04 Feb 21 | India, News and features
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Farmers protesting/Randeep Maddoke/WikiCommons
India is currently witnessing one of its longest and largest ever expressions of dissent. Farmers – protesting three laws passed in September by the central government – have been camping at the borders of the national capital since 26 November last year, challenging the powers in New Delhi.
The protests would seem, on the surface, to show that India is functioning as a democracy with the freedom of individuals to protest. It is therefore ironic that at least seven journalists have been booked for reporting on the events that have transpired during the clashes between police and authorities.
On 29 January , six prominent journalists – Rajdeep Sardesai, Mrinal Pande, Zafar Agha, Vinod Jose, Paresh Nath and Anant Nath – were booked by Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh police under charges of sedition, criminal conspiracy and promoting enmity.
A day later, freelance journalist Mandeep Punia, who was on a project for The Caravan magazine, was detained by the Delhi police, a few hours after he went live on Facebook and reported on how stones were pelted at the farmers at Singhu border, even as security personnel looked on. He has since been granted bail.
Based on eyewitness testimony during a rally by the protesting farmers on Republic Day, 26 January, when India celebrates the 1950 entry into force of its Constitution, The Caravan reported that a man was killed after being shot by the Delhi police. Sardesai, Pande and Agha’s tweets echoed the testimony.
Police have vehemently denied shooting the farmer, which they claim is backed up by an autopsy report. However, the man’s family has refused to accept the Delhi police’s claim. “The doctor even told me that even though he had seen the bullet injury, he can do nothing as his hands are tied,” the farmer’s grandfather told Indian news website The Wire.
Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, was booked by the Uttar Pradesh police for tweeting the police report of the incident.
While the controversy around the farmer’s death is far from settled, the government’s decision to go after these journalists is only the latest episode of its effort to gag the voices that have dared to question it.
The question arises, why would the central government of the largest democracy in the world choose to take these steps? This was answered by the secretary general of the Press Club of India during a meeting organised to protest the intimidation of journalists covering the protests.
“The government is sending a message that while on paper we’re a democracy, we are behaving like several undemocratic states of the world,” Anand Kumar Sahay said.
The statement encompasses almost everything that journalists in India, who are not toeing the line yet, deal with as they try to speak truth to powerful authorities. India lies 142nd on Reporters Without Borders’ world press freedom rankings.
RSF says: “Ever since the general elections in the spring of 2019, won overwhelmingly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, pressure on the media to toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line has increased.”
That a large number of journalists are being booked, arrested or assaulted for doing their job just around these farmers’ protest tells a worrying story. A more thorough examination of the cases, with focus on the organisations that these journalists represent and the ideology that they support, will show whether Modi is targeting just the critical media or journalism as a whole.
There are also more covert ways in which the far-right party that governs the Indian state has told news establishments to not speak out against them if they want to preserve their business.
The mainstream news organisations in the country typically function on an advertisement-based revenue model. While this has helped in keeping the cost of the national dailies low, it has also made them dependent on large corporations and the government, the two biggest advertisers in newspapers.
As expected, the government has not missed the opportunity to milk this dependency and has led many media organisations to indulge in self-censorship and push the government agenda forward, particularly during the Covid pandemic when government advertising has increased.
While there is ample evidence of censorship by the Indian government on independent news websites like Newslaundry, it was also hinted at by the Modi in an interview with prominent English daily The Indian Express, in the run-up to Assembly Elections 2019.
In the article, Modi talks about the PM-KISAN income support or ‘dole’ scheme for farmers and compares this with payments received by other sectors from the government, such as publishing.
“I give advertisements to the Indian Express. It doesn’t benefit me, but is it a dole? Advertisements to newspapers may fit into a description of dole,” Modi said.
Media organisations are therefore on a warning by the government.
The close government scrutiny had also become clear back in 2018, when anchor Punya Prasun Bajpai was forced out from ABP News.
In a detailed account of the reasons behind his departure, Bajpai described how the channel’s proprietor had told him to avoid mentioning Modi’s name in the context of any criticism of the government.
Bajpai also described a 200-member monitoring team that was involved in observing news channels resulting in directives that would be sent to editors about what should be showed and how.
These “commandments”, which were reserved for TV news and large national dailies until 2019, have now reached the digital versions of these conventional news organisations. The only journalistic outfits who have dared to critically examine this government’s rule operate as digital platforms. The government is thus looking to “regulate” their work as well.
Censorship of content that is consumed by millions has not existed before on this scale.
But it has now permeated the Indian media to such an extent that freshers starting work in media are being told to “ride the tide” and “reserve their optimism” for when the political environment is less volatile.
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25 Jan 21 | Index in the Press
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship CEO Ruth Smeeth added her thoughts to proposed legislation to protect free speech in UK universities.
The legislation known as the Freedom of Speech (Universities) Bill 2019-21, proposed by former Brexit secretary David Davis, had its first reading on 19 January.
According to the UK Parliament website, the bill will “place a duty on universities to promote freedom of speech; to make provision for fining universities that do not comply with that duty; and for connected purposes”.
In the Daily Express, Smeeth said: “Universities are the home of debate and investigation in society and should always be a home for exploring new and controversial ideas. We must ensure free speech exists on campus.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
25 Jan 21 | Index in the Press
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The global Covid-19 pandemic has been the root cause of some of the most concerning and frightening attacks on journalists worldwide.
For The Times’ Red Box, Index’s Head of Content Jemimah Steinfeld laid out why the attacks were so concerning:
“Even we have been shocked by the scale of the attacks,” she said. “Journalists have been detained in Serbia; they’ve been called ‘wimps’ by Brazil’s leader Jair Bolsonaro; they’ve been expelled from China; banned from asking questions at lobby briefings in the UK; assaulted by police in South Africa; cowed by legislative change in Hungary.”
“The attacks have been relentless.”
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14 Jan 21 | News and features, Politics and Society, United States
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Biden and Obama/The White House/WikiCommons
On top of being the only US president impeached twice, Donald Trump leaves a legacy of attacks on the very foundations of free speech and specifically on journalists and the media.
President-elect Joe Biden has offered people hope of returning to normal politics, rather than another term of a president with a severe distaste for free speech. But are notions of a saviour cometh and confirmed on Inauguration Day on 20 January misguided?
Biden has an extensive record in politics from which he can be judged, as well as eight years in high office as vice president under Barack Obama that could give an indication of how he plans to proceed. But the picture that emerges is not one that identifies Biden clearly as a champion of free spech or otherwise.
Going back to the start of Biden’s career as a senator, the signals were already mixed on issues of free speech. In 1989, Index reported on then Senate Judiciary Committee chair Biden introducing a bill to make it illegal to desecrate a flag. Nan Levinson reported at the time: “Biden’s bill and a similar one introduced in the House are intended to sidestep free speech issues by outlawing actions without mentioning motivation, the part of flag desecration that the Court determined is protected by the First Amendment.” But in his favour, some 13 years later Biden helped propose the creation of a “Radio Free Afghanistan”.
In more recent years, there is the way in which the Obama Administration handled whistleblowers. Biden can set an early example with the case of Julian Assange by pardoning him. The question is, will he?
Such an action may have been considered by the Obama administration, but was not pursued. The whistleblower involved in the case, Chelsea Manning, eventually had her sentence commuted by Obama in January 2017.
Assange faces charges under the US Espionage Act, a first for a journalist or publisher. The onus is therefore on Biden to ensure there is no legal precedent stopping a journalist from publishing sensitive information again. Pardoning the WikiLeaks founder would go some way to achieving this.
Rumours of an immediate pardon once Biden takes office have arisen and many believe the election of Biden to be a positive thing for Assange. His lawyer Edward Fitzgerald went as far as telling Associated Press “Much of what we say about the fate which awaits Mr. Assange remains good because it’s about systemic faults in the prisons and his underlying conditions,” he said.
But as yet there has not been any indication either Trump or the president-elect will move to do this and any speculation has shaky foundations. There is a contradiction in that – though Obama may have commuted Manning’s sentence – in 2010, Biden described Assange’s work with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning as “closer to a high-tech terrorist than to the [actions of revealing the] Pentagon Papers.”
“The Obama administration went after other whistleblowers whose cases remain active. Edward Snowden for example. These track records and trends started before President Trump,” said Rebecca Vincent from RSF in an earlier interview with Index.
In fact, eight of the 13 people charged under the Espionage Act since its inception in 1917 were during the eight years of the Obama presidency.
Jeffrey Sterling was convicted and sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2015 for violations of the Espionage Act. Through correspondence with US journalist James Risen, Sterling brought to light covert plans to frame Iran by providing a flawed design for a component of a nuclear weapon, also known as Operation Merlin.
In an interview with Index, Sterling spoke of the importance of whistleblowers and said: “A vital part of free speech is the ability of citizens to hold those in power accountable by speaking out about wrongdoing and misuse of power.
“Whistleblowers are essential to free speech because their courage exposes what the unfettered power of government would prefer not to be known.
“Without whistleblowers, the wrongdoing and abuses of government will remain hidden to the detriment of the people. Without whistleblowers, free speech can be rendered ineffectual and of no concern to those in power.”
In short, misuse of the Espionage Act stops those working for US intelligence agencies and government offices from speaking out against wrongdoing.
“Targeting whistleblowers with the severe penalties and implications of being prosecuted under the Espionage Act has a chilling effect on anyone who might choose to exercise their free speech by being critical of or exposing the wrongful acts and abuses of government,” Sterling noted. “In my opinion, the Obama presidency did all it could to characterise whistleblowers as anti-patriotic and criminals and offered absolutely no protection.”
“When those who are the subject of a whistleblower’s complaint control the dialogue, there are no whistleblowers, just leakers. The Obama administration set the tone by essentially eliminating the very idea of a whistleblower and instead characterised them as leakers, or criminals.”
The contrast between Obama and Trump’s outward attitudes towards the press, however, is significant. While Trump chose to claim most of the criticism against him as “fake news”, Obama often spoke of the importance of journalism, a free media and free speech, such as after the 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
At the same time though the 44th president came under repeated fire for his actions towards media freedom and freedom of information in particular. Access to public information during his presidency was limited. The USA’s Freedom of Information Act allows US citizens, like many across the world, to question local and federal authorities. The Obama administration apparently spent a record $36.2 million in legal costs in the final year alone to preserve its right to turn over redacted information.
A lack of transparency and targeting of those revealing information in the public interest does not cast a positive light on Obama’s then right-hand man.
It is perhaps unfair to negatively predict the future of the Biden presidency and its role of free speech solely on the president he served under as second in command. The role of vice president offers no true indication of support of a particular policy; many doubt the power the role has. John Adams once described the role as “the most insignificant Office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived”. It could reasonably be said that whether or not Biden was supportive of Obama’s free speech policy, there would have been little he could have done about it either way.
Yet it is no secret that Obama is a man Biden greatly admires and – while the former Delaware senator did not exercise as much power as some vice presidents – the relationship between the two was famously good. Perhaps a certain level of emulation can be expected.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has put forward a white paper to set out how Biden can go about restoring freedom of speech in the USA. Among their suggestions were calls to “set an example for the world” by ensuring the independence of US government-funded media, appointing a special presidential envoy for press freedom and ensuring previous administrations’ attacks on publishers and whistleblowers were not repeated.
“President Biden should commit to an open and transparent administration that supports Freedom of Information requests, back Justice Department guidelines that protect confidential sources, and pledges never to use the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists or whistleblowers,” they said. “These long-standing concerns of CPJ and the press freedom community were also raised during the Obama administration. “
They said: “President Biden has the opportunity to restore American influence in a critical area.”
“However, this can only be achieved if defence of press freedom is a matter of principle, and not expediency. America must confront its adversaries, but also challenge its friends.”
Adopting such policies would go a long way to allay fears of a Biden presidency that departs from recent ones.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also like to read” category_id=”579″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
