Looking back, 2019: The highs and lows of Indian journalism

To give you a better picture of how this year turned out for Indian journalism, we reached out to some journalists with the following questions:

1) What, according to you, was the lowest point for Indian journalism in 2019?

2) What, according to you, was the highest point for Indian journalism in 2019?

3) What would you hope Indian journalism gets right in 2020?

Here’s what they said.

Sudipto Mondal, investigative journalist

The arrest of journalists from Kerala by the Mangaluru city police and the assault on Muslim journalists by the police in different parts of the country were shocking because nothing of this sort had happened before. It was also the lowest point of the year for Indian journalism because nobody stood by the persecuted journalists.

Arnab Goswami slamming the CAA was, for me, the most spectacular moment in Indian journalism in 2019. I don’t know if it qualifies as the highest point. The stiff resistance, in the face of tremendous pressure, put up by small media outlets (The Wire, Scroll, Newslaundry, The News Minute, The Caravan, The Quint) was heartening.

The safety of journalists working for digital outlets is a big concern. Journalists from big media outlets have complete control over working journalists’ unions and other self-regulatory bodies in the country. In many places, Mangaluru is a classic example: digital journalists are not given membership in the local journalist bodies and are not allowed by their print and TV colleagues to contest for office bearer positions.

Journalists working for digital publications need to organise urgently so we can demand accreditation from the government. Print and TV big media fat cats will never climb down from their high horses and push for our inclusion in the accreditation musters. The police, bureaucrats and politicians consider us a nuisance. In these days of frequent internet bans, some of us could get hit real bad if we don’t come together fast.

Nistula Hebbar, politics editor, The Hindu

For the lowest and highest point, I would say that it was the reporting on the CAA protests. Some outlets did verified ground reporting while others floated propaganda. To parse facts from the barrage of videos and tweets was a very difficult task, and some did it well, others didn’t. Print media mostly redeemed itself on this front.

Indian journalism has to wake up to social media, algorithms and news consumption pattern changes due to that. That is the biggest challenge, to reach out to readers and viewers outside of echo chambers and to reflect and influence public opinion in a meaningful way.

Prem Panicker, freelance journalist

In 2019, journalism slid further down the butter slide it has fashioned for itself. Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable, tell the truth to power — these used to be the guiding principles of our profession. Unfortunately, every single one of these tenets was observed only in the breach. Which, by the way, is why Newslaundry has a reason for existence, isn’t it?

There were a few honourable exceptions. Sites like Scroll and newspapers like The Telegraph; Ravish Kumar on TV and some brave, committed journalists. Snigdha Poonam, Supriya Sharma, Nikita Saxena, Rohini Mohan, etc. are names that come immediately to mind. I apologise for not making a comprehensive list, which may be beyond the scope of this response, [of those who] have been soldiering on regardless, but they are the exception, not the rule.

I hope — and it is a tenuous hope which I know, even as I make it, will not fructify — that in 2020, journalism rediscovers its moral compass. I hope we as a tribe realise we are not here to transcribe and publish the words of those in power, or to be propaganda vehicles for political and business interests — we are here to probe, to question, to hold power to account for its actions.

Above all, we are tasked to inform the public, not confuse them; to ask the questions they want to be asked of those they have elected to represent their interests and not drown their voices in the din of stage-managed “debates”. Above all, we are tasked to report reality, not spin facts to suit vested interests. We know all this: it is Journalism 101. I only wish that we remember what we became journalists for in the first place.

Dilip Mandal, journalist and professor

TV news media has seen a new low and endlessly decided to become His Master’s Voice. The most disturbing thing for me was that it helped the BJP in reproducing the Hindu-Muslim binary on shows like Dangal on Aaj Tak by Rohit Sardana or shows by Rubika Liyaquat.

I don’t have exact data for it, but from my commonsensical idea, I can say with conviction that most of the shows, or any of the shows [that] are about Hindu-Muslim binary, invite the most rabid voices from Hindus and Muslims. This helped the BJP and RSS in creating a binary which they wanted.

It might have given them high TRPs. But getting the most vicious and rabid voices from the Hindu and Muslim community is like gladiators in a ring, while the anchors become the ringmasters of the arena of a Roman gladiators fight…This has happened the most in 2019, and I have seen it in most of the shows.

The new report released by Oxfam and Newslaundry on diversity in newsrooms was great. The last time this issue was discussed was in 2006 when Yogendra Yadav, Anil Chamadia and Jitendra Kumar produced a report on diversity in newsrooms in Delhi. But we are still very far from being at par with the US, which produces newsroom diversity reports every year with more than 900 top media organisations.

This report still made an initiative, and it is very authentic. I hope we do more and more research on this issue as this can lead to some positive structural changes in the Indian newsroom.

The hope is that there are alternative news platforms, very small YouTube channels and Twitters handles with 400 – 500 followers. This will democratise news in the coming years, and I hope it happens. The newsroom should become a place where we can find more and more contrarian voices.

Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor, The Caravan

The lowest point in Indian journalism in 2019? Kashmir. We went back 30 years where we had to depend on the BBC to know what is happening in Kashmir. We never thought we’d reach those days again. Everything could’ve been done better. Anything that a journalist has to do: ask questions to the government, put their claims to scrutiny, report what is actually on the ground and not pretend to report what the government wants you to report, or pretend to see what the government claims is happening, which is untrue.

The only positive thing that I see in terms of reportage is that the government does not have complete control over the entire media. Largely, it has control over the whole of mass media but there are still some pockets left out of it…You will see the same divide across events, whether it is the protest or the reportage on Kashmir, where there are certain smaller media houses which are relatively independent, reporting what is happening.

Much of the mainstream media is compromised and sold out. So, I don’t see an event where you’ll suddenly see a media that a democracy of our scale deserves. I don’t see any great positives in journalism this year.

The problem is systemic. Unless you throw three-fourths of our media organisations down the Arabian Sea, I can’t see what can be done.

Rahul Shivshankar, editor-in-chief, Times Now

I am not a major journalist by your own definition. Therefore could you excuse me from this remarkable exercise? Hopefully, we will be a more inclusive society as we move forward. A happy new year and a Merry Christmas to you.

Ravi Srinivasan, editor, Hindu Businessline

Not so much a single low point as the year in which news television sank to its nadir, with the main news hour being reduced to a cacophony of screaming voices, blatant jingoism and war-mongering and the shameful amplification of hate and propaganda.

The highest point? The fact that we are, as a collective, still doing some outstanding investigative journalism: the Rafale deal expose by N Ram in The Hindu, Somesh Jha of Business Standard exposing the suppressed NSO survey, Businessline‘s Radheshyam Jhadav’s story on the forced hysterectomies on cane cutter women.

Hopes for 2020? The basics: doing its job as an independent watchdog rather than being the lapdog of the government.

Malini Subramaniam, freelance journalist

I was most disappointed by journalists like Rahul Pandita who hovered over the Kashmir Valley in a sponsored chopper, posting “all is normal” news from Kashmir. In Hyderabad, the arrest of Mojo CEO Revathi Pogadadanda under a lame pretext, and the hounding of TV9 CEO Ravi Prakash, showed how vulnerable journalists are under highhanded governments.

The uncouth bickering between the current Jaganmohan Reddy government and the past Chandrababu Naidu government, using media as a tool to pull each other down, has lessons for media to be as independent as possible. The gag order by the Jaganmohan Reddy government — allowing department secretaries to file defamation cases against journalists and reporters — predicts a frightful future for media in Andhra Pradesh.

Indian channels continue to be disappointing, which is not surprising given the past years. However, the Indian media, including print and others, have still not held politicians and the government accountable to the most deplorable social and economic condition that the country is passing through. Sharper editorials and opinion pieces need space as never before. The fact that the prime minister continues to function without any accountability to the media by mandatorily holding press-conferences (read: interviews to selective channels) need to be vociferously challenged.

What about the high points?

The series of investigative pieces on electoral bonds by Nitin Sethi in Huffington Post was fantastic exposure. The articles established two things for me, for which we as journalists need to fight and strive: First, bring the Right to Information Act to the centre stage, not allowing it to be diluted. I struggle to get information under the RTI, which is closely guarded by the CG police. The brilliant investigation could emerge as a consequence of the information got under the RTI.

Second, publishing agencies need to set aside sufficient resources to encourage investigative pieces.

Be it the Kashmir lockdown or the protests against the CAA and NRC over police brutality: it was heartening to see low-budget independent web portal media outlets such as Scroll, The Wire, Newslaundry, Newsclick, The News Minute, The Quint and others bringing ground reportage. Thanks also to the use of social media by ordinary citizens to share shocking videos of brutality on students and silent protesters. This to remind us once again to safeguard the independence and freedom of the press, and also denounce government interference by shutting down the internet, and get bodies such as the Editors’ Guild and Press Council of India to bring jurisprudence on such matters.

For 2020: more and more ground reportage and investigative pieces, and that web portal news outlets flourish to cover news and influence the public with fact and truth. The student unrest in the country is a wake-up call to the Indian media as well that has begun to settle in the new norm created by the current dispensation.

Also read: Media Rewind 2019: The Year of the Feral News Anchor

Is this the beginning of the irrelevance of Big Media?