Fourth Pillar Under Stress, World Media Wakes Up Including Press Council Of India

 

“ Journalists behind bars reached a record high in 2021, with 293 behind bars as political upheaval and media crackdowns reflect increasing intolerance for independent reporting around the world,” CPJ(Committee to Protect Journalists, a US based NGO) said in the report published on its website on last Friday.

However, the CPJ is still awaited to highlight the number of journalists from various countries those who have been subjected to untold mental and physical torture and sadly, some of them were killed in brutal manners.

Press Council Alerts

Press Council Of India, taking cues from the apex court stricture,  has taken serious note of similar such developments at home and abroad. In a recent appeal the Council has given a soft yet bold call to the fraternity to support a united platform from where the freedom of press can be safeguarded in the midst of a climate of intolerance from the people in power.

Nationwide and worldwide rather, there is general bemoaning over the issue of media being at the receiving end over the kinds of reportage that even have slightest edge of criticism. Or can we see the dangers for various reasons most often and on.

Fairly recently, the Supreme Court of India was a bit hard in its observation on the issue of applying the laws relating to sedition. The apex court categorized saying that, journalists are required to be kept out of the ambit of such laws when it is a question of their views concerned on the functioning of the governments and they are entirely entitled to be critical about them within a certain parameter.

In A Less Vibrant Odisha     

In a state like Odisha where politics still remains less vibrant and its ramifications lesser, had in earlier years witnessed incidents when the media had been subjected to some impediments through vindictive ways of retributions.

The 80s had witnessed a few incidents of certain politically motivated incidents in Odisha when scribes had been the targets of political intolerance and even met fatal ends.

Self-Imposed Toxic Censorship

Even at the national level, there is a perceptible, although veiled, self-imposed censorship by a few media outlets, while the others demonstrate a willingness to follow the unwritten dictates of the politics.

There is a free handle for the media in Odisha but, the ones who maintain a contrarian editorial view of the political people in power, sometimes, depart from certain areas even though those deserve headlines against political indulgence.

All said and done, the government of Odisha has shown admirable empathy for 58 journalists who fell victim to the Covid-19 in 2020-2021 allocating financial packages as compensation.

Let’s start from the ground. Be it a vicious political clash on the streets or any social unrest involving common people for a cause or let it be a politically engineered incident of hostile nature, today the media is expected to be the one for dissemination, balance and being so, it has to play the role of a trouble shooter without making a scratch on any side involved in them. Or merely remain a soothsayer.

Which is difficult given the premises from where objectivity must prevail.

Silencing Unpopular Ideas!

In fact, according to the history of journalism, right from the early times, no dispensation has been comfortable with the Press or media speaking the real truth and it has remained a persistent quest for the ones in politics or in power to see that the media say what suits their political goals.

To silence the unsuitable opinions has remained a decades old practice in the field of journalism, including in countries those who sport tags for freedom of press and tom-tom their tolerance towards healthy criticism.

“There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press” that is how Mark Twain once viewed the freedom of speech for the press and its relevance as regards the people.

It is no comparison between the people and the press but a note of corresponding realities which is not possible without the freedom for both.

“ Cease to play the part of the ruled” was the call from Mahatma Gandhi and it all depends how the media fraternity wriggles out of the brackets.