A chilling message to media

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “a day to reiterate our unwavering support towards a free and vibrant press.” The weeks that followed revealed the wide gulf between this pious wish and his administration’s practice.

A few days before that tweet, the Central Bureau of Investigation had received a complaint alleging fraud in a transaction between NDTV, a leading media organisation, and the ICICI Bank, both private companies. The complainant, Sanjay Dutt, was a shareholder of both the companies and had been pursuing allegations against the media company and its promoters, Prannoy Roy and his wife, Radhika, in various forums for four years with little success.

On June 2 the CBI registered an 88-page first information report on the basis of Dutt’s complaint and two days later it conducted searches at four places belonging to the Roys. It was not the first time that an investigating agency had acted against media owners but the attendant circumstances suggested that this one was intended to send a chilling message to the entire media.

NDTV is one of the earliest private news television companies and played a major role in bringing to national attention the enormity of the anti-Muslim riots that swept Gujarat in 2002 soon after Modi became the state chief minister. Just a few days ago, one of its anchors, Nidhi Razdan, had asked Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Sambit Patra to apologise or leave her show as he alleged the channel had an agenda.

Two central government agencies, the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax department, had started looking into NDTV’s finances soon after Modi became the Prime Minister. They served notices on the Roys in connection with certain transactions, and they moved the courts with regard to some of them.

Last November the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting ordered the group’s Hindi channel, NDTV India, to go off the air for a day for revealing sensitive information in its coverage of the attack on the Pathankot airbase in violation of the rules regarding reporting of terror incidents. Media organisations had protested against singling out the channel for action sparing others who, too, had shown similar visuals.

Last week, at a largely attended meeting of journalists in New Delhi to demonstrate solidarity with the Roys, eminent jurist Fali S Nariman pointed to infirmities in the CBI conduct. It had acted not on the basis of any crime-related discovery but on a lone private complaint. The criminal conspiracy and cheating alleged in the complaint had taken place during 2008-09 and it did not say why the matter was not brought to the agency’s attention earlier.

Instead of instituting a criminal inquiry and conducting raids, the CBI should have asked Dutt to file a complaint in a criminal court, Nariman said.

Veteran journalists who spoke at the meeting likened the current situation to what prevailed during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime and called upon the media fraternity to stand together to safeguard press freedom. Prannoy Roy asserted he and his wife had done no wrong, and the action against them was a signal to the media that the government could get them even if they had done nothing.

A majority of the media has been uncritical of the government and there is in the electronic media a group of fawning fans ready to fight Modi’s and his party’s battles as if they were their own. But Modi remains distrustful of the media and avoids press conferences.

The CBI’s uncalled-for action on a private complaint with regard to transactions involving private companies has once again turned the focus on the functioning of that agency.

Set up by Jawaharlal Nehru’s government in 1963, the CBI established an early reputation as a competent investigative agency. That reputation now lies in ruins. After reviewing the way it handled a scandal of the United Progressive Alliance government, a Supreme Court judge had dubbed it a caged parrot repeating its master’s voice.

Ranjit Sinha who headed the CBI at that time said the court’s assessment was correct. The agency later appealed to the court to free it from governmental interference but nothing came of it.

The BJP, then in the opposition, had lambasted the UPA government using the judge’s remarks about the CBI. Last month leading lawyer and former Congress minister, Kapil Sibal said the CBI was now the long arm of the Modi government and it was holding out threats to people to secure favourable statements. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 13, 2017. 

Bid to tame free media

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Modi government last week ordered a Hindi news channel to cease transmission for 24 hours this week for contravening the year-old broadcast guidelines on live coverage of terror attacks. 

The unprecedented action has the making of a surgical strike calculated to tame sections of the media which have been reluctant to go the whole hog with the government and its Hindutva supporters who constantly invoke national sentiments for partisan purposes. 

The channel which has been handed down the punishment is NDTV India, a Hindi channel belonging to the oldest and arguably the most professional of the private national networks. The cause of action, ostensibly, is a report it telecast during the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air force base in January.

According to the government, an inter-ministerial committee found that in a near-live telecast on January 4 NDTV India “revealed strategically sensitive details.” Its report had said, “Two terrorists are still alive and they are next to an ammunition depot, And the jawans who are under fire are concerned that if the militants make it to the ammunition depot it will be even harder to neutralise them.”

This information was given to the media earlier by security officials themselves, and other channels and newspapers too had reported it. However, NDTV India was singled out for punitive action.

The inter-ministerial committee rejected the channel’s contention that other media too had carried similar reports on the specious ground that it had mentioned the exact location of the terrorists with regard to the ammunition depot.

As Information Minister, the task of defending the action against the channel fell on M Venkaiah Naidu, who has an infinite capacity to confuse issues in the guise of clarifying them.

Within 24 hours of the government order against the channel, the Editors Guild of India condemned the action, describing it as reminiscent of the Emergency of 1975. Naidu dubbed it a belated response and an afterthought.

He said that during 2005-2014 the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government had directed various channels on 21 different occasions to suspend telecasts for periods ranging from one day to two months. The comparison was odious for they were penalised not for airing any news reports but for showing obscene or violent movies.

There could be no UPA precedent for the Modi government’s action since the rule relating to live telecast of anti-terrorist operations did not exist in its time. It was brought in by the present regime last year through an amendment to the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995.

The entire opposition and the entire media barring the government’s partisan supporters raised their voice against the action against NDTV India. That, however, didn’t prevent Venkaiah Naidu from claiming that the people were broadly with the government on this issue.

India is perhaps the only country which does not have a law to regulate the working of the electronic media. After it came to light that the live telecasts of the 2008 Mumbai attack had provided the terrorists’ handlers in Pakistan with valuable inputs on real time basis, there was general agreement in the country on the need for a law to curb irresponsible competition-driven coverage. At that stage, two groups of channel owners set up separate bodies of their own to look into complaints against their coverage. This was done to forestall the creation of a regulatory mechanism by the government. 

The self-regulation experiments have been a failure. The arbitrary and ham-handed manner in which the government has acted against NDTV India reveals the dangers inherent in vesting the regulatory power in the government. 

The action against NDTV India has come more than 10 months after the indicted report. Viewed in the context of calls by ministers to journalists to put national interest above freedom of expression, it can be seen as a not-so-subtle attempt to send a message to all media.

The attempt to juxtapose national interest with freedom of expression is mischievous as there is actually no conflict between them. The government’s discomfort arises from the conflict between its own political interest and exercise of freedom by the citizens and the media.

On Saturday, in a bid to ward off criticism that NDTV India has been singled out for punishment, the government announced that a regional channel of Assam has also been asked to go off the air for 24 hours --for revealing the name of a minor who had been tortured.

On Monday, following a protest meeting by journalists in New Delhi and the filing of a petition by NDTV in the Supreme Court challenging the order, the government put it on hold pending a review of the decision.

A mechanism is needed to regulate the working of channels. It is not a task that can be left to politicians and bureaucrats. A credible statutory mechanism with due representation for media professionals is needed.  -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 8, 2016.

Rape film touches a raw nerve

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The cry of a young woman who fought back a gang of sexual predators in a Delhi bus on a cold night two years ago is reverberating throughout the world again, thanks to an hour-long documentary.

News reports of the gangrape outrage in India prompted Leslee Udwin, maker of the award-winning British film East is East, which deals with the life of South Asian immigrants in London, to confront her own past. A rape survivor, she had kept her teenage experience a secret and harboured a sense of guilt for decades. She came to India to find an answer to the question why men rape. The documentary, “India’s Daughter”, is the result of her effort.

The film was to be released on BBC 4 and the Indian channel NDTV 24x7 and shown at various other countries on March 8, International Women’s Day. Clips from the documentary and news reports about its contents alarmed the Narendra Modi government, which is already having an image problem. A commercial rival of NDTV launched a virulent campaign against the documentary, and the government, in a kneejerk response, banned the documentary without even seeing it.

On a plea by the government, a Delhi court issued an injunction restraining channels and websites from showing the film, also without seeing it. The BBC responded by telecasting the documentary immediately. Within minutes it was on YouTube too.

Bowing to the Delhi court order and BBC’s copyright claim, YouTube blocked the film but it kept reappearing as intrepid Netizens kept posting it again and again.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh asked the External Affairs Ministry to alert Indian missions abroad to prevent the exhibition of the film in other countries. Few foreign governments obliged.

As it happened, the government could scuttle only the NDTV telecast. The channel left the screen blank during the hour set for the telecast.  

The documentary divided Indian political parties and civil society.  The government described the documentary as part of an attempt to tarnish India’s image. It said the interviews with the accused and their lawyers included in it were objectionable as the legal processes in the rape case were still not over.

Kavita Krishnan, Secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association, who is one of the persons Leslee Udwin interviewed for the film, rejected the government’s arguments for banning the film but said it did not address the problem of rape culture. A group of women activists, led by well-known lawyer Indira Jaising, while opposing the ban, wanted its screening to be delayed until the legal processes are completed.

The public outrage over the gangrape had forced the government to refer the case to a fast-track court. Within nine months of the crime, four accused were sentenced to death. This was a record in rape trials. The high court disposed of the convicts’ appeals in just six months, which, too, was a record.

Fast-tracking ended there. The convicts’ appeals against the high court judgement confirming the death sentence have been pending before the Supreme Court now for a year.

The argument that telecast of the film before completion of the legal processes may prejudice the rights of the victim and the convicts is based on a sound principle. However, it is disingenuous to suggest that it may influence the Supreme Court, which has stated that pendency of a matter is no bar on intellectual debate.

The anti-women statements of Mukesh Singh, an unrepentant convict, and ML Sharma and AP Singh, the defence lawyers, in the documentary touched a raw nerve. All three blamed the victim for her tragic end. Singh said on camera that he would burn his daughter alive if she had sex outside marriage.

The Bar Council of India has asked Sharma and Singh to show cause within three weeks why disciplinary action should not be taken against them for their misogynistic remarks.

Official statistics show that sex crimes are on the rise and the state is failing to send the culprits to jail. Rape cases in Delhi shot up from 706 in 2012 to 1,646 in 2013 and more than 1,789 in 2014, molestation cases from 727 to 3,515 and to more than 3,674, and lewd taunt cases from 236 to 916 and to more than 1,092. Courts returned a guilty verdict only in 6,892 of the 25,386 rape cases decided in India in 2013.

“Our heads hang in shame,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a Women’s Day speech. That statement explains the government’s ham-handed efforts to ban the documentary.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 10, 2015

Media run for cover

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The media hounds who were chasing India’s scam-stained politicians are running for cover. Leaked tapes contain material that links some media celebrities with a corporate lobbyist.

They had kept the nation on tenterhooks for days with reports on the 2G scam, the biggest in India’s history by virtue of the huge amount involved in suspect deals. Then the X-tapes came into the public domain. Two periodicals, Open and Outlook, put them on their websites and printed the transcripts.

The tapes contain telephone conversations Niira Radia had with politicians, businessmen and journalists during 2008-09. Radia runs a public relations firm whose clients include Mukesh Ambani, who, Forbes magazine has said, may soon be the world’s richest man, and the Tatas, the oldest of the corporate giants. Her mission at one point was to ensure that A. Raja, who recently resigned as Communications Minister, got that portfolio.

Burkha Dutt, Group Editor of NDTV and one of the best known faces on Indian TV, and Vir Sanghvi, Editorial Director of the Hindustan Times and a popular columnist, were among those whose assistance she sought. Going by the tapes, both were willing. A few other journalists also figure in the tapes.

“India, the republic, is now on sale,” Outlook wrote. “Participating in the auction is a group of powerful individuals, corporate houses, lobbyists, bureaucrats and journalists.”

Dutt and Sanghvi denied wrong-doing, the former through Twitter and the latter through his website. Both justified contacts with Radia as legitimate journalistic activity.

“Radia was a valid news source for DMK camp,” Dutt wrote. “She gave info on Karunanidhi, and sought my analysis on what Cong may do next. Valid journalism.”

Her tweets ended with these words: “…bizarre to think any government bases decisions on cabinet formation on what journos say!! End of discussion folks. see ya.”

Sanghvi wrote, “There is nothing at all in the tapes to suggest that I lobbied for Mr Raja.” He added, “While gathering news, journalists talk to a wide variety of sources from all walks of life, especially when a fast-moving story is unfolding. Out of a desire to elicit more information from these sources, we are generally polite. I received many calls from different sources during that period. In no case did I act on those requests as anybody in the government will know.”

Both sought to cast doubts on the tapes and the transcripts. So did Radia’s Vaishnavi Corporate Communications Pvt. Ltd, which said “some media properties” were levelling unsubstantiated, baseless and reckless allegations against it.

In solidarity with scam-hurt colleagues, mainstream media properties blacked out the contents of the tapes. One editor informed readers he received transcripts but did not act on them “because we couldn’t authenticate them.” He wrote under the headline, “Why we are quiet on the Open magazine story.” He may as well have written: “Why we are not quite open on the magazine story.”

Editors actually had time to verify the tapes, if they wanted to, since they had come into their possession months earlier. Girish Nikam, a New Delhi journalist, had mentioned them on his website last May. He also explained why the media shut their eyes to them. Niira Radia, he wrote, “has friends in the media, including some of the highest profiled media figures, apart from newspaper owners and editors.” He added, “The fact that she dictates the media policy of three of the richest corporates means none of the media houses can afford to take cudgels against her.”

While the English language newspapers, which had led the campaign against “paid news” in the Marathi press, steered clear of the Radia minefield, J. Gopikrishnan, a little known staffer of The Pioneer, pursued the story and played a role in the developments that resulted in Raja’s fall. His editor, Swapan Dasgupta, is an Opposition MP.

Breaking with the mainstream approach, G. Sampath of the Mumbai daily DNA wrote in his blog: “The complete blackout of the Niira Radia tapes by the entire broadcast media and most of the major English newspapers paints a truer picture of corruption in the country than the talk shows in the various news channels and the breast-beating in all the newspapers.”

There is nothing in the tapes to indicate that the journalists sought any favours. However, their explanations raise some question. Do ace journalists rely on business lobbies for information on political developments? Do they hold out false promises to get information from dubious sources? Is under-the-table sale of newspaper space to politicians a more heinous crime than use of media clout to further corporate motives, which, as Outlook implies, amounts to sale of the republic? -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 22, 2010.

An Open Letter to NDTV's Barkha Dutt

By Saeed Haider

Dear Ms. Barkha Dutt:

I have always been an admirer of your objective, fearless and purposeful reporting. You are among a very few Indian journalists who rekindled my hope and trust in the Indian Fourth Estate which otherwise has lost the direction and is rather motivated by vested interest and TRPs. The 24-hour news channels have not only ignored but bypassed all journalistic norms and ethics in all kind of reporting. As a fellow journalist, in you I saw hope for India and Indian journalism.

However, you not only betrayed all my hopes but also generated a kind of nervousness and fear with your reckless comments and opinions. Yes, terrorists scared me like hell, but your reporting scared me even more because you were doing exactly what these terror outfits wanted you to do.

Being a journalist who had covered two Gulf wars (1990-91 and 2003), I am fully aware of the sensitivities and limitations of covering such events and hence I don't have any problem as far as your factual reporting is concerned. What pained and disturbed me the most was your attempt to hit the very political structure of the country. The way you tried to shape the public opinion was extremely dangerous. It was you who initiated politician-bashing. I don't think you need any kind of experience to have a clear perception of the situation. It is a basic common sense that in an event like 26/11 a reporter's prime job is to report; report sensibly and accurately and not to indulge in rhetoric and jingoism and to ignite people's sentiment. What you were doing was exactly the opposite.

You were too melodramatic, igniting people's sentiment against politicians, challenging democracy and unintentionally, or may be intentionally, preaching anarchy. Your "Enough Is Enough" catchphrase was extremely sick. It was like a clarion call for anarchism. While reporting from Nariman House you very blatantly tried to create Politicians versus Armed Forces battle. What you failed to perceive was the fact that by drawing such parallel you were forcing public opinion to opt for military dictatorship instead of democracy. It may sound a bit ludicrous but if you will see your own footage with a cool and open mind you too will reach the same conclusion.

I fully agree that India's political structure needs a drastic revamping and the country is largely a victim of corrupt, inept, insensitive and illiterate politicians. But then we all have known this for ages. We do realize that drastic changes and reforms are required. But that was not the time to initiate such hate campaign against politicians.

You quoted Narayan Murthy and Salman Rushdie congratulating you for the NDTV coverage, I am sure you don't take such comments seriously nor will they ever shape the quality of your channel's coverage. These people have limited vision and narrow approach and could not see things in totality, as you can see.

On five different occasions you compared 26/11 with Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York. You went on to say that "despite some minor wrong decisions" US succeeded in preventing terror attack. I am sure, Barkha, an astute and seasoned journalist like you know that America achieved this at the cost of hundreds and thousands of lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and the regions bordering Pakistan. It put thousands of innocent people in Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Are you professing us to become a rogue fascist state like the United States? You literally pushed India on the brink of war. Do you realize that?

Do you realize that you essentially set the tone of other media coverage of 26/11. After your style and rhetoric, overnight all major news channels like Times Now, IBN-CNN, Headlines Today, Aaj Tak and Star News, changed their tone and began bashing politicians.

Your "We the People" in the backdrop of a burning Taj was another disaster when film actress Simi Garewal made an irresponsible and pathetic remark on Pakistani flags being hoisted at every dwelling in Mumbai slums. Instead of clarifying it then and there you allowed it to pass away and only on second or third day your channel gave a one-line clarification. Don't you agree that it was an extremely irresponsible omission on your part in such a volatile situation?

Despite all these, the fact remains that you are a fine journalist and I do respect your past work but certainly your work during 26/11 did not make me proud. I am sure you will look within, do serious introspection by watching your own footage and will bounce back once again as a fearless, objective and purposeful journalist. Just be a journalist. Please don't don the mantle of a savior or a messiah.

Saeed Haider is an Indian journalist based in Saudi Arabia. He can be reached at haider.saeed@gmail.com.

Hooligans ransack NDTV office at Ahmedabad

A group of 15-20 people calling themselves the Hindu Samrajya Sena ransacked NDTV's office in Ahmedabad on Saturday for airing an SMS poll on Bharat Ratna with famous painter M F Husain as a contender.

See report at NDTV website.