7 Nov 2024 | India, News and features, Volume 53.03 Autumn 2024
The four editors of Assam’s English daily, The Drongo Express, meet in person once or twice a month. They sit hunched over their laptops and notebooks – either at parks or in someone’s house in Diphu, where the paper is headquartered – figuring out how to keep their newspaper afloat.
One of them, Helvellyn Timungpi, from the tribal district of Karbi Anglong, told Index: “Last year, our publisher decided to walk away from the newspaper. We who were on the editorial board came together and signed the partnership deed and got a transfer of ownership. We didn’t have any other employment, and we wanted to stop this newspaper from going down the drain.”
Like many newspapers in North East India – which is made up of eight states including Assam – The Drongo Express relies heavily on advertisements placed by government departments. “We haven’t received a single penny since last October,” said Timungpi.
“If we were receiving our bills regularly, we would be OK.”
Home to about 140 notified Scheduled Tribes [indigenous groups], the region remains poorly covered by the mainstream media. Most Delhi-based media houses continue to employ just one reporter in the region. Others send journalists to cover only stories of extreme violence – for instance, the ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur or the botched security operation in Nagaland that led to several civilian deaths. Local news channels, newspapers and websites have played a significant role in filling this gap.
Karma Paljor, a former news anchor and founder of EastMojo – the first and only independent digital news outlet that primarily covers the North East – said media ownership was a big problem.
“Anyone with a reasonable amount of money, including contractors, lobbyists and politicians can start a media organisation,” he said. “There are very few newspapers here that stand for balanced news.”
The demographic complexity of the region also plays a part.
“On account of the region’s layered contemporary history as well as ethnic and linguistic faultlines, most local publications do tend to be nativist and, in many cases, unabashedly take sides on polarising topics such as immigration,” explained Tora Agarwala, an independent journalist based in Assam.
Media organisations in the region are often faced with a lack of revenue and resources. Kenter Joya, the managing editor of the Arunachal Pradesh-based Eastern Sentinel, said: “The cost of printing papers is 15 rupees, and we are selling it at three rupees. Vendors take 50% of this money … we try to make it up through advertisements from state government, which constitute 65% of advertisements placed, and corporate advertisements.
“Annually, bi-annually, we receive only 50-60% of what we are owed for the advertisements.”
She said she wondered if payment was being withheld as a form of punishment.
Meanwhile, repeated calls for subscriptions, especially by independent outlets such as EastMojo, haven’t yielded many results.
“The people of the North East are not aware of the power of media, hence they aren’t able to fathom why they should support us,” Paljor said.
“I don’t know who to blame,” said an exasperated Timungpi. “No matter how penniless I become, I want to cling to this profession. But it pains me when my three children have nothing to eat.”
24 Oct 2024 | India, News and features, Volume 53.03 Autumn 2024
On 25 June this year 40-year-old journalist Shivshankar Jha was returning to his home in Muzaffarpur, in the eastern frontier state of Bihar, when he was set upon by a group of men. He was taken to hospital with multiple stab wounds and later died of his injuries.
He worked for several Hindi news outlets in the region and had been reporting on liquor smuggling. His family said he had received death threats and blamed the criminal gangs he had been investigating.
In July, Unesco director-general Audrey Azoulay said: “I condemn the killing of Shivshankar Jha and call for a thorough investigation to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Journalists play a vital role in investigating crime and wrongdoing, and impunity for crimes against them must not prevail.”
This is not an isolated case. Waheed Azam, of Patna-based Democratic Charkha, explained that the illicit trade in alcohol and raw materials such as sand was open to exploitation from criminal gangs.
“Journalism in Bihar is extremely challenging,” he said. “The last decade has been marked by political instability, with frequent changes in government. Meanwhile, illegal liquor smuggling and the sand mafia have shaken the state’s economy. If you publish a report that displeases the mafia or those in power, you end up either dead or framed in false cases.”
Madhubani is globally renowned for its ancient tradition of painting. However, on 12 November 2021, the headlines were not about the city’s art but about the brutal murder of a 26-year-old journalist named Avinash Jha.
Jha, who worked for the local news website BNN, was found dead, his body charred beyond recognition. He had been missing for three days.
He had published a series of news reports exposing illegal nursing homes operating in the district, after which he began receiving threatening phone calls.
His last Facebook post read: “A major exposé on illegal nursing homes is coming soon.”
Kanhaiya Mishra, the editor of BNN News in Madhubani, called on the Central Bureau of Investigation to take up his colleague’s case.
“There was never an impartial investigation. Initially, the police tried to frame the murder as the result of a love affair, but everyone knows why Avinash [Jha] was killed,” he said.
One of the most notorious cases was the 2016 murder of Rajdev Ranjan in Siwan.
Ranjan, 46, had recently become bureau chief at the Hindustan Daily, where he had published several reports on the criminal activities of former MP and notorious gangster Mohammad Shahabuddin. His final report focused on how Shahabuddin continued to operate his gang from behind bars.
The Bihar police and the CBI have a track record of failure in solving journalists’ murders. In the Ranjan case, the CBI told a court in 2022 that the key witness, Badami Devi, had died.
She later appeared in court with all her identification documents.
Ranjan’s wife, Asha Devi, recalled: “The day after his murder was supposed to be our wedding anniversary. I was waiting for him, but he never came back. Everyone knows who ordered his murder, but people are too scared to even mention his name. Why? Because he is a powerful gangster and a former MP.”
Two common threads run through these cases: all the journalists were local reporters, covering grassroots issues in Bihar, and none of the cases has resulted in the conviction of the perpetrators. Bihar ranks high for incidents of violence against journalists but, living in the poorest and most backward state in the country, its local journalists often find no one to take up their cause.
14 Oct 2024 | News and features, Russia, Statements, Ukraine
Index on Censorship, the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) and partner organizations today mourn the death of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who died in unclear circumstances while in Russian detention, and whose death was confirmed by Russian and Ukrainian authorities on Thursday. We welcome the opening of an investigation by Ukrainian authorities on grounds of “war crime combined with premeditated murder” and demand that Russian authorities do the same to elucidate the circumstances of Roshchyna’s death and bring to justice all those who could be responsible.
Roshchyna, a freelance journalist with Ukrainska Pravda, a major Ukrainian publication, and several other leading Ukrainian outlets, left Kyiv in late July 2023 with the intention to reach Russian-occupied territory in southeastern Ukraine. Soon after her departure, she went missing, with many of her colleagues expressing their fear that she was most likely being held by Russian forces.
In May 2024, nearly a year after her departure, Roshchyna’s family reported that Russian authorities had confirmed to them that the journalist was being held in Russian custody. However, the charges against her, as well as the place of her detention remained unknown.
Following the announcement of her death, reports emerged suggesting that Roshchyna had spent the past four months in an individual prison cell in the Russian city of Taganrog, which is located immediately next to the Ukrainian border. Prior to this, it has been reported that she was held in pre-trial detention by Russian forces in Berdyansk, a city in southeastern Ukraine currently under Russian occupation.
According to Russian authorities, Roshchyna died on September 19. Unconfirmed reports by Ukrainian media suggest that she passed away while being transported from Taganrog to Moscow. According to the same reports, Russia was preparing to include Roshchyna into a prisoner exchange with Ukraine.
While it is unclear what location the journalist managed to reach as part of the reporting trip she began in late July 2023, it was known that she planned to report from regions of Ukraine under Russian occupation.
“Victoria was herself from the Zaporizhia region,” Ukrainska Pravda editor-in-chief Sevgil Musayeva told IPI in October 2023, when Roshchyna’s disappearance was first made public. “She saw it as her mission to tell the stories of the people under occupation and when fears grew that the Russian military may be planning to blow up the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, she wanted to go.”
Roshchyna was one of the very few Ukrainian journalists to travel to Russian-occupied territories to cover the impact of the war. In March 2022, she was taken captive by Russian forces while reporting near Mariupol, when the city was under a prolonged siege by Russian forces. She was released ten days later and continued working as a journalist from Kyiv. She documented her experiences in captivity here.
MFRR partners, Index on Censorship and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterate their support of journalists who continue to report on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We mourn the death of yet another journalist who lost her life while attempting to cover the consequences of this brutal invasion, and demand justice for her and other deceased colleagues.
Signed:
International Press Institute (IPI)
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ)
Index on Censorship
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
ARTICLE 19 Europe
OBC Transeuropa (OBCT)
International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
28 Aug 2024 | Asia and Pacific, India, News and features
On 1 April, less than a month before India went to the polls, a young YouTuber named Dhruv Rathee released a video calling India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister a dictator. Speaking in a loud, declamatory style, Rathee delivered fact after fact, laying out how Narendra Modi had tried to throttle Indian democracy. The video ended with an appeal to vote against the Prime Minister.
At the time of writing, Rathee’s harangue had garnered an incredible 37 million views on YouTube. This number does not capture the fact that many Indians would have viewed this video as a “forward” on WhatsApp. With an incredible 24.6 million subscribers, Rathee is the person Indians increasingly turn to when they want to consume current affairs. And he’s not the only one. Ravish Kumar, one of India’s most well-known journalists, now broadcasts on YouTube with nearly 12 million subscribers. These one-person YouTube channels frequently garner more views and subscribers than corporate-funded mainstream media channels.
For a decade now, India’s mainstream media has stopped doing the job it’s meant to do – holding the powerful to account. Using a mixture of carrot and stick, Modi has ensured his government has little to fear from traditional broadcasters or newspapers. The result: Indians are now increasingly turning to the internet for news and opinion. This trend is so significant that Modi is making increasingly desperate attempts to control what takes place online.
Throttling the press
As a wave of autocratic strongmen sweeps the world, arguably Modi leads the pack. The power he commands in India and the ideological changes he has made to the country have few parallels either globally or in India’s own history. The tactical keystone of this politics? Control over the country’s media.
In 2014, India’s Congress-led liberal coalition crashed to a defeat, bringing Modi to power. This loss was portended by loud television debates bashing the government over corruption, women’s safety and, most of all, so-called Muslim appeasement. Once he came to power, Modi had digested that hard political lesson and was determined to ensure that it would not happen to him.
This was relatively easy to do given the Indian media’s structure. Owned by large corporations who looked to curry favour with the government, India’s powerful national television channels bent over backwards for Modi. In 2022, NDTV, India’s last news network not seen to be pro-Modi was acquired: a billionaire who is not only seen as Modi’s close ally but one whose remarkable rise has been facilitated by his government. The change of NDTV’s ownership was like flipping a switch: the network simply stopped doing any critical reporting, leading to an exodus of its top journalists.
If not directly controlled through a proprietor, the Modi government can also influence media houses through ad spending. Oddly enough, the main source of advertising income for legacy media houses in India is the government. Previously, the Modi government has withheld ads from media houses seen as being critical of the government.
Carrot to stick
What happens if a media house does not bend to Modi? In that case, Indian law provides massive powers to the federal government to regulate and even ban television networks. In 2022 the Modi government peremptorily shut down a Malayalam-language news channel, MediaOne, citing “national security” as a reason. While the ban was later reversed by the Supreme Court, the action had a chilling effect on news networks, which simply cannot afford to be yanked off air overnight.
Starting in 2020, the Modi government employed even harsher provisions against a small, left-wing website called NewsClick. First, India’s severe money-laundering laws were deployed against the media outlet. Not satisfied, the government then charged it under India’s draconian terror legislation, which provides for long prison terms even before a court pronounces on the guilt of the accused. Newsclick’s founder, Prabir Purkayastha, found himself spending more than seven months in jail before the Supreme Court granted him bail.
Modi has not been shy of using similar tactics against the BBC. In 2023, the government launched income tax raids against the British broadcaster’s offices in Delhi after the network aired a documentary that was critical of Modi’s role as chief minister in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat.
All this creates a climate where outright violence against journalists is common. Since Modi took power 28 journalists have been killed. Reporters without Borders calls India “one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media”.
Broadcast Bill
With the traditional media subdued, Modi is now swivelling his guns towards the internet. In 2023, the government released a new Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill looking to regulate television and OTT internet broadcasters. However, in 2024 a new draft significantly expanded the bill’s scope to include internet content creators, apparently driven by the critical role social media had played in the 2024 general election where Modi sustained considerable losses.Copies of this bill were circulated privately by the Modi government and then, just as abruptly, withdrawn.
Even as the exact status of the bill remains unclear – is this truly a withdrawal or a tactical retreat before the final charge? – the provisions in the 2024 draft version are a good pointer as to the scope of Modi’s ambitions when it comes to controlling India’s internet.
The 2024 draft bill, for example, demanded that content creators subject themselves to a draconian regulatory regime designed expressly to stifle free expression. The bill called for content creators to set up “content evaluation committees” which would need to approve the majority of content before it was broadcast (certain programmes such as news and current affairs programmes were exempt), appoint a grievance officer and join a government-approved “self-regulatory organisation” to address grievances as well as ensure compliance with the relevant codes that would be drafted by the government alone. A new Broadcast Advisory Council would have been created by the Indian government which would, in turn, sit above, these self-regulatory organisations.
The entire edifice is a marvel of Orwellian “red tape-ism”, not only bringing content creators under government regulation but making them pay for it themselves. This is significant since adherence to the relevant provisions in the bill would represent a significant, even crippling, cost for small outfits or individual content creators.
How successful has Modi been in his desire to curb free expression in India? While he has achieved a substantial number of his goals, it is credit to India’s democratic traditions that the country’s media has not bent in its entirety. While major media houses are unlikely to play their role as watchdog, independent media and even individual content creators have stepped in to do the job. In fact, the fierce criticism Modi faced when he released the draft of the Broadcast Bill is a fine example of how India’s democratic traditions are trying to push back against curbs to free speech. It is not insignificant that Modi withdrew the draft bill and has gone back to the drawing board on trying to control the internet.
