She was an Indian journalist-turned-activist from Bangalore, Karnataka.

She worked as an editor in Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly started

by her father P. Lankesh, and ran her own weekly called Gauri Lankesh
Patrike. She was shot to death by assailants outside her home
in Rajarajeshwari Nagar on 5 September 2017. At the time of her death,
Gauri was known for being a critic of right-wing Hindu extremism. She
was honored with Anna Politkovskaya Award for speaking against right-
wing Hindu extremism, campaigning for women's rights and opposing
caste based discrimination

• Official investigations in both Britain and France found that Diana

died in a manner consistent with media reports following the fatal
car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. In 1999, a French
investigation concluded that Diana died as the result of an
accident. The French investigator, Judge Hervé Stephan, concluded
that the paparazzi were some distance from the Mercedes S280
when it crashed and were not responsible

Pakistan Expels Indian High Commissioner and Recalls Its Envoy,

Suspends Trade over J&K Move

1. What’s wrong with political journalism? Prof Charlie Beckett

MC417 2016
2. 2. What does journalism do for politics? • Information [facts,
records, statistics, events, policies] • Deliberation [debate, analysis,
 comment, opinion] • Accountability [investigation, audit, voice for
citizen, campaigns]
3. 3. Politicians News Media Public
4. 4. Political reporting is now networked Media Politicians Citizens
5. 5. Networked political journalism is.. • Mainstream or digital
native media ‘exploiting’ networks • ‘Digital first’: Connected,
continuous • Includes public participation at some point: source,
interactivity, audience analysis, dissemination • Multi-source,
multi-format, multi-platform • Service, not product
6. 6. Examples of networked political journalism
7. 7. Build your own coalition
8. 8. What digital can for democracy • More information • Citizen
voice and participation • Media accountability • Direct
communication (disintermediation) • Organisation & campaigning
9. 9. What digital can for democracy • More information • Citizen
voice and participation • Media accountability • Direct
communication (disintermediation) • Organisation & campaigning
• Over abundance of data and voice • Replicates hierarchies •
Homophily (filter bubbles) • Fragmentation and polarisation •
Distraction, extremism, clicktavism
10. 10. #EdStone
11. 11. Trust in media: relative to platform, source, country
12. 12. Real problem is lack of engagement, attention &
authenticity
13. 13. Corbyn’s solution: bypass MSM
14. 14. Labour’s ratings have declined under Corbyn to record
post-war low
15. 15. Labour supporters don’t even back him for PM
16. 16. blog.sysomos.com/ (2015) • Orange = Corbyn critics •
Red = centre Left, neutral or supportive • Purple = broad debate •
Blue = Corbynistas
17. 17. Trump’s media by-pass
18. 18. Trumpvision
19. 19. Trump v Clinton • HRC is significantly ahead in all
mainstream polling • US tradition of anti-establishment voting
 historically grounded • But seems to confirm filter bubble works
for core (primaries), less so for open votes (presidentials, general
election) i.e. for power not mobilisation
20. 20. Journalists have lost control to platforms
21. 21. Platforms now increasingly shape political information
flows
22. 22. Facebook’s new news policy • “In the weeks ahead,
we’re going to begin allowing more items that people find
newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest — even
if they might otherwise violate our standards. We will work with
our community and partners to explore exactly how to do this, both
through new tools and approaches to enforcement. Our intent is to
allow more images and stories without posing safety risks or
showing graphic images to minors and others who do not want to
see them.” • http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/10/input-from-
community-and- partners-on-our-community-standards/
23. 23. Facebook fosters hyper-partisan false news posts
24. 24. False information feeds partisan passion • Articles with
false news gain more traffic than those that are factual • 38% of
right wing hyper partisan posts contained significant false
information • 22% of left wing hyper partisan posts contained
significant false information •
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-
analysis?utm_term=.fhewlD3Z8z#.qqXD3ZmWQq
25. 25. Brexit: more evidence that MSM journalism has lost
relevance?
26. 26. The Brexit media failure? • False equivalence (esp BBC)
• Partisan press • Lack of fact checking • News media out of touch
• Failed to predict result • But both sides lied
27. 27. Post-truth? • Is ‘Post truth’ actually simply the failure of
Establishment to recognise challenging views? • Does politics and
media deserve to be trusted? • What should mainstream news
media do to regain relevance?
 REAL LIFE. REAL NEWS. REAL VOICES.

HOW FREE IS INDIAN JOURNALISM FROM POLITICS

INDIRA GANDHI – EMERGENCY
PULWAMA
ARTICLE 370
SRI LANKA ATTACK
PRIINCESS DIANA – PAPARAZZI

For a country that prides itself on the strength of its democracy, India’s
record in upholding the freedom of press has been consistently poor.
Currently, India ranks an abysmal 138 out of 180 in the Press Freedom
Index — the position not having changed much for over a decade. While
the current administration may seek to suppress critical reportage,
structural issues have limited the Indian reporter long before the
Bharatiya Janata Party’s ascendency.
This reading list examines the institutional shackles which constrain a
reporter’s right to free speech, and consequently, prevent important
stories from being published.
1) Censorship Begins From Within
What do you do when the very institution you work for stifles your
voice? Commenting on the Hindustan Times’ abrupt closure of four of
its editions in early 2017, Samrat Choudhury’s article traces the link
between employment conditions of journalists and the corresponding
effect on their work. He argues that unstable working environments
dissuade many journalists from speaking up against the management.
The Working Journalists Act of 1955 lays down service conditions for
journalists, but newspaper managements refuse to follow them.
“Most journalists including editors are employed on contracts of three
years or less, with an exit clause that permits them to leave or be fired on
a notice of between one and three months. As a result, journalists have
lost the courage to speak up or write about any issue that owners and
managements do not want them to, including the issue of their own
unstable working conditions.”
2) Balancing Freedom of Trade and Freedom of Speech
Samarika Kumar’s 2016 article examines various cases brought before
the Supreme Court which have sought to regulate the dissemination of
information, primarily through newspapers. Set against Reliance’s
managerial takeover of Network18, this article looks at government
policies and court cases since independence which have debated
curtailing established newspapers’ circulation to allow entry to newer
aspirants, questioning whether the freedom to trade infringed upon the
fundamental right of speech and expression.
The concentration of ownership of media implies that the influence and
power which result in distribution of news and culture among other
forms of expression and opinion-building in the country is now vested in
only a handful of people—those who own or control the media.…..Is the
prevention of concentration of media ownership one such claim for
freedom of speech and expression? At the other end, the freedom to
trade becomes an obvious claim to consider when the issue is that of
ownership of media, since ownership is patently a concern of business
and trade.
3) Who Controls the Indian Media?
What happens when businesses control the dissemination of
information? Paranjoy Guha Thakurta’s 2014 article is an investigative
analysis of the circumstances resulting in Mukesh Ambani emerging as
India’s largest media baron. Alluding to his proximity to the current
government, the author sounds caution over the independence of the
fourth estate.
“The consequence of RIL strengthening its association with Network18
is a clear loss of heterogeneity in the dissemination of information and
opinions. Media plurality in a multicultural country like India will
diminish. In particular, the space for providing factual information as
well as expressing views that are not in favour of (or even against the
interests of) India’s biggest corporate conglomerate will shrink, not just
in the traditional mainstream media (print, television and radio) but in
the new media (internet and mobile telephony).”
The free press is expected to uphold society’s civil and political
freedom; however, the distribution of information in our country is
neither free nor fair. The increasingly oligopolistic nature emerging in
Indian media was studied by Anuradha Bhattacharjee and Anushi
Agarwal. Their article provides a detailed analysis of the 12 major media
houses in our country. They stress the importance of the media on
matters of democratic choices, caution against corporate interests
restricting a consumer access to unbiased information and also argue for
greater transparency in the oligopolistic nature of the market.
Industrial houses have been investing in media companies and indirectly
gaining control over them (Subramanian 2012). This reinforces the view
that investors are investing in the media for their access and proximity to
power and authority, and thereby also indulging in lobbying, rent-
seeking behaviour—as brought out during the telecom and coal
allocation scams—and even attempting to shape political and market
information by influencing editorial content. Ninan (2011) has observed,
“For the Indian media, it is unquestionably the best of times and it is
also, unfortunately, the worst of times. We have never seen such a
flowering of TV channels and such a spreading footprint of newspaper
titles, but the market is more consolidated than ever around the top few
players. The quality of what we offer to our public has never been better
but that same public can see that the ethical foundations of our actions
have plummeted to new depths.”
4) Where are the Legal Safeguards to Protect a Whistleblower?
A journalist is only as good as their source. Thus, maintaining their
anonymity must be paramount. India, however, has a patchy record
when it comes to protecting whistleblowers. Sohini Chatterjee’s
2018 article provides a case study of prevalent codes of conduct in
national publications and analyses relevant court cases in the United
States and the United Kingdom. She argues for reporters’ privileges to
maintain source confidentiality to be protected by courts and the
Parliament as a part of the fundamental right to freedom and expression.
“The stunted development of source protection privilege law in India has
meant that newsgatherers’ interactions with confidential sources are
coloured by ambiguity. Despite two sets of recommendations by the
Law Commission of India, neither the government nor the judiciary has
displayed an inclination to directly address the issue. Courts have
adopted an impressionistic and ad hoc approach in deciding cases
bearing upon source protection. The casualties of the quagmire are
newsgatherers, sources, the public, and the spirit of a democratic
nation.”

The media in South Asian countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
has never been more obedient to corporate and political forces as it is
today. As these countries are scrutinized for human rights violations and
atrocities committed against minority groups, the freedom of journalists
to objectively report is ceasing to exist, with governments and legal
systems failing to protect or rescue them. Every day, journalists battle
for autonomy, fight for their rights to speak out freely, protect media
pluralism and counter the ills of monopolies.
While Pakistan and Bangladesh have been well-known press freedom
battlefields in recent years, with many journalists and bloggers killed,
wounded or sued for speaking the truth, the surprising entry to this list is
India. This is a country of 1.2 billion people where the media was until
recently deemed “free [and] fair with equal access”—a Fourth Estate to
the world’s largest democracy.

Today, prominent Indian politicians and corporate entities are making

increasingly underhanded investments in news media, and the press is
failing to serve as a potent, unbiased tool to inform public perception. In
this way, it is also increasingly unable to provide an arena for public
debates where issues of shared interest can be represented and discussed.

Unlike many democracies, where political and corporate entities are

ostensibly supposed to be prohibited from holding news media
broadcasting and publishing rights, media outlets in India are openly
owned and controlled by political and business conglomerates, which
are using the media to undermine the relevance of their opponents with
scant regard for overall national interest.

The main casualty has been the ability of the citizen to find out the
objective truth, as different media outlets divide into camps on any
major issue, polarizing the reporting and their readerships. This has
become so evident that in a report to the government, India’s regulatory
body, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI), recommended
legislation to empower journalists for free and fair expression.

“Instances of irresponsible reporting and sensationalization are common

these days when controversial news stories are bandied in the public
domain through media outlets,” the report reads. It suggests Indian
journalism, with its lack of freedom and self-regulation, cannot be
trusted now—it is currently known for manipulation and bias.

Subir Ghosh, co-author of Sue The Messenger, a book about how

corporate ownership and legal harassment by powerful business houses
are shackling reportage and undermining democracy, states, “If writing
and reportage are shackled, it is democracy which gets undermined. It is
the people who lose their unfettered right to know.” Ghosh said the
reality on the ground is that the editorial policies of most media outlets
are affected by corporate entities, either through influence or by the heft
commanded by advertising and revenue generation. Leading Indian
newspapers like the Times of India are increasingly market-driven, and
have long diluted editorial authority.

India’s biggest TV network, CNN-IBN and the Eenadu group of

regional language channels, is directly controlled by one of the world’s
richest business tycoons, Mukesh Ambani. Ambani is the chairman,
managing director and largest shareholder of Reliance Industries
Limited (RIL), a US $100 billion asset and Fortune Global 500 company
with interests in energy, petrochemicals, textiles, natural resources, retail
and telecommunications. RIL, which owns businesses across India, also
has stakes in several other media entities. Ambani’s brother Anil
runs Reliance Big Broadcasting and has stakes in numerous publications
and TV channels, including American film production
label DreamWorks. Other prominent media houses—New Delhi
Television (NDTV) and India Today, for instance—also have corporate
investments, which are significantly influenced by political preferences.

TRAI points out that the primary motivation for a media company to
have a presence in multiple media segments, i.e. to have cross media
holdings, is to maximize its reach to consumers in different
demographics with varying media consumption patterns. This translates
into higher economic gains for these media owners. “Media pluralism is
getting restricted with entities having cross media holdings occupying
dominant positions in different media sectors,” said journalist Naveen
Upadhyay, a political editor with a Delhi-based Indian English language
daily.

Ghosh also writes that readers need to understand that persecution is fast
becoming the norm for Indian journalists. “What was earlier intermittent
is now increasingly taking the shape of a distinct trend in the targeting of
journalists. While more journalists want to expose corporate corruption
and crony capitalism, it is increasingly being seen that corporations are
openly intimidating writers and journalists.”

In this environment, how can journalists not be forced—or feel

compelled for the sake of job security—to report in ways that reflect the
political opinions and corporate interests of shareholders?

This trend of interference also extends to political actors having close

ties to news media. For example, News 24 is owned by Annuradha
Prasad, the wife of opposition Congress Party leader Rajeev Shukla,
whose name surfaced in corruption and spot-fixing scandals in the
Indian Premier League. As journalists are intimidated for attempting to
expose corruption, it is extremely worrisome when politicians accused
of corruption have such close and personal ties to those in charge of the
media.

TRAI, in addition to recommending the need for regulations of media

ownership, has stated that “media influences ideas and therefore can
swing opinions. It is, therefore, important that an arm’s length distance
is ensured between the media and organs of governance, political
institutions and other entities which have a profound sway over public
opinion. It is, thus, essential in the public interest, as a guarantee of the
plurality and diversity of opinion.”

Such alarming observations about corporate and political interference

are made when several top Indian journalists are themselves becoming
politically active, queuing up to become Members of Parliament in the
Upper House and lobbying for political parties that often
make compromises to serve their own interests.

In one instance, Zee News editor Sudhir Chaudhary was arrested in 2012
for allegedly trying to extort US $15 million from former Congress MP
and industrialist Naveen Jindal. And not long ago, NDTV’s top
editorBarkha Dutt, along with many other journalists like
former Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi, were caught “political
lobbying” in the infamous Nira Radia tapes controversy, when
conversations allegedly between Radia, an influence peddler and
journalists were recorded, revealing their intention of promoting money
laundering and tax evasion.

Writing about the controversy, TV commentator Rajdeep Sardesai said,

“The robust Indian tradition of adversarial journalism has been
mortgaged at the altar of cozy networks.” This scandal revealed that
these journalists served as power brokers for a deal considered to be
among India’s biggest ever political scams.

Where else has the line between journalism and politics been blurred?

 Jaya TV in southern India is controlled by Tamil Nadu State Chief

Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram.
 Sun TV is led by former TeleCommunications Minister Dayanidhi
Maran.
 Shobhna Bhartia, Chairperson and Editorial Director of
the Hindustan Times, was a Congress Party Parliamentary
member.
 A popular national TV news channel is owned by editor Rajat
Sharma, who is open about his lobbying interests and support for
the ruling political party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
 Chandan Mitra, the editor of Pioneer newspaper in Delhi, and
veteran Indian journalist and author M. J. Akbar, are members of
BJP.
 Arun Shourie, former editor of the Indian Express newspaper, is a
public BJP sympathizer.

Journalists are free to pursue political careers and actions, but the
potential for conflicts of interest are high, with no regulations to prevent
them from using their positions in the media to promote personal
political agendas. For a truly free press, they must ensure that political
aspirations do not affect their objective news reporting in the meantime.
Date:
08 Aug 1942
Event location:
Gowalia Tank Maidan, Bombay, India
About:
On 8 August 1942 at the All-India Congress Committee session in
Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhilaunched the 'Quit India'
movement. The next day, Gandhi, Nehru and many other leaders of
the Indian National Congress were arrested by the British Government.
Disorderly and non-violent demonstrations took place throughout the
country in the following days.
By the middle of 1942, Japanese troops were approaching the borders of
India. Pressure was mounting from China, the United States and Britain
to solve the issue of the future status of India before the end of the war.
In March 1942, the Prime Minister dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps, a
member of the War Cabinet, to India to discuss the British Government's
Draft Declaration. The draft granted India Dominion status after the war
but otherwise conceded few changes to the British Government Act of
1935. The draft was unacceptable to the Congress Working Committee
who rejected it. The failure of the Cripps Mission further estranged
the Congressand the British Government.
Gandhi seized upon the failure of the Cripps Mission, the advances of
the Japanese in South-East Asia and the general frustration with the
British in India. He called for a voluntary British withdrawal from India.
From 29 April to 1 May 1942, the All India Congress Committee
assembled in Allahabad to discuss the resolution of the Working
Committee. Although Gandhi was absent from the meeting, many of his
points were admitted into the resolution: the most significant of them
being the commitment to non-violence. On 14 July 1942, the Congress
Working Committee met again at Wardha and resolved that it would
authorise Gandhi to take charge of the non-violent mass movement. The
Resolution, generally referred to as the 'Quit India' resolution, was to be
approved by the All India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay in
August.
On 7 to 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee met in
Bombay and ratified the 'Quit India' resolution. Gandhi called for 'Do or
Die'. The next day, on 9 August 1942, Gandhi, members of the Congress
Working Committee and other Congress leaders were arrested by the
British Government under the Defence of India Rules. The Working
Committee, the All India Congress Committee and the four Provincial
Congress Committees were declared unlawful associations under the
Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908. The assembly of public
meetings were prohibited under rule 56 of the Defence of India Rules.
The arrest of Gandhi and the Congress leaders led to mass
demonstrations throughout India. Thousands were killed and injured in
the wake of the 'Quit India' movement. Strikes were called in many
places. The British swiftly suppressed many of these demonstrations by
mass detentions; more than 100,000 people were imprisoned.
The 'Quit India' movement, more than anything, united the Indian people
against British rule. Although most demonstrations had been suppressed
by 1944, upon his release in 1944 Gandhi continued his resistance and
went on a 21-day fast. By the end of the Second World War, Britain's
place in the world had changed dramatically and the demand for
independence could no longer be ignored.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Subhas Chandra Bose, Mohandas

Karamchand Gandhi, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Asoka Mehta, Jaya
Prakas Narayan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr
Rajendra Prasad, Chakravarti Rajgopalachari.

PULWAMA
For the last three weeks, many people have expressed revulsion over the
coverage of some news channels as the Indo-Pak crisis unfolded on
ground. The concern over the war-mongering and hyper-nationalistic
debates conducted by some anchors should be a major concern for
sensible people in India.
Some journalists have been bold enough to call out the sensationalistic
and biased media personalities and outfits. Ravish Kumar of NDTV
India has been consistently drawing attention to how basic journalistic
and democratic principles are undermined for the sake of TRPs and
political patronage. He has emerged as a lone crusader against the
“spineless” mainstream media. Journalists like Ravish are in the
minority right now and their shows do not enjoy the same TRPs as their
noisy nonsense counterparts in other channels. Yet it is not only in the
best interest of Indian journalism but also Indian democracy that they
continue to raise questions on the unethical practices of their peers and
call a spade a spade. Some of the issues flagged by Ravish are worth
introspection. For instance, when he says that present-day Indian media
is scaling new heights of impropriety and that it is destroying the norms
of Indian democracy, he has plausible reasons for it.
Speaking at ‘The Wire Dialogues’ in Delhi recently, Kumar even
suggested that people should stop watching TV news for at least two
months for the sake of democracy just to underline the threat posed to
informed public opinion by outlets peddling propaganda in the name of
news.
Kumar also warned against the perils of the “complete fusion” of politics
and mainstream media. “Our mainstream media does not question the
government; on the contrary, it interrogates the people on behalf of the
government! The political line emerging from these channels in the
wake of the Pulwama blast has shown that clearly…If you ask a
question, you will be accused of being the a Congress agent, a Naxal,
urban Naxal, an opponent of Hindu unity, a supporter of Muslims, and,
finally, an opponent of Modi…” he said.
“This is not the work of one odd channel or anchor; hundreds of them
are at it all the time…What it seeks to do, and has done, is fashion a
bhakt who is completely bereft of information. One who is
informationless is loveless as well. Political parties have also been
affected by this build-up of fear – they too have withdrawn from asking
questions for fear of losing out.”
In a separate interview with Deutsche Welle, Kumar referred to the
phenomenon of news channels becoming "graphic war rooms" and
indulging in war mongering during the recent India-Pakistan standoff.
Responding to a question, he conceded that journalists in India are
facing pressure to conform to this narrative. “We are under pressure
because if the general mood is tuned toward warmongering, we have to
decide between catering to this mood and reporting factual information.”
Stating that media has crossed all boundaries, Kumar referred to the
signature style of prime-time shows. “Instead of presenting information,
television channels are continuously showing discussions between
experts. These talks are mostly based on perception and imaginary
scenarios, like what will happen if someone does this, or that.”
Journalism is all about telling truth with honesty rather than whipping
emotions for the sake of TRPs. The one-sided discussions are based on
assumptions rather than facts. In the absence of proper information, the
news anchors present opinions as facts. Selective reporting is another
aspect of the problem. Some trivial issues are blown out of proportion
while real issues are not considered worth the prime-time.
Amid the claims and counter-claims following the aerial strikes by India
and Pakistani retaliation, the cross-border shelling intensified. The news
channels should have ideally advocated cessation of hostilities rather
than adopting confrontational tone and acting as cheer-leaders for war.
Sitting in the cozy news studious thousands of miles from the border
where people suffer every time there is exchange of fire between Indian
and Pakistani troops, the anchors run commentaries on the ground
situation. Much of the media reporting of the border situation is often
driven by political compulsions, resulting in one-sided exaggerated
reportage. Border areas are often portrayed as war zones and not as real
places where human life exists. In the process, the humanitarian problem
is undermined. Border people pay for the hostility with their livelihood,
homes and even lives. In such a situation, by indulging in war
mongering, media only makes prospects of peace more and more
difficult.
Though it would be unfair to paint the entire mainstream media with one
brush, good journalists seem to be endangered species as the pack of
chauvinists run wild. Good journalists are either intimidated into
submission by social media trolls or quietly slip into self-censorship
mode. As the line between journalism and jingoism is fast eroding, India
needs people like Ravish Kumar to save the profession from further
disgrace.