By Ranjona Banerji
Student activist Umar Khalid’s bail application at the Additional Sessions Court, Delhi, brought up references to the media, putting our whole community in an unsavoury light. Should I edit that in case so many of us feel hurt?
Specifically, then, in case this makes you feel better, the two media entities mentioned are Republic TV and News18. According to Khalid’s lawyer Trideep Pais, both “news” channels ran truncated versions of a speech given by Khalid at Amravati on February 17 last year. These led to his arrest in the Delhi riots case under the draconian UAPA.
Republic TV informed the Delhi Police (after a demand made under Section 91 of the Criminal Procedure Code) that they had received this clip from the BJP’s Amit Malviya. In their defence, they claimed that Malviya had tweeted the clip.
News 18, according to Pais, went further and edited the clip tweeted by Malviya to change its meaning.
Pais, Khalid’s lawyer also debunks the Delhi Police case about a conspiracy hatched by Khalid and two other accused to plan a bomb blast during President Donald Trump’s visit to India in February 2020. This conspiracy meeting took place days before anyone had any idea that Trump was going to visit India.
https://www.thequint.com/news/law/umar-khalid-bail-hearing-uapa-case-fir-59
Discrepancies in the Delhi Police case are investigated in this Scroll article as well:
https://scroll.in/article/974896/special-report-a-silent-crackdown-sweeps-through-delhi-in-the-guise-of-probing-riots-conspiracy
We have therefore our “news” channels and a few small pockets of journalism here and there.
Now, do you want me to get all shirty and sit on some moral high horse about the tenets of journalism, ethics and all that?
Because you and I know that our ethics are a bit shredded now. And when it comes to our most-watched and most-popular “news” channels, well, what was that word again, begins with an e ends with an s, four letters in between? Intriguing word. What does it mean?
What it means is that for most of the mainstream media in India right now there is no dividing line between journalism and government publicity. If your main “source” which you carry without collaboration is the head of the BJP’s IT Cell, then you are effectively an arm of the government.
This is not new. This has been obvious post-2014. And we have sat back and watched. Ranted and railed a bit. But the popularity of these channels has not dimmed. In fact, they have grown from strength to strength. Apparently even NDTV, the last hope of “liberal” TV watchers (count me out of this one, brothers and sisters, count me out… there is life outside TV “news”) has fallen. To the extent that it was tied up with Koo, the social media site formed by the Hindutva rightwing who find Twitter too filled with evil non-BJP “anti-national” pro-democracy types.
https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/08/23/why-ndtv-is-on-koo-and-koo-on-ndtv
I must point out that it is only in India that NDTV would remotely be considered “left of centre”!
There are other questions too. Republic TV is exempt here. We all know it is a BJP-funded mouthpiece. But what’s with News 18? Owned by Mukesh Ambani, India’s wealthiest and possibly most successful industrialist. Partnered with CNN. Filled with journalists of excellent calibre amongst all the dross. And yet, all too often we find it no different from Republic TV. Filled with Islamophobia and questionable journalism. The ‘Malviya media’ if you like.
Aah well. As long as you keep watching, they’ll keep at it.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia every Tuesday and Friday. Her views here are personal.