Opinion | Freedom Of Press In India
By Iffat Ikram
For decades, the press has been the archetype of the voice of democracy, for any country. Freedom of the press has been one of the most sought after rights in any freedom struggle. The voice of the people depends on the press and its integrity.
In a country like India, with a vast population and a new culture in every state, democracy more or less depends on the integrity of the press. The country depends on what the media covers and how it covers for their update of current affairs. However, a threat to this democracy is posed as the probity of the media has been very questionable for the past few years.
There are two sides to every coin. In the case of the media in India, there are two sides too. But the problem, however, is that the more powerful side, the mainstream media, is the one that is menacing while small independent publications are more reliable. Again, the complication here is that most people would trust these old, mainstream media more than newer online publications, without fact-checking the news that they cover and later incite violence. The question here would be, if we know where the problem is, why do people still trust these sources?
The answer is much more complicated than it seems. These sources were not always unreliable. This has been only happening recently, more so since 2014 after the coming of the current ruling party BJP, and everything that is seen on mainstream media is heavily influenced by this party. Situations where the government was clearly in the wrong, like passing bills in an empty parliament, the media would safeguard them rather than covering what actually happened. In September 2020, the Indian Rajya Sabha (equivalent to the Congress of USA) passed 7 bills in an empty parliament with no opposition. These bills were mainly supported by the ruling NDA party, and while the opposition benches were empty, these bills were passed with the majority votes of one single party, the ruling party. The liberal and left-wing youth has always been suppressed by this mainstream media while right-wing people are always uplifted. In fact, the very conflicting, three farmers bills were passed in an empty parliament along with a few other bills. The farmers of the country have been protesting for months now. The problems with the three farmers’ bills are as follows:
- The first big issue is that the market is now open to mass privatization.
- Farmers are not guaranteed a minimum support price (MSP) anymore.
- There will be no limit to the amount or duration for which companies can hoard goods.
- And most importantly, these bills free the government of any accountability there might be from the above actions.
These were situations where people could clearly tell the media was in the wrong. But there are other deep, more complicated ways in which the media falsifies facts. And to identify these cases, people would need to dive more into learning about what actually happened and fact-check the headlines. Then again, only few would bother to do that. The question here is, why wouldn’t the media deliver reliable news in the first place? A study report by Statista in 2019 showed that more than 50 percent of people are concerned by the growing fake news the country has been seeing. While another survey conducted by Social Media Matters (SMM) and Institute for Governance, Policies and Politics (IGPP) has found that over 53% of the population has received fake news over various social media platforms as the elections near.
Going back to the farmers’ protests, this was a time that the country desperately depended on the media. Some people on social media knew how wrong those laws are and why exactly the farmers are protesting, but people who are not on social media, depended on these mainstream channels for their share of updates. Instead of covering what really happened, and why it happened, most media networks constantly tried to laud the government and its ‘efforts’ This however, was only one of the many times the media disappointed the public.
When a media channel, news source or journalists constantly support the ruling NDA party, the public usually calls them ‘Godi Media’. The word ‘Godi’ literally translates to ‘Lap’ hence signifying the media source as a lapdog media. In the last few years, the use of the term has become quite frequent with the coming of the Modi government (some would even call the press ‘Modia’ resonating with the name of the prime minister). In fact, the press became more and more dishonest in Modi’s administration (mostly compared with the Trump administration). Mainstream news would all be in favor of Modi, it is almost like a headline goes through several layers of filtration before the public actually reads it.
The significance of the Godi Media can be seen vastly across the country. In fact, the year 2020 saw the emergence of fake news more than ever. Back in June 2020, this Godi media used the death of a well known movie star, to market themselves. They used his death to frame an innocent woman and terrorized the lives of her family and friends. Only several months after the incident, the woman was declared innocent and the media moved on as if they had no role in completely brainwashing the minds of the public. This was one of the many times the press wrongfully influenced the public.
While glorifying Modi, some of these media networks completely turned a blind eye to headlines that the world actually needed to know. Last year, India was divided upon the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which later became the Citizenship Amendment Act, even after much opposition from the people. According to the bills, Indian citizenship would be granted to people from all religions except Muslims from the neighboring countries of India. There were protests daily and instead of coming to a solution or listening to the public, the government took away all internet services from a few states that were directly affected by the act and jailed activists without any valid reason. The media could have predicted how wrong the whole process was but only local news channels covered what had actually happened.
Like mentioned before, there are two sides to every coin. There are honest journalists and reliable news sources as well but then again, the Godi media has given so much power to the Rightists, that if anything or any news is against their likes, they would start a frenzy. They have become so intolerant that if any headline merely goes against their beliefs, they would start a Twitter battle or call for boycotting the source or even the journalist.
All countries depend on the press and the media to know what happens around them, to know that democracy still lives. But with the existence of Godi Media, it has become very tough to feel that way in India. This has become dangerous to levels where there has been communal disharmony and conflicts related to religion.
India is a secular country, however, the Godi Media tries to influence people otherwise. Crime has increased with fake news poisoning the minds of the civilians. People are committing crimes, purely on the notions spread by the Godi Media and at the end, it is the public, the innocent civilians who remain the petrified victims.
The only things we, as the public, can do is fact check the source where we are reading our news from, avoid sources that widely call for intolerance and most importantly, we must keep in mind that, even unknowingly, we do not spread fake news.
Iffat Ikram is a high school sophomore from Assam, India and a blog writer for Youth Upholding Democracy. The views reflected in this article are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Youth Upholding Democracy.
