Media in the time of Modi

Itrsquos tempting to write an obituary of Monday Blues which will gasp for breath one last time and then die unceremoniously and unlamented as soon as you finish reading today its last instalment I will however confine myself to crediting midday for mostly allowing me to freely articulate my opinions including even those that are anathema to the ruling regime which smells and sifts media outputs with the diligence and ferocity of a watchdog Not your fault in case you think Irsquom being ironicalJournalist friends would ask ldquoHow come you are allowed to write what you dordquo Surprising as this question is in a democracy Irsquod be reminded of American journalist AJ Liebling who famously said ldquoFreedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own onerdquo The owners indeed decide the extent of freedom journalists working for himher should enjoy Irsquove enjoyed utmost freedom to dateYet ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept to power in May 2014 the freedom of the press is no longer guaranteed to even owners Ask Anuradha Bhasin and Prabodh Jamwal the wifehusband duo who owns and edits the Kashmir Times which had its life taken out bit by bit by denying it government advertisements The newspaper shut down before it was reinvented in 2023 as a small digital operation which attracts around 52000 visitors dailyDecidedly a media bee in contrast to the behemoths of the fourth estate the Kashmir Times buzzed against the excesses and mistakes routinely committed in Kashmir goading the State into raiding its shuttered Jammu office and discovering incredibly arms and ammunition stored there The raid was conducted to investigate charges clubbed under the category of antinational activities The State has lassoed yet another watchdog of democracy an honorific befitting the Kashmir Times for treatment the Supreme Court has reserved for the strays The methods of silencing independent media voices are limitlessAlthough owners themselves the freedom of the press couldnrsquot be Bhasin and Jamwalrsquos because they also happen to be feisty journalists now an increasingly endangered tribe Most owners are businesspersons who censor their journalists blanking out news They fall in line because they fear raids and tax evasion cases although their silence earns them revenue through advertisements the government gives them At least in their cases the government with its enormous powers can be partly blamed for breaking the mediarsquos nibThis canrsquot be an excuse for corporate giants for they have entered the media to influence policies and for salvaging their reputation thatrsquos sullied because of being the beneficiaries of crony capitalism Compromising media freedom is a necessary precondition for acquiring power and pelf Itrsquos inevitable theyrsquod spin the ruling partyrsquos unethical conduct as in the recent Bihar elections as a masterstrokeFear and greed apart ideology too has turned the media into becoming the governmentrsquos voice an aspect that came across in Modirsquos speech in the sixth Ramnath Goenka Lecture He hailed Goenka the founder of the Indian Express Group for his courage in opposing the British and then decades later Indira Gandhi during the Emergency But he also in the same breath vividly described Goenkarsquos proximity to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh the previous incarnate of the Bharatiya Janata Party which won him a Lok Sabha election on its ticket Modi in a way affirmed that Goenkarsquos opposition to Mrs Gandhi was as much about fighting for press freedom as it was about bolstering HindutvaA large segment of owners of legacy media belongs to a social group that has traditionally patronised the RSS and its Hindutva ideology Torn between the demand for journalistic objectivity and their ideological inclination much of the media resembles the trapeze artist engaged in a torturous balancing act The tension of this conflict shows Articles mildly critical of Modi are offset by a barrage of Page one headlines on even his most hackneyed comments and a slew of pieces extolling his geniusAffinity to Congress ideology was also a media feature during its decades of dominance It too made media owners legislators Worse the Nehru government introduced a clause on ldquoreasonable restrictionsrdquo in Article 19 in a misguided reaction to fiery criticism from the Organiser a Sangh mouthpiece and Romesh Thaparrsquos Cross Roads a leftwing publication Yet the partyrsquos inherent liberalism often compromised but never effaced restrained it from compelling the entire media to become its cheerleaders The Congress government in the 1960s gave advertisements to even the Organiser as Abhishek Choudhary points out in his biography of AB VajpayeeIt is no surprise that a large number of journalists have quit TV channels and floated their YouTube channels in recent times Journalism without fear or favour is largely practised in the digital space strapped though they are for funds having to rely on donations They too have experienced the governmentrsquos sharp edge with the deepest cut inflicted on NewsClick whose more than 80 employees and contributors were raided one morning in 2023 In this gloomy ambience itrsquos a miracle that Monday Blues lived for six years mdash an apt epitaph for this column which bids with its last breath goodbyeThe writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon Challenging CasteSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper