Lessons for Indian media: Start hissing or get ready to be stoned

New Delhi: Here goes a tale from Panchatantra - a sage once told a poisonous snake to mend his ways and stop biting people. Snake agreed and the sage went away for a while. 

When he returned he found the snake half dead. Surprised, he asked what happened. Snake said no one feared him anymore as he had stopped biting and now people throw stones at him. 

Sage said, “I had asked you to stop biting but not hissing to scare away people.”

That’s the tale of Indian journalism now. It stopped biting long ago and now can’t even hiss.

And once in a while when it tries to hiss, the political class is quick to ruthlessly crush it down.

हिंदी में पढ़ें: भारतीय मीडिया जागो: फुंफकारना शुरू करो या पत्थर खाने के लिए तैयार रहो

Leading Hindi news channel Times Now Navbharat is alleging that a legitimate story on the expenses incurred on renovating the official residence of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal resulted in the arrest of their reporter, cameraman and the driver of the vehicle in which they were travelling in Punjab.

The Punjab and Haryana high court is seized of the matter and has granted bail to all the three who have been accused of ramming down a woman in Ludhiana who sustained injury and also using caste slurs in the ensuing argument with her.

The reporter was arrested and was sent to judicial custody and got interim bail after spending a day in jail while the other two accused had to wait three more days in jail when the high court came to their rescue. 

The high court was surprised as to when the charges were bailable why two of the accused were not granted bail by the police after their arrest and also why the duty magistrate sent them to judicial custody.

In its bail order, the court said, “It appears that at no stage, the provisions of the Statute were actually gone into or seen. In a mechanical manner, initially, the Arresting Officer and thereafter, the Judicial Officers proceeded to pass orders of arrest and remand. Continuance of a citizen in custody without there being a mandate of law i.e. illegal custody cannot be permitted. A Court and that too, a Constitutional Court, when comes to know of the same, cannot shut its eyes to the same.”

It seems that tough days are ahead for the AAP government in Punjab to explain its actions before the court. And the arrest and jail for the reporter, cameraman and their driver are going to be a forever taint on AAP if the court finds fault with them.

And it's also going to be a loss of face for senior AAP leaders Sanjay Singh and Atishi Marlena who were quick to denounce the reporter, cameraman and their driver following their arrest.

Now, let's come back to the state of journalism in India, especially in the last decade.

India’s ranking in the latest press freedom index has slipped to 161 out of 180 countries. The report is prepared by a global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF). In 2022 India was ranked 150.

The entire political class of the country is equally responsible for crushing the press. No political party can be spared from the blame in this regard.

But equally worthy of blame is the press itself which has totally capitulated before the political class.

Setting the police after reporters became a new norm with wide acceptance within the political class. It started in small towns. Stingers were the first to face the heat and the biggies in the national capital kept mum thinking the monster will spare them but now they are realising that the monster has become habitual and doesn’t discriminate between big names of journalism or small-town reporters and stingers.

The BJP veteran Lal Krishna Advani had once commented that during the emergency when the media was asked to bend it started crawling.

It seems that the time has come to tweak his statement - when asked to crawl, the media started acting dead.

It's a wake-up call for the media fraternity as a whole. Bite and hiss otherwise be ready to be stoned.