Skip to main content

Thick-skinned Modi loyalists are bullying journalists, lodging "serious criminal cases" in India: Washington Post

By Representative
The powerful US daily "Washington Post" (WP) has sharply criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him "popular and thick-skinned", even as pointing towards how he has "effectively cut off the mainstream media, forgoing news conferences to communicate directly with his vast electorate through Twitter, where he has 40 million followers."
Annie Gowen's article, titled "In Modi’s India, journalists face bullying, criminal cases and worse", says, "Loyalists to the country’s powerful Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, have bullied editors into taking down critical stories, hushed government bureaucrats and shifted from the common practice of filing defamation cases to lodging more serious criminal complaints, which can mean jail time and take years in India’s overburdened court system."
Quoting India World Press Freedom Index, which ranks India136th in 2017, three points down in a year, WP says , one of the main reasons for the poor ranking is "growing self-censorship and the activity of Hindu nationalists trying to purge 'anti-nationalist' thought". The ranking, which is below Afghanistan and Burma, has been calculated by the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders.
"Times are tough for journalists in India, where many reporters and editors say it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do their jobs", says the daily, giving the example of Rachna Khaira, an "unknown crime reporter" in Chandigarh, who shot into prominence in the first week of January, when she wrote a story  that exposed a major privacy breach in a nationwide database of more than 1 billion Indians.
Annie Gowen
According to Gowen, "Officials were not amused by her sleuthing and filed a police complaint that accused Khaira, her newspaper and the alleged cybercriminals of forgery and other offenses punishable by a total of 30 years in jail." The action came in for sharp criticism from the country’s editors' guild, protest marches were held, she added.
Gowen goes on, of all persons, former CIA agent Edward Snowden, now a computer analyst whistleblower who provided the Guardian with top-secret NSA documents leading to revelations about US surveillance on phone and internet communications, "sent a tweet supporting the new whistleblower, saying she deserved 'an award, not an investigation'.”
While Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s minister for electronics and information technology, claimed that any suggestion that the government was hampering the press freedom was “completely wrong", Rajeev Chandrasekhar, whom Gowen calls "a member of Parliament allied with Modi’s coalition and a principal investor in Republic TV, a conservative news channel", insists it is "nonsense" to suggest that "suddenly things have gone south".
Contesting these claims, Gowen says, "But international observers say the situation has worsened under Modi, with media organizations self-censoring for fear of offending the government and losing valuable advertising." She underlines, "Even stories about the Reporters Without Borders ranking, which detailed 'online smear campaigns' of journalists by 'radical nationalists', were taken off the websites of two newspapers."
Gowen also quotes Nicholas Dawes, the deputy executive director for media at Human Rights Watch and former chief content officer for one of India’s leading newspapers, as saying, “The pressures appear to be more intense now than they have been in a generation... The government has also done little to reassure journalists in the face of both orchestrated digital attacks and physical violence.”
Recalling that India's "vibrant media" was first "profoundly shaken during the period known as the Emergency in the 1970s, when embattled Prime Minister Indira Gandhi locked up opposition leaders and censored newspapers to retain her power", Gowen insists, *Over the years, politicians of all stripes have arrested, threatened and blocked access to journalists, often falling back on India’s defamation or Colonial-era sedition laws in an attempt to limit free speech."
Noting that "many of the top news channels and newspapers are owned by families or conglomerates with business interests like mining and telecom that have long been reluctant to be critical of the government", Gowen further quotes Mark Tully, veteran BBC correspondent who was expelled during the Emergency but now lives in Delhi, as saying, “Modi doesn’t take that kindly to criticism, and he doesn’t engage with the media. The media has no real access to him at all.”

Comments

  1. Thank you Ravish Kumar for being the Indian voice of protest against the Bullying of Media by Modi, calling it a 'Godi Media' which translates as 'Media in bed with Modi'.

    ReplyDelete
  2. another one bite the dust,,,,u gwen how much u ve been aid by khangress and leftist assholes,,,and suedoliberals,,,watch ur own country where drug , sex and no moral values r left,,,how many times ur cousin unaroriately touched u or ur boss ,,, and u felt enjoyment...







    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

NOTE: While there is no bar on viewpoint, comments containing hateful or abusive language will not be published and will be marked spam. -- Editor

TRENDING

Defeat of martial law: Has the decisive moment for change come in South Korea?

By Steven Lee  Late at night on December 3, soldiers stormed into South Korea’s National Assembly in armored vehicles and combat helicopters. Assembly staff desperately blocked their assault with fire extinguishers and barricades. South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol had just declared martial law to “ eliminate ‘anti-state’ forces .”

70,000 migrants, sold on Canadian dream, face uncertain future: Canada reinvents the xenophobic wheel

By Saurav Sarkar*  Bikram Singh is running out of time on his post-study work visa in Canada. Singh is one of about 70,000 migrants who were sold on the Canadian dream of eventually making the country their home but now face an uncertain future with their work permits set to expire by December 2024. They came from places like India, China, and the Philippines, and sold their land and belongings in their home countries, took out loans, or made other enormous commitments to get themselves to Canada.

EVMs: Govt must prove beyond reasonable doubt it's upholding mandate for free, fair polls

By Jerald D’souza  With the growth of India’s population, concerns about electoral fraud associated with ballot papers, also began to escalate. In 1989, the People’s Representation Act was amended to enable EVMs to prevent electoral fraud. In 1998, EVMs made their debut during legislative assembly elections and for the first time for general elections in 2004. However, criticisms against the EVMs and questions about their integrity have been raised by political parties, civil society and the general population. On 2 February 2024, there was a noteworthy demonstration of dissent where numerous individuals, including Ambedkarite advocates, legal professionals, and other members of civil society  convened at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar demanding the prohibition of EVMs. In 2024, the Supreme court had slapped down a petition to return to paper ballots on the basis that machines give “absolutely accurate results” unless human bias maligns them. The court stated that it was open to testi...

This Indian British Marxist blamed USSR's collapse in 1991 on Khrushchev's 'revisionism'

By Harsh Thakor*  Harpal Singh Brar, British Indian Marxist scholar and communist leader, has passed away in Chandigarh. He was 85. He was a lifelong supporter of socialism, Marxism, and the working class. He will be remembered among British Communists.

A groundbreaking non-violent approach: Maharishi’s invincible defense technology

By MajGen (R) Kulwant Singh, Col (R) SP Bakshi, Col (R) Jitendra Jung Karki, LtCol (R) Gunter Chassé & Dr David Leffler*  In today’s turbulent world, achieving lasting peace and ensuring national security are more urgent than ever. Traditional defense methods focus on advanced weapons, military strategies, and tactics, but a groundbreaking approach offers a new non-violent and holistic solution: Maharishi’s Invincible Defense Technology (IDT). 

Chalapathi's death in encounter suggests Maoists' inability to establish broader mass support

By Harsh Thakor* The Maoist movement experienced a significant loss during the Ramagudem encounter on January 21, with the death of Chalapathi (Pratap), a Central Committee member of the CPI (Maoist). His death, along with 15 others, marks a major setback for the movement. Reports suggest that his location was revealed to security forces through a selfie with his wife.

Why do we mostly resist and refrain from communicating on sanitation topic?

By Nikhil Kumar, Mansee Bal Bhargava* According to UN SDG Progress report (2022), at the present moment no targets for SDG 6 are expected to be met by 2030. In 2022, 2.2 billion people had no access to safe drinking water and 3.5 million lacked safe sanitation. Approximately 50% of the world’s population was reported to have been under resourced in enough water for part of the year and a quarter of that population was living under “extremely high” water stress. Add to it, droughts have affected over 1.4 billion people between 2002 and 2021.

CCG raises concerns over Indian State of Forest Report 2023 in open letter to environment minister

By A Representative  The Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), a collective of former civil servants, has expressed serious concerns over the Indian State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2023 in an open letter to the Union Minister for Environment, Forests & Climate Change. The group has criticized the report's delayed release, flawed methodology, and misleading claims regarding the state of India's forests.

Govt of India asked to work for release of 217 Indian fishermen detained in Pakistan since 2021

By A Representative  Members of the fishing communities from Gujarat and Diu, Union Territory, held a press conference in Ahmedabad, urging the Union Government to take proactive measures to secure the release of Indian fishermen currently detained in Pakistan. Presently, 217 Indian fishermen, mostly from Gujarat and Diu, are held in Pakistan’s Malir Jail. Of these, 53 have been incarcerated since 2021 and 130 since 2022.

Operation Kagar represents Indian state's intensified attempt to extinguish Maoism: Resistance continues

By Harsh Thakor Operation Kagar represents the Indian state's intensified attempt to extinguish Maoism, which claims to embody the struggles and aspirations of Adivasis. Criminalized by the state, the Maoists have been portrayed as a threat, with Operation Kagar deploying strategies that jeopardize their activities. This operation weaves together economic, cultural, and political motives, allegedly with drone attacks on Adivasi homes.