World Press Freedom index: India retains 142 of 180 spot in, stays “one of the world’s most dangerous countries” for journalists

While India has not slipped additional on the World Press Freedom Index 2021 printed by the worldwide journalism not-for revenue physique, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), nonetheless, it continues to be counted among the many international locations categorised “bad” for journalism and is termed as one of the vital harmful international locations for journalists attempting to do their jobs correctly.
The newest index launched on Tuesday ranks 180 international locations, topped, but once more, by Norway adopted by Finland and Denmark, whereas Eritrea is on the backside. China is ranked 177, and is simply above North Korea at 179 and Turkmenistan at 178.
India is ranked 142, similar as final yr, after it had persistently slid down from 133 in 2016. In the South Asian neighbourhood, Nepal is at 106, Sri Lanka at 127, Myanmar (earlier than the coup) at 140, Pakistan at 145 and Bangladesh at 152.
The report launched on Tuesday acknowledged that India shares the “bad” classification with Brazil, Mexico and Russia.
For India, the most recent report has blamed an surroundings of intimidation created by BJP supporters for any crucial journalist, who, the report mentioned, is marked as “anti-state” or “anti-national”.
It mentioned that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “tightens his grip on media”. With “four journalists killed in connection with their work in 2020, India is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists trying to do their job properly”.
Journalists “are exposed to every kind of attack, including police violence against reporters, ambushes by political activists, and reprisals instigated by criminal groups or corrupt local officials” and, the report mentioned, ever since “the general elections in the spring of 2019, won overwhelmingly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, pressure has increased on the media to toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line”.
“Indians who espouse Hindutva, the ideology that gave rise to radical right-wing Hindu nationalism, are trying to purge all manifestations of ‘anti-national’ thought from the public debate. The coordinated hate campaigns waged on social networks against journalists who dare to speak or write about subjects that annoy Hindutva followers are terrifying and include calls for the journalists concerned to be murdered,” the report mentioned.
RSF has highlighted that the “campaigns are particularly violent when the targets are women”. Further, it mentioned that prison prosecutions are in the meantime “often used to gag journalists critical of the authorities” with sections for sedition additionally used.
“In 2020, the federal government took benefit of the coronavirus disaster to step up its management of reports protection by prosecuting journalists offering info at variance with the official place. The scenario remains to be very worrying in Kashmir, the place reporters are sometimes harassed by police and paramilitaries and should address completely Orwellian content material rules, and the place media retailers are liable to be closed, as was the case with the valley’s main day by day, the Kashmir Times.
“While the pro-government media pump out a form of propaganda, journalists who dare to criticise the government are branded as “anti-state,” “anti-national” and even “pro-terrorist” by supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),” mentioned the most recent report.
It additionally acknowledged that this, “exposes” the crucial journalists “to public condemnation in the form of extremely violent social media hate campaigns that include calls for them to be killed, especially if they are women”.
Further, “when out reporting in the field, they are physically attacked by BJP activists, often with the complicity of the police,” and “finally, they are also subjected to criminal prosecutions”.
Speaking in regards to the bigger Asia-Pacific area, the report talked about that “instead of drafting new repressive laws in order to impose censorship, several of the region’s countries have contented themselves with strictly applying existing legislation that was already very draconian – laws on ‘sedition,’ ‘state secrets’ and ‘national security’.”
Also, it mentioned, there isn’t any “shortage of pretexts” to make use of these legal guidelines, and the “strategy for suppressing information is often two-fold”. One, it mentioned, “governments use innovative practices often derived from marketing to impose their own narrative within the mainstream media, whose publishers are from the same elite as the politicians” and, second, “politicians and activists wage a merciless war on several fronts against reporters and media outlets that don’t toe the official line”.
It known as India’s utility of “these methods” as “particularly instructive”.
The report has additionally highlighted throttling of freedom of expression on social media, and particularly talked about that in India the “arbitrary nature of Twitter’s algorithms also resulted in brutal censorship” highlighting that “[a]fter being bombarded with complaints generated by troll armies about The Kashmir Walla magazine, Twitter suddenly suspended its account without any possibility of appeal”.
The RSF mentioned that Asia Pacific’s “authoritarian regimes have used the Covid-19 pandemic to perfect their methods of totalitarian control of information, while the ‘dictatorial democracies’ have used it as a pretext for imposing especially repressive legislation with provisions combining propaganda and suppression of dissent”. It added that the “behaviour of the region’s few real democracies have meanwhile shown that journalistic freedom is the best antidote to disinformation”. It didn’t classify which nation falls below which class.
It additionally acknowledged that the 2021 report “shows that journalism, the main vaccine against disinformation, is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 countries ranked by the organisation,” and, the “2021 Edelman Trust barometer reveals a disturbing level of public mistrust of journalists, with 59% of respondents in 28 countries saying that journalists deliberately try to mislead the public by reporting information they know to be false”. The report famous that “only 12 of the Index’s 180 countries (7%) can claim to offer a favourable environment for journalism”.
The Indian authorities has been involved about its low rankings in such worldwide indices, and had final yr began learning them to know tips on how to enhance. Soon after the index was launched final yr, Union Minister for Information and Broadcast Prakash Javadekar had tweeted on May 2: “Media in India enjoy absolute freedom. We will expose, sooner than later, those surveys that tend to portray bad picture about ‘Freedom of Press’ in India.”