Wage issues not fit to print?
A take-down notice was sent to website Bodhicommons at the best of the Mathrubhumi management.
GEETA SESHU says the police cyber cell’s job is not to curb dissent.
In January this year, over a hundred employees from different newspapers in Kozhikode, Kerala, held demonstrations in front of several newspaper establishments, including that of Kerala’s highest-circulated newspaper, Mathrubhumi, to demand implementation of the recommendations of the Majithia Wage Board in their establishments. The reaction was swift: a spate of transfers and terminations.
News of the protests and subsequent action by newspaper managements was picked up by a few news portals in Kerala, including malayal.am, doolnews.com, marunadanmalayali.com and bodhicommons.com. Implementation of the Majithia Wage Board’s recommendations for journalists and non-journalist employees has been a contentious issue ever since the Award was notified in November 2011. The notification was challenged by newspaper and news-agency managements across the country and currently, final arguments on Special Leave Petitions are being heard in the Supreme Court of India.
To their surprise and dismay, editors of Bodhicommons received a notice from the district police chief at Kozhikode that a complaint was filed by Mathrubhumi that the news item was defamatory and that it be taken down. The editorial team, in a special editorial note filed on February 3, 2013, has decided not to comply with the notice.
Their decision, as well as the action of the newspaper to complain against the news, has resulted in a lively discussion on media freedom, especially the attempt of one newspaper establishment – a prominent media house in Kerala with a widely circulated Malayalam daily – to curb another medium, that too an online media portal with a modest readership.
Interestingly, the complaint filed by the Mathrubhumi management against the website is under Sec 91 of the CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure) and not under the draconian Sec 66 (a) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Sent from the office of G Sparjan Kumar, district police chief’s cyber cell of Kozhikode, it states that a complaint was lodged by Mathrubhumi that a defamatory news item was published by the site and demanded it be taken down as it could ‘mislead the public and perpetuate falsehood’. Further, it also sought the registration details of the URL so as to trace the culprit!
Prashant Sugathan, an advocate with the Software Freedom Law Centre, who was consulted for a legal opinion on the matter by Bodhicommons, said that it was clear the notice was a tactic by the media house to threaten the web-portal into removing its report.
“First of all, you can’t ask for the deletion of any content on an online site under Sec 91, because this section is only applied for the purposes of investigation and collecting of information. Secondly, it stated that the item was defamatory, which is a non-cognisable offence, the investigation for which required a magistrate’s sanction,” he said.
On February 6, Bodhicommons replied that the notice was premature, procedurally incorrect, a violation of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression and an abuse of power vested in the police.
The article, an English translation of which is available with this writer, is titled Mathurbhumiyilenadukadathalummadhyamangalileswathanthryavum (Mathrubhumi transfers and media freedom) and goes into details about the spate of transfers and punitive action taken by the Mathrubhumi management against several of its journalists who participated in the protests. Senior journalists were transferred, some sent to ‘cold storage’ postings in small bureaus. The services of those on probation were terminated.
Interestingly, journalists from several media houses took part in the demonstrations, including Malayalam Manorama and Kaumudi. But it appears that only the Mathrubhumi management took umbrage at the protests and at the news items that followed and filed a complaint seeking their take-down.
Bodhicommons, which is a bi-lingual site, is an avowedly ‘left-progressive’ portal run by activists and volunteers, members of its editorial team told this writer. When the complaint was received, Rajeev, a member of the editorial team said, “We didn’t back off. Instead, we reviewed the article as per our own editorial policy, removed what we felt were not in line with our editorial policy and continued to publish the article,” he added.
Essentially, changes the Bodhicommons editorial team made related to some idioms used generically, Rajeev said. Deepak, another member of the team said that the website, which began around two years ago, has sought to focus on in-depth analysis and publishes critiques of various issues. Even this article was taken from another portal after the Bodhicommons team did a basic fact-check and sought more information from the Kerala Union of Working Journalists. The decision to publish the story was taken as they felt it was an important indicator of the state of the media in Kerala.
In the editorial note, the website states that Bodhi decided to “retain the article with some modifications to reflect our editorial mandate and review guidelines. On the other hand, we are concerned that following up on this initial police inquiry, draconian laws may be invoked in order to suppress freedom of speech. Mathrubhumi, as a publication, has stood for democratic ethos and fought state repression even in the darkest times of Indian democracy. It is deplorable and ironic that a media organisation like Mathrubhumi, when confronted with charges of trampling on the basic workers’ right to unionise and demand higher wages, chooses to invoke draconian laws to muzzle freedom of speech, which it claims to uphold and protect.”
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