Journos targeted: stray incidents or the new normal?

Unfortunate as it is, the media is the news, rather than an instrumentality for disseminating news and creating a common public life. It’s a phenomenon not restricted to India, but being witnessed worldwide. The subcontinent was never an exception, but India itself had been a rather placid zone in terms of media freedom—statist consensus and robust dissent, both had their place.

But things look to be changing. Two days ago, journalists took to the streets of Delhi after a young TV stringer was picked up from his house from India’s capital city, in the middle of the day, by UP cops in plainclothes who bypassed the Delhi Police. For what? An allegedly ‘defamatory’ social media post on Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Meanwhile, journalists in Nepal will be out on the streets to protest against a coercive bill to impose hefty fines on journalists for publishing anything deemed defamatory. Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy slapped an FIR against a local journalist for writing a controversial report on his family, then went right ahead to warn the media of legal action for any ‘defamatory’ content. Haiti, Russia, Mexico, Turkey … journalists are under threat everywhere. They have been killed or jailed for reporting. This is not counting the death threats they face in the line of duty, or being targeted by terrorists.

In the UP case, the charges brought against the journalist were so obviously inapplicable and ridiculous that the Supreme Court had to intervene to uphold the right and liberty of a journalist, as a citizen. Too little to change the ethos. Next day, in an even more shocking episode, railway police thrashed, locked up and subjected a small-town journalist in UP to unspeakable torture. Stray incidents, one could argue. But mass complaisance towards the state and a new vulnerability for those who still report the truth is the new normal.