Why ‘bend or crawl’?

The reminder on June 25 of the same day in 1975 when Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency and suspended democracy is material especially now — particularly to those of us in the media who, in the immortal words of LK Advani, “crawled” when we were asked to “bend”.

There is no declared Emergency in our times and no one is even publicly asking us to bend. But what is apparent even to rank outsiders is that the shrillness and deliberate bid to polarise public discourse by the ruling BJP and those in the Opposition has entered the mainstream newsrooms.

The Opposition mocks at us for having been “terrorised and suppressed”, while the BJP’s tends to brand as “anti-national/terrorist/communist” anyone not compliant enough or critical of the ruling party’s worldview. This sort of polarisation is accentuated in the run-up to the next general elections.

News and public interest

While the killing of the Editor of Rising Kashmir and former correspondent of The Hindu Shujaat Bukhari underlines the challenges of our times, it would be a befitting tribute to our thoughtful colleague if we are mindful of the basic journalistic tenet — that it is public interest alone that constitutes news and mostly, it places us in direct conflict with those in power.

The present political climate with the ruling party pushing public discourse towards hyper-nationalism and the Opposition straining to neutralise it by underlining issues of corruption, economy, agricultural crisis, caste violence et al is making it difficult for us in the newsrooms to prioritise and focus on everyday headlines and coverage.

But it is not a place we have not been before. Advani may have been right in underlining the majority who caved in during the Emergency.

But even in those trying times, we had editors and reporters who rose to the challenge, faced jail terms and sanctified the space that the Fourth Estate still occupies in Indian democracy. What powerful bids to shape popular conversations and dialogue in the times of social media, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram should ideally lead to is a heightened urgency to go back to the basics; to analyse and research with integrity and always be mindful that news is public interest.

Those in power and outside have tried in the past and are doing it now — to define and shape what constitutes public and national interest.

As citizens and journalists, the only way to counter these assaults on everyday autonomy to define news is renewed rigour in ascertaining facts, not confuse opinion with reportage, and guard our freedoms won through decades of struggle.

Self-censorship

And while we scrutinise, debate and ascertain facts, a particular tendency to guard against is self-censorship.

Governments in power routinely bear down on news organisations to suppress or promote news depending on what suits their political motives. Journalists have a well-honed instinct about what pleases different sets of political powers, especially those in power.

A certain proportion of pragmatism is good, but trying times also demand courage. So let us just get on with our job.

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