[NIAS Lecture, February 9,2018]

By Malini Parthasarathy

The Media as Watchdog and Conscience-Keeper in India’s Democracy

Esteemed faculty of the NIAS and friends! I am privileged to be here today speaking at

the Senior Executive Programme, which is one of this distinguished institute’s valuable

offerings to public discourse and education. The theme of this lecture series “From

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Excellence to Eminence: Facilitating Thought Leadership” is indeed a thought

provoking one. I appreciate the NIAS spearheading this theme because striving for

excellence and thereby eminence is the foundation of genuine intellectual inquiry. India

is a great nation, but we are always in quest of perennial greatness and we take great

pride in being a front-ranking nation. Hence this theme is of great national value too.

I am here to speak to you about the media and what ought to be its role in facilitating

the national task of helping our country sustain its eminence and leadership. One of the

most valuable assets that independent India has, in contrast to many nation-states in the

developing world, is our free press. With all its limitations and constraints, amidst

formidable challenges, we can confidently say that the Indian press has done a valiant

job to sustain its independent spirit. By and large the media has ensured the vibrancy of

the concept of freedom of expression in the public space in India.

However, looking at the larger issue of whether the press has pushed boundaries and

carved out an iconic status for itself as is the case in the United States or the UK, I

would argue that our media has a long way to go to achieve that sort of legendary

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status. In the US, the public imagination was fired by the massive exposes of the

Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal led by the New York Times and the

Washington Post which had far reaching and salutary impact on democratic institutions

there including the presidency. In the UK, despite the lack of written constitutional

guarantees, the press has pushed back hard against Government policies including the

sensitive domain of national security policy. It has also ignited debate about the extent

of privacy laws when it comes to exposing the misdemeanors of public figures. The

British press has constantly sought to examine and situate issues in the larger

institutional context of its parliamentary democracy.

What is the situation in India today? It is true that we have the proud legacy of a

vigorous and independent press supported by robust Constitutional and judicial

guarantees and the continued loyalty of the public who want independent sources of

information. But I would argue that we have not effectively built this legacy into a

strong pillar of representative democracy as we should.

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Governments have certainly been more repressive in recent times than they were in the

immediate aftermath of Independence but the media, armed as it is, with decades of

judicial and public support, needs to be more assertive of its role as a defender of the

public interest and less fearful of public authorities as it unfortunately appears to be

today.

I would like to briefly set out the context in which this cherished legacy of the concept

of the freedom of the press is embedded in India’s democratic structure. I draw here

from eminent jurist, Durga Das Basu’s noted work on the Law of the Press (Third

Edn,1996). While there is no separate provision guaranteeing the freedom of the press,

as in the USA, the freedom of the press derives from Article 19(1)(a) relating to freedom

of speech and expression. Our Supreme Court has also held that there was no need to

mention the freedom of the press separately, because it is already included in the

guarantee of freedom of expression.

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As has been noted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 1948,

regarded as the foundation of international human rights law, “Everyone has the right

to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions

without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any

media and regardless of frontiers”.

A free press is regarded as a basic feature of representative democracy. Thus, in

America, the First Amendment to the American Constitution in 1791 ensured that “The

Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech or of the press”. It was

axiomatic to those who saw the intrinsic connection between democracy and a free

press that the two would have to be anchored together for democracy to succeed. The

English jurist William Blackstone said, “the liberty of the press is indeed essential to the

nature of a free State...”

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No less important is the function of the press in exposing abuses of power by public

officials and in keeping them responsible to the people whom they are expected to

serve. According to British jurist, James Bryce, “The press and particularly the

newspaper press, stands by common consent first among the organs of public

opinion…the conscience and common sense of the nation as a whole keep down the

evils which have crept into the working of the Constitution and may in time extinguish

them. That which…we may call the genius of universal publicity has some disagreeable

results but the wholesome ones are greater and more numerous …No serious evils, no

ranking sore in the body politic can remain long concealed, and when disclosed, it is

half destroyed. So long as the opinion of a nation is sound, the main lines of its policy

cannot go far wrong.”

As noted by Basu and other Indian jurists, freedom of expression is guaranteed by

Article 19(1)(a). While the press as an institution has no constitutional or legal privilege,

what is known as the freedom of the press is nothing but the freedom of expression of

every citizen guaranteed by Article 19 (1)(a) which includes-

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(i)the right to lay what sentiment he pleases before the public or the right to impart

information and ideas

(ii)the right to receive information and ideas from others through any lawful medium.

The scope of freedom of the press in India as laid down by the Supreme Court in

judgments like Express Newspapers v. Union of India and the Bennett Coleman & Co v.

Union of India was summarized thus:

“…the freedom of the press rests on the assumption that the widest possible

dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the

welfare of the public…The purpose of such a guarantee is to prevent public authorities

from assuming the guardianship of the public mind and freedom of the press involves

freedom of employment or non-employment of the necessary means of exercising this

right or in other words, freedom from restriction in respect of employment in the

editorial force”

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Anything which indirectly affects the independence of the editorial authority of

newspaper would also constitute an interference with the freedom of the press.

It must be also said that unlike in the United States, where the First Amendment

expressly protects the freedom of the press, since freedom of the press in India is a right

derived from the right of freedom of expression, there is a certain inherent vulnerability

that must be acknowledged.

As a right flowing from the freedom of expression belonging to citizens, generally the

liberty of the press in India stands on no higher footing than the freedom of speech and

expression of a citizen and no privilege attaches to the press as such, distinct from the

freedom of a citizen unless conferred by the Constitution itself. Hence there are

“reasonable” restrictions under clause 2 of Article 19 as to “the sovereignty and

integrity of India”, “security of the State”, “friendly relations with the foreign States”,

“public order”, “decency or morality”, “contempt of court”, “defamation” and

“incitement to an offence”.

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The fact that these restrictions are preceded by the qualification “reasonable” shows

that judicial review of such restrictions is in order which in turn essentially safeguards

the right of freedom of expression from unjust restrictions.

II

I wish to briefly examine the scope in which the Indian press has developed so far.

The press or the nationalist press as it was viewed before Independence played a

sterling role in stirring national fervor and reporting meticulously the political and

constitutional debates that were being played out in the public arena. With its relentless

pursuit of the nationalist cause, the Indian press served as a vanguard of the freedom

movement and helped build the public imagination in favour of the new democracy

and helped foster a sense of national pride in Indian citizenship. This was a necessary

foundation for a new republic that was starting out against tremendous odds.

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The Indian press began well, without holding back its punches as it unhesitatingly

recorded the disagreements and policy debates at the top in government and the ruling

party. It also exposed the challenges before the new country as it was becoming a

republic.

It will be fair to say that until the infamous Emergency when Indira Gandhi suspended

the entire scheme of fundamental rights and introduced prior restraint and censorship,

the Indian press was able to hold its own and perform its role with dignity. But the dark

period of the Emergency brought out the worst in the Indian press and marked a real

low in an otherwise proud history of India’s free press.

For the first time in India pre-censorship was imposed by promulgating a Censorship

Order dated 26 1975 under Rule 48 of the Defense of India Rules, 1971. Because of the

Censorship Order, no news, comment, rumour or other report relating to any action

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taken under certain provisions of the DIR, or any action taken under MISA, could be

published unless it was previously submitted to the Censor (called authorised officer)

for his scrutiny and his permission was obtained. Indira Gandhi’s disastrous

experiment with authoritarianism saw Indian editors and proprietors going out of their

way to propitiate the authoritarian regime. They refused to combat the abuses and

authoritarian excesses, actually singing the praises of the 20-point programme, and also

lionising Indira Gandhi and her wayward son Sanjay Gandhi. This was indeed a bleak

period for Indian journalism and highlighted the inherent fragility of press freedom in

this country.

The lesson from this episode for India’s democracy, rendered fragile overnight by

Indira Gandhi’s catastrophic lurch towards authoritarianism, was that the Indian media

is required to keep up its vigilance at all times to avoid such disasters from recurring.

There is no escaping the fact that if the Indian press expects to have its role taken

seriously and receive the due regard from the public, readers and viewers, it will have

to ensure it adheres to its core function—reporting fearlessly the truth about public

affairs and holding a mirror of sorts to the institutions of our democracy.

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The media can gain the trust of its readers and viewers only if it is seen as representing

as effectively as possible the public interest. Whatever entertainment or information

value that the audiences are interested in extracting from the various publications and

electronic channels, ultimately trust and loyalty hinges on the credibility of the media in

demonstrating that it is serving the public interest in executing its reporting and

commentary functions.

There are numerous debates about what constitutes the public interest and whether this

lofty idea has degenerated into a weak excuse for journalists to invade privacy and

adopt questionable ethical means in uncovering issues. Yet, the news media still enjoys

the confidence of its readers and viewers because there is still the belief that the media

ultimately stands out as an institution that will monitor issues of governance, public

policies on the economy, health and other social issues and ensure a citizen connect to

public affairs.

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Unlike in earlier times, the pressures on the Indian media have become more varied, as

competition for eyeballs has intensified in both electronic and print. With the economic

reform process initiated in the 1990s, the media has also like other products in the

market been forced to adapt to changing reader/viewer tastes and preferences. The

need to entertain and to provide updated data on business, market trends and

commodities has now become a necessary staple of providing information. Taking all

this into account, the fact remains that the reading and viewing public expect the media

to function as a watchdog of democratic institutions and as a conscience-keeper for

society and the nation.

The emergence of social media in the last decade has added to the pressure on the

media, with the vigilantism that is being practiced which very often degenerates into

trolling and denigration of media and media practitioners. On the one hand, the rise of

social media has had a salutary effect on the performance of the mainstream media in so

far as it exposes its embedded biases and latent prejudices. To the extent that the social

media highlights issues much faster than mainstream media since the timelines are

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online, it helps media stand on its toes to ensure that order to produce credible and

accurate information to its readers and viewers.

There is a downside to this however. Social media by the very fact of its disorganized

existence, its diffused ownership by the public itself, has produced an unfortunate

cynicism about the media and its practices. A lot of the current negativity towards the

media that is expressed in the public sphere is because of the venom and hate spewed

on the various timelines on Twitter and Facebook against newspapers, news channels

and journalists. The political parties have caught on to the potential of social media as

reaching directly to constituencies, by passing the mainstream media. Very often,

politicians and parties have used social media as a tool to undermine the moral

credibility of the mainstream media. Often, at the instigation of political parties and

movements, the phenomenon of organized trolling of journalists has had the effect of

unnerving and browbeating journalists from doing their duty towards public affairs.

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By frequently calling into question the ethics of the media and often unfairly and

harshly attributing negative motives to media reporting and editorial-writing, the

efforts of the media to contribute constructively towards the public discourse on critical

issues are subtly undermined and often discredited. The attribution of partisan motives

to media reporting and the sarcastic vitriol that is often poured on media reports and

editorials is indeed daunting. Very often, questions on national security policies raised

by the media in the public interest are pounced upon as “anti-national” and

“unpatriotic” by trolls on social media. This is an unhealthy trend and at the risk of

sounding alarmist, I would even say, these are the classic hallmarks of a fascist culture.

Yet fortunately the bulk of the mainstream media has not been intimidated yet into

adopting positions that are dictated by aggressive social media positions. The cynicism

reflecting repeatedly in the social media which has gone on to question the bonafides of

media in insulting terms is not a healthy development. This is anti-democratic too as it

will only strengthen the hands of political forces whose orientation is antithetical to free

speech and expression.

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Undeniably, with all its faults and weaknesses, in a democracy like ours, the media

remains the fourth pillar of the democratic structure and is a necessary bulwark against

authoritarian tendencies especially of the executive. For the mainstream media to retain

this respect as our national life goes into a period of turbulence, it is critical that it

underlines the public interest and the democratic cause as its primary focus in any

reporting or analysis of events and developments.

III

Now I come to the central question at the heart of my discussion here.

Has the Indian press done well as a watchdog of democracy and a conscience-keeper

over the last decades? Has it effectively represented the public interest? The answer is

yes and no. There are two aspects to the role of the media in this regard which I detail

now:

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The first aspect of the role of the news media is to report events and situations as they

develop, accurately and with as much detail as possible to provide the reader or viewer

unbiased and comprehensive coverage so that the reader/viewer can form his or her

own judgment or perception.

The second aspect of the role of the media is to ensure that reporting or narrating events

and developments in the public arena does not feed into political or social narratives

that ultimately harm the public good. Very often, self-serving political parties or

movements build claims that are meant to increase their own leverage at the expense of

the larger national cause. It is the job of the media not to fall into such traps or to

provide any legitimacy to false narratives seeking to further narrow goals.

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As regards the media’s primary role of reporting events and developments, the Indian

media, by and large, thanks to strong editorial structures and well-developed

newsrooms has held its own, reported substantively and swiftly on breaking news,

ensuring it reaches its targeted households effectively. Thus, in a sense the media has

acted as the first whistle-blower on crucial events such as the demolition of the Babri

Masjid, the riots of 1992, the horrifying terror attack of 26/11, the attack on Parliament

in 2001, the Kargil War, events in Kashmir, Sri Lanka that have a bearing on our

national and internal security. The immediacy of the flow of detailed information on

developments as they were breaking, has enabled the citizen to feel connected and

engaged to important national issues and take positions that in turn have reinforced

democratic participation to a large extent.

That many of these events such as terror attacks or violent communal incidents unfold

on live television and become the subject of instant commentaries makes it tougher on

Governments to escape accountability and they are under compulsion to unveil policy

responses that ostensibly place the national interest up front.

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As technology has improved in newsrooms and television studios, the quality of

reporting and analysis, using data tools, has also qualitatively grown better over the

decades, allowing for first rate coverage of important developments on a daily basis,

ensuring that Indian citizens are alert and connected to the larger public sphere.

However, the Indian news media does not seem to have performed as well on the

second aspect of its institutional role which is to ensure that it remains independent and

credible as an information source. Unlike in the earlier decades, when the news media

were active participants in the nation-building process and extremely conscious of their

duty to build journalism into another institutional pillar in India’s fledgling

representative democracy, large sections of the media in recent years appear to have

forfeited credibility by getting drawn into incendiary propaganda wars and chauvinist

campaigns orchestrated by political parties.

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It is important for the press in a democracy to remember that the public interest is the

interests of the citizens rather than what the government of the day deem it to be. It will

be apt here to quote the famous observation of the US Supreme Court in the landmark

judgment Thomas vs Collins(1945) on the First Amendment protecting freedom of speech

and expression:

“But it cannot be the duty, because it is not the right, of the state to protect the public

against false doctrine. The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public

authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the

press, speech, and religion. In this field every person must be his own watchman for

truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from

the false for us.”

Our own Supreme Court has taken similar positions on the requirement to safeguard

the freedom of the press as part of the essential freedom of expression under Article

19(1). In cases ranging from the Express Newspapers v. Union of India(1958) , Bennett

Coleman v. Union of India (1973), and more recently, Indian Express v. Union of India

(1985), the thrust of the judgments has been to safeguard newspapers from excessive

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duties and taxation that could force them to depend on government aid. In the Indian

Express case, the Supreme Court said:

“The purpose of the press is to advance the public interest by publishing facts and

opinions without which a democratic electorate cannot make responsible judgments.

Newspapers being purveyors of news and views having a bearing on public

administration very often carry material which would not be palatable to governments

and other authorities. With a view to checking malpractices which interfere with free

flow of information, democratic constitutions all over the world have made provisions

guaranteeing the freedom of speech and expression laying down the limits of

interference with it”

Given that the judiciary has by and large, stood by the press and ensured that its

freedom is preserved as much as possible from arbitrary government actions, the duty

on the part of the media to uphold the interests of the citizen and to defend the public

interest becomes all the more compelling.

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In my view, in the last few decades, the performance of sections of both the print and

electronic media has been less than normative as regards the duty to report factually

and critically scrutinize propaganda or chauvinist campaigns. In the 1990s, the hysteria

that was built up around the Ram temple issue and the fervid coverage given to the kar

sevak campaign, injected a false certitude into the political claims of Hindu nationalists

and had the unfortunate impact of giving prominence to the Babri Masjid Ram

Janmabhoomi issue. The breathless and uncritical media coverage of the rising tide of

Hindu nationalist chauvinism legitimised the undermining of our secular democratic

structure. India’s reputation as a harmonious and pluralist multi-faith democracy was

severely dented. The coverage given to false narratives deliberately stoked to fan the

flames of communal hatred and polarization such as the notion of “Love Jehad”, “mass

Christian conversions” which was not critically scrutinized by a substantial section of

the press and television channels, legitimised false narratives and poisoned the

atmosphere between communities.

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Another area in which I think the media needs to be more alert is on national security

and foreign policy. We must acknowledge that the public interest lies in offering a

harmonious and stable environment for India’s citizens. Whereas in earlier decades,

leading journalists and news media had expressed dismay and consternation when

there were tensions between India and Pakistan or in South Asia and editorially urged

India to try to settle regional disputes, today one finds leading television channels

indulging in sheer jingoism, whipping up a near-war hysteria, uncritically giving play

to unverified stories about conspiracies and terror incidents being instigated from

across the border on a daily basis.

The media cannot abdicate its duty to the public interest and needs to evaluate

government policy on national security and internal security and ensure that the

reader/viewer is provided with as much factual information and first hand reporting as

possible.

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The third issue on which the media must sharpen its focus is on corruption in high

places. There have been excellent standalone investigations no doubt in the past

decades that have unearthed arms deals scandals, the fodder scam, the 2 G spectrum

affair.

The attempts by governments in recent years, starting with Rajiv Gandhi’s infamous

attempt to bring in an Anti-Defamation Bill and the constant invoking of defamation

and privilege laws, particularly criminal defamation which remains a regressive feature

on our statutes, no doubt intimidates attempts to scrutinize corruption allegations or to

follow up evidence of misuse of public funds. But journalists by ensuring they are

armed with data and facts can persevere with reportage on these important issues of

great concern to the public, especially since the judiciary has tended to protect the

public right to information and the media’s right to pursue such issues that will

strengthen the accountability of public institutions and government leaders.

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Unquestionably, there needs to be much more awareness built up amongst the public as

to institutional accountability for the use of public money. There are not enough

investigations into the end-uses of public spending, of the various budgetary schemes

and whether the desired targets are really achieved, because not enough reporting is

done by media houses on these issues. Given the competition for viewers and readers in

a market that is becoming increasingly competitive, the temptation is now to go after

sensational stories involving public figures, business deals while dutifully continuing to

cover the major political debates.

So, is the media playing the desired role of conscience-keeper and watchdog of

democratic institutions? By and large, by reporting factually the events as they play out

in our democratic political theatre, the reader/viewer continues to be informed about

the crucial issues of the day and is enabled to exercise political participation at a basic

level.

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But on the larger moral obligation to ensure that the institutions of our democracy, our

law enforcers, our law-makers and our law-interpreters, are accountable to the citizen in

the ultimate analysis, the media as an institution must become more self-critical. We do

need to introspect on why the competitive frenzy for a larger market share has allowed

us to dilute our focus on our traditional role as a watchdog of democratic institutions.

Our ultimate strength as an institution lies in our being perceived as a guardian of the

public interest and a credible source of information in a representative democracy. If we

allow our focus on this essential role to be diluted, we will lose our moral shine and

thereby deprive India’s great democracy of one of its greatest assets, a free, independent

and principled press.

But I have confidence that as an institution conscious of a rich historic legacy of having

participated in our freedom struggle and subsequent nation-building, we will rise to the

present challenge and come out of it stronger and with more determination to fulfill our

democratic obligations.

Thank you!

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