Introduction

“Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.” Albert Camus

Democracy is said to be standing on three pillars – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The fundamentals of a democracy stand on these three independent identities, and it has a role to play in determining the success or failure of a modern state. It is not unknown to most that a fourth pillar exists, which is the pillar of media. If one makes a comparison, the pillar of media is probably the most accessible, identifiable and conceivable part of the structure. In a country like India, the average polity is highly aware of the presence of media all around and it is also decently conscious of the media’s role in creating a public opinion; unfortunately it is gloriously indifferent to the utmost criticality of the function of media and how the country would simply fail to exist were the fourth pillar to fail. When the public displays apathy or disinterest towards an aspect of public life, the government most certainly will capitalize on that through its policies and actions.

Media, press, journalism are terms not unknown to anyone, but their analysis and frequent usage warrants a formal definition. Mass media refers to a method of communication used for reaching out to people in large numbers; it does not speak about the content of the information to be transmitted. Press, coming from the institution of the printing press, comes closer to specifying the function and means of information transmittal – newspapers, periodicals, and often radio and television news broadcasting. Finally, Merriam Webster very judiciously puts down “journalism” as “writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation”.

The Role of Media

The role of the media is that of the eyes and ears of a polity. In order to function as a country, it is imminent for a citizen to make himself aware of the developments in all regions of the nation because the fate of the country is all interlinked together. Considering the vastness of the country in terms of dimension and diversity, it is not possible for a citizen to do this alone and individually, and that is where media comes in. The most essential part of the field of journalism is its unbiasedness. They are supposed to portray the facts of an incident precisely in the form an eyewitness would see them. The responsibility of interpreting the events and coming to a conclusion about what would augur well for the country is the responsibility of the common man – the “consumer” of the news.

In the World Press Freedom Index India ranks a glorious 140th, below the likes of Palestine, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Liberia. In all honesty, this is not a surprising result. The primary impediment to achieving free media lies in the funding which the media houses receive. Journalists have their own families to run, and media houses have their expenses to pay. The moment they turn to external sources for advertisement and funds, it is the objectivity of journalism which is compromised. The occurrence of the financial transaction alters the nature of functioning of the media house. It would be an understatement to call mainstream Indian media today as biased. What is most scary is not the incident of their biasedness towards business organizations or political affiliations of their choice, but the blatant disregard for journalistic principles they display when they make no effort to disguise their lack of objectivity.

The Process of Democracy

Democracy stands on the fundamental right of allowing every adult citizen the right to choose his/her future. It is a great weapon, a precious gift which our generation has had the privilege of being born with. Considering this, how unfortunate is it that our interpretation of democracy and of our fundamental duties towards our constitution and the holy institution of parliamentary government have been distorted and contorted beyond recognition, and that too by the facilitator of democracy named media? The structure of democracy rests on the concept of suffrage and election, but voting is by no definition the only responsibility that a citizen has towards the country. As per our political structure, an average Indian citizen would get the opportunity to vote thrice in five years. Are our democratic rights restricted to merely thrice in every 1800-odd days?

Democracy thrives only when it is a continuous process. Discussion, dissent and argumentation are as vital in a democracy as the fundamental duty of voting, and without the reporting of honest, unbiased and undistorted facts and figures by journalists, these acts are as good as none. In the words of American historian Howard Zinn,

“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it”.

The Indian parliament sits three times a year, but the newspaper is a parliament always in session.

Political chokehold - Across party lines

Neither is the murder of democracy is a new phenomenon, nor is it limited only to particular political dispositions or ideologies. A case in point is the occurrence of silencing the media by threats and enticement at an unimaginable scale during the Emergency of 1975. The Congress government of the day under the iron-clad control of Indira Gandhi declared the suspension of civil liberties which included, among other things, free media. The newspapers of the day broadly took two positions – institutions like The Statesman and Indian Express took firm stances and left their editorial pages empty and unblemished as a symbol of their tremendous opposition, while other media houses who judged their own security and comfort above national interest prompted senior leader LK Advani to comment, “You were asked only to bend, but you crawled”. One can only sigh in irony when his party, forty years later, would be accused of committing the gravest crimes on free speech this country has seen.

The need for highlighting the sorry state of the Indian media is not merely because of lack of professional ethics by a section of the journalists. There has been a systematic degradation of the institution, and a well-planned procedure has been executed by consecutive governments and influential business houses for killing the sanctity of the media for their personal benefit. Professional immorality alone cannot threaten the institution of journalism unless there are external organized forces behind the downfall. Dissent as a concept is being targeted. In a lot of cases, the striking down of dissent is a direct hangover of the British colonial era where policies and laws were used to target the leaders of the masses of the Indian freedom struggle. Section 124A of the IPC penalizes “sedition” as an offence, and does so in a manner which is extremely vague and improperly defined. In the 21st century, most of the moderately advanced and open-minded nations of the world have decided against having legal ramifications against sedition simply because of the gross misuses that are possible in the name of punishing “affections against the state”, and for greater respect towards the freedom of speech and expression. Even in the countries of the Occident where the law is indeed still present, its use is almost unheard of; the Indian government of the present day has promised to make the draconian law stronger.

The British government, who opened the Pandora’s Box by setting up and using the sedition law for their own purposes to derail the Indian freedom movement, have now themselves scrapped the law; India meanwhile joins the ranks of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Turkey and Senegal in holding sedition as a criminal act. During his prosecution and trial by the colonial government in 1922, Mahatma Gandhi had remarked about sedition:

“If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite to violence”.

The country still has a long way to travel before it reaches the actual Ramrajya Gandhi had dreamed of, and if that is not ironical, then one doesn’t know what is.

You and I

Acts of gagging fair journalism and silencing dissent are not just legal technicalities which get discussed in the intellectual circles, but it is a harsh reality that affects ordinary individuals like us. Even after the Supreme Court struck down the notorious Section 66A of the Information Technology Act 2000, dissenters and those speaking against the powerful, the rich and the government are routinely arrested and illegally framed under a section that does not even hold now. During the Congress regime under Rajiv Gandhi, playwright Safdar Hashmi, a vocal social activist and staunch critic of the government of the day was stabbed and killed in Delhi while performing a street play – the perpetrators had the backing of the government.

The Golden Quadrilateral project which was supposed to bring the country together is remembered less for its contribution to roadways transport and more for the murder of an engineer who was too outspoken for his own good and had disturbed the comfortable bastions of the powers that were. Since the NDA government has come to power in 2014, deaths of journalists and social worker who took anti-government stands have not only been increasing, but these incidents are also not being given even a fraction of the importance they deserve by significant sections of the media. The names of Vinayak Dabholkar, MM Kalburgi, Govind Pansare, Gauri Lankesh have been forgotten soon after their lives were extinguished.

Conclusion

Silencing of dissent and muzzling of the media is not an accident, nor is it a classified conspiracy of an evil few. It is a well-framed and well-thought-out policy of the forces in power. The fourth pillar of our democracy’s structure is under considerable attack, and if the remaining three do not seem intent on restoring it to its position, the people of the country need to sit up.