Neutral Media is the Power of Democracy! Does the 'Largest Democracy' have it's Neutral Media?

Neutral Media is the Power of Democracy! Does the 'Largest Democracy' have it's Neutral Media ?

"Neutral Media" ---- One of the fundamental rights of our Constitution is the freedom to speech. It includes the freedom of media to publish articles and news items, which shows the precise and clear view of what is happening at the moment in our country. Sadly, most of the media is sold and lost its neutral status. They need to publish what the ruling government asks them to. They cannot at any cost, write what the truth is. The same is the state of both - the print and the electronic media. The long-simmering crisis of reliability in the Indian news media has finally reached a boiling point. Administration, Judiciary, and Press should all work independently. Most of the real democratic countries let the press and media to point out the flaws of the administration. The primary goal is to help them correct it and work in the right direction. In India, the story is different. The person who speaks is trolled or is not allowed to publish the content. In worse cases, the person is even asked to quit his job. The scenario is getting worse with each day.

Digital Media - a crucial section of the press is the fastest growing platform in India. And in-fact, Digital Media is the fastest growing platform in India. According to the reports, a sting operation by an outfit called Cobrapost showed that some twenty-five of India's leading media organizations, including a few giants, were willing to take part in propaganda for the BJP. Other outlets recorded in the sting, even went to the extent of agreement to spread communal hate in return for cash from the current ruling party. These people also manage to get a lot of appreciation and likes. Social media is another circus altogether. People are appointed to write a hate post towards a particular community or matter. Another team is selected to sit and like those posts and move them forward by sharing them. People are getting paid for liking the article or blog and sharing it ahead. This way, the content becomes popular and creates a massive misunderstanding in the masses. Digital marketing has become the joke as major political parties are using them as weapons of hate and division. The Modi era harmonized with an exponential rise in the use of social media in India. It became a medium that this government exploited to the handle to target critics, mobilize public opinion, and use tags like anti-national, to question anyone showing a hint of the care with the state narrative.

Between the years of 2016 and 2018 alone, the number of Indians using social networks grew from 168 million to a whopping 326 million, making it a easy tool for the ruling party to spread half deadly truths and fake news through a cobweb of personal accounts and unleash trolls to charge journalists who tried to challenge them. As a result, journalists in India have over the last five years typically had their mobile numbers circulated on WhatsApp groups, and been suppressed to a deluge of sexually specific messages, rape and death threats, and other forms of online bullying. It is not just social media alone. Boycotting prime-time debates, raiding news channels, and stopping government advertising—a vital source of income for the industry—have been among the usual tactics used by the Modi regime. And if someone did not want to do it, it often led to sacking. Surprisingly, the government had employed 200 staff to check the media and send directions to editors on how they must publish on the prime minister's activities. The BJP has also been selective in handing out TV licenses to new candidates, controlling who enters the fight. Republic TV, which is partly owned by its own parliamentarian Rajeev Chandrasekhar and helmed by Arnab Goswami, a popular, well-known anchor known for his style, was given immediate permission last year to start a channel. At the same time, Bloomberg Quint, which is a collaboration between Raghav Bahl and Bloomberg LP, who are known to be criticizing the government, has been waiting for over two years to get the license. Bahl, who sold his news channel to Mukesh Ambani, now takes care of Bloomberg Quint as a digital live-streaming service. Meanwhile, Ambani himself has become as one of India's most crucial media peers, owning large chunks of news space across television print, and online media. With several business interests like oil and gas to telecom, he and many others like him, who now hold big shares in the country's news business, can afford to brush the government on the wrong side. While the use of businessmen and online bullying tactics has enabled the government to control the story closely, what's even more worrying is the willingness India's top media houses have shown in these years to do the government's call.

Norway stands number 1 on Reporters Without Borders website for the freedom of speech in media. According to Article 100 of Norway's 1814, the Constitution  prepared the ground for media freedom. Today in Norway, the media are free, and journalists are not subject to censorship or political pressure. Violence against journalists and media outlets is a rare sight. India sadly stands at 140th position. In a recent study, an alarming rate of managed hate campaigns waged on social networks against journalists who would speak or write about subjects that annoy Hindutva. A free press is one of the critical measures of a healthy democratic society. But from attacks on journalists by anti-government demonstrators in France to outlets being called to as false news, the media environment in 2019 is turning very hateful. Around 34 journalists were murdered worldwide last year because they dared to speak against the government. Unfortunately, less than one-fourth of the world is regarded as the right place for the media. India continues to go down the World Press Freedom Index. In the annual rankings published by Reporters Without Borders in April 2019, India was ranked 140th out of 180 countries, two places down from the last year.

In India, how can we forget about the arrests that took place recently? Kanojia, Ishika Singh and Anuj Shukla, who worked at Nation Live, a private news channel, were arrested on the same charges as Kanojia. When the ruling party was asked to comment, they declined. The arrests appear to follow a pattern of increasing attacks on press freedom since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ascension to power in 2014. Modi effectively cut off all networks with the media after coming to power in 2014, preferring instead to direct his messaging through tweets, radio programs like Mann Ki Baat and fluffy staged interviews with plastic journalists.

The fundamental right to seek and distribute information through an independent press is under attack, and part of the attack has come from an unexpected source. Selected leaders in many democracies, who should be press freedom's most reliable defenders, have made apparent attempts to shut the critical media voices and strengthen media channels that serve up good and favourable coverage. The trend is connected to a global decline in democracy itself. In many of the influential democracies in the world, large segments of the population are no longer receiving unbiased news and information. Example: In Israel, one of the few democracies in the Middle East, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has constantly criticized investigative reporters and now faces corruption charges for supposedly offering regulatory favours to two significant media firms in exchange for favourable coverage. In perhaps the most worrisome development of recent years, press freedom has come under unusual pressure in the United States of America, the world's leading democratic power. Although key news channels remain strong and continue to produce powerful reporting on those in office, President Donald Trump's constant vilification of the press has seriously increased an ongoing decay of public confidence in the mainstream media. Among other steps, the president has repeatedly warned to strengthen libel laws, cancel the licenses of certain broadcasters, and even damage media owners' other business interests.

Within the mainstream, there continue to be a few honourable exceptions that struggle on despite the pressures. In the last decade, there has been the emergence of many small, but strongly independent, online portals, fact-checking websites, and investigative outlets in the country. Despite facing a lot of pressure, they have been responsible for some of the essential news breaks that have kept this government in check, allowing democracy to breathe. With no proper financial model yet emerging for such online media portals, the question of the hour is how long they can keep going? The picture of world press freedom is not entirely dim. The major encouraging examples of democratic progress over the past two years—Malaysia, Ethiopia, Armenia, and The Gambia—have nearly all featured similar gains in their media environments. Social media are an important part of the modern media ecosystem. They dramatically expand way to information and freedom of expression, and in difficult and troubled countries, they remain an aid to journalists, activists, and regular citizens trying to exercise their democratic rights. Rather than abandoning these services to the evil forces that have exploited their weaknesses, democracies must fight back in a way that is harmonious with their own long-standing values.