The Sellout of Indian Media

Is India joining the ranks of North Korea, China, and Russia when it comes to the freedom of the media? India’s rank in the World Press Freedom Index as well as many other similar indices has been declining rapidly in the recent years. The cover story of the December issue of The Caravan magazine, one of the few remaining independent journals in the country, is about how Mukesh Ambani has become the media manager of Narendra Modi.

Ambani’s Reliance bought News 18 in July 2014. The year is significant. Modi had just come to power in Delhi. Eventually News 18 bought off many TV channels and journals. The Caravan informs us that using these media Modi is doing exactly what Kim Jong Un has been doing in North Korea, Putin in Russia, and Xi Jinping in China.

The first major casualty, when the government takes control of the mass media, is Suppression of free speech and dissent. The Caravan reveals how scores of journalists who refused to propagate what the government wanted them through Mukesh Ambani’s agencies were shunted out from their jobs altogether. I’m quoting the example of Sagarika Ghose below.

The Caravan has umpteen other examples to show. Those who remain in the rapidly increasing arms (pun intended) of News 18 are spineless journos who have sold themselves out totally. They have to write what their bosses tell them to.

Propaganda and misinformation are what we get, consequently. News 18 and a lot of other media are nothing more than Modi’s propaganda machinery today, meant to glorify Modi and promote the narratives his office fabricates day in and day out. The public perception is manipulated and distorted. Historical revisionism is another outcome. Inconvenient truths are erased or altered to serve the regime’s interests.

Democracy is an obvious victim. We know how elected MLAs and MPs of other parties are bought off just like commercial commodities in the market by Modi’s party. We know how writers, poets, activists, and many others have been arrested and left to rot behind the bars by Modi’s police. We know how a whole gargantuan army of Modi fans is running the social media with their savage attempts on the critics of the government. The Caravan also shows how social media like Facebook has been rendered practically incapable of allowing content that goes against the Modi regime.

An ordinary citizen of India today cannot write his opinion freely on Facebook and social media platforms simply because those platforms have already developed AI bots to remove such material within seconds of their posting. What is allowed is what the government wants. What will happen sooner than later is India will have a population that is unaware of or indifferent to systemic corruption, abuse of power, societal inequalities, etc.

Marginalisation of minorities is another offshoot of this sort of a situation which takes control of mass media. Divisiveness is encouraged while unity slogans are shouted. Hatred is spread while tolerance is glorified as the country’s ancient virtue. Ethnic, religious, or political minorities find their concerns totally ignored or misrepresented in the public sphere.

Cultural and intellectual growth will be stifled in such an atmosphere. What sort of art, literature, and academic enquiry will there be without the freedom to seek the truths?

The Caravan reveals how those journalists who were pushed out of Reliance’s media world were not even able to find jobs elsewhere. Other media houses were forewarned against employing them. Within Reliance’s media world, spies were appointed to keep a watch on their own colleagues! 

Now, imagine when that sort of a system moves out of Reliance’s world into the public spaces of the country. I leave you with that imagination. Make sure that your government doesn’t take away your freedom to imagine.

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