Time to speak out

Media scrutiny is essential for democracy

The Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has told the television news channel NDTV India to go off air for one day – November 9 – supposedly for irresponsibly giving out operational information about the attacks on the Pathankot air base in January this year. The facts of this allegation are still disputed, with the news channel claiming it had not compromised any security operations and reported what was known elsewhere. Certainly, it is to be hoped that NDTV chooses to examine the legal options available to it in order to ensure that this order does not go through. That said, however, it is clear even without legal intervention that the government has seriously overstepped its mark. There is minimal precedent for the order to stop broadcasting. Many other forms of sanction are available to the ministry that do not involve the throttling of views and outlets of which it disapproves. The government must reconsider its order.

The Editors Guild of India has called the order a “direct violation of the freedom of the media”. This is not an overstatement. It is necessary for all those interested in preserving the ability to speak and think freely to strongly condemn not just the ministry’s action but also the thinking behind it. It is a long-established truth that those who choose not speak out in the face of injustice just because they are not the targets of state authority at the first instance will eventually become targets themselves — and find that there is nobody to speak for them. Thus when the signs of a government clampdown on the freedom of expression become unmistakable, a push-back from the media, and people more generally, is essential. 

It is also noteworthy that the ban has been directed towards a channel in the NDTV group. After all, in the past NDTV went out of its way, presumably on its own accord, to accommodate a hawkish approach to national security reportage. Most recently, it was reported – and apparently confirmed by senior editors at the television station – that NDTV 24x7, the English general news channel of the group, chose to kill the broadcast of an interview with former home minister P Chidambaram on the subject of military strikes on terrorist staging positions across the Line of Control. Given that the news group so recently chose to bend over backwards to avoid even the appearance of controversy or confrontation, it is ironic that it is one of its channels that has been censured in this manner by the government.

The government’s action highlights the larger climate of intolerance and intimidation that has been legitimised over the past years. Criticisms and questions, no matter how rational or reasonable, of the military or counter-terrorism operations, for instance, have been increasingly, and loudly, condemned as “anti-national”. This adds to the growing de-legitimisation of dissent and it will have dangerous consequences as it further threatens civil liberties. If there is no healthy discussion of how state power is being used, then there is every chance that it will eventually be abused. Criticism of the security forces, in particular, should never be seen as being out of order or unpatriotic. It is extremely important to curb the possible abuse of power for national security operations. The actions of the armed forces, the paramilitaries and the police should be subject to scrutiny by a free and open media.