the 29 Information Commissions made provision for taking up urgent matters.

Furthermore, the websites of 11 of these commissions had no information or notification about the functioning of the Information commissions during lockdown.

The report states that since March 25, police and the authorities have questioned, filed cases or arrested more than 50 journalists for reports on the sub-standard quality of personal protective equipment (PPE), quarantine conditions and on the plight of migrant workers and the lack of rations for them. The largest number of attacks on the media persons was reported from Uttar Pradesh (11), followed by Jammu and Kashmir (6), and Himachal Pradesh (5).

The reported also decried arbitrary and vague arrest of a journalist in Andaman Nicobar islands who questioned the government on why families are placed under home quarantine for speaking over phone with Covid patients. He was arrested on various charges such as circulating a rumor, and disobedience of public servant’s order.

On May 7, Dhaval Patel, the editor of a news portal ‘Face of the Nation’ was charged with sedition for writing that the number of Covid-19 cases was on the increase in Gujarat.

On April 1, an FIR was lodged against The Wire and one of its founding editors, Siddharth Varadarajan, for allegedly posting false news about the participation of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in a Ram Navami celebration during a nationwide lockdown.

On March 26, Hindi-language daily Jansandesh Times was sent a legal notice by the district administration for reporting that a tribe in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, didn’t have enough to eat due to the sudden announcement and that children were eating grass.

On April 30, Manish Pandey, a journalist of Hindi news channel News1 India, was interrogated by the Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh police for his report on the poor quality of personal protective equipment kits supplied to eight hospitals and medical colleges in the state.

The TV news media is being increasingly criticized for polarized and partisan manner of reporting while neglecting important issues affecting the free dissemination of fair, accurate and verified news to the public.

Since March, the news media was dominated by allegations that the Tabligi Jamaat in Delhi had contributed to the spread of the pandemic. Businessline newspaper conducted a study which found that 11,074 stories published from 271 media sources with the term ‘Tablighi Jamaat’ between March 20 to April 27. Around 1.5-10 percent of the stories had words with negative connotations such as ‘violating’, ‘crime’, ‘spitting’, ‘terrorist’, and ‘jihad’. These stories fed into an epidemic of Islamophobic fake news and hate speech.

The report has been authored by Geeta Seshu with assistance from Kabi, Mihir Desai, Sandhya Gokhale, Lara Jesani, Chayanika Shah, Venkatesh Narayanan and other members of PUCL (Maharashtra).

Source: sabrangindia.in