Media under attack in Orissa
The intimidation of journalists in the form of physical attacks, threats and initiation of legal proceedings against them has reached a peak in Naveen Patnaik’s state.
GEETA SESHU travelled to Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, and Jajpur to file this investigation for the Hoot’s Free Speech Hub.
Excerpts from The Complete Report
The intimidation of journalists in the form of physical attacks, threats and initiation of legal proceedings against them has reached a peak in Orissa. There have been 12 physical attacks on reporters, stringers or camerapersons this year, and 6 cases of threat and intimidation, up from 3 attacks in 2009. Between 2004 and 2009, four cases of sedition were filed against stringers or reporters and a writer. The details are available here.
The attacks occurred either in retaliation for reports written or while the media- persons were on reporting assignments. The perpetrators fall in many different categories: sarpanchs (3), politicians and their henchmen (3), a bank manager, students, Central Industrial Security Force jawans, and Indian Reserve Battalion (IRB) personnel. In three cases the police were present but chose not to act. Cases filed have not made much headway. (The list of cases and the current status of police complaints filed are in the annexure. Click here for details).
The profession of journalism is undergoing changes in Orissa. This is partly an outcome of the rapid growth of the print and the electronic media as well as the hold that political parties and businesses have acquired over these. The most widely broadcast channels and the largest circulating daily are owned by powerful people. (See main report for details.) Given this reality, reporting the depredations caused by national and international business houses that have descended on the state to exploit its ample natural resources has become a perilous task.
As mining and industrialisation-related growth accelerates along with protests against these by the displaced populations, it is in the interest of the pro-development lobby to suppress all type of negative publicity. This is done by controlling the media through ownership, doling out largesse in the form of advertisements to others and intimidating those who cannot be neutralised by these. Among the worst affected are the faceless, and often nameless, stringers who form the feeder lines for the city-based media and have to bear the first brunt of media suppression by the powerful.
The attacks on journalists are inextricably linked to the changing equation between the state and civil society, brought about by the triumvirate of aggressive industrialisation, political interests and competitive media houses.
The state government either actively supports the corporations branding the critical media as Maoists, anti-national or seditious, or plays the role of a spectator. Its failure to take swift and punitive action in these cases has sent a clear message: the messenger can be shot.
Among other issues, those attacked have been reporting on the Maoist conflict, movements resisting displacement due to mining and steel projects, instances of corruption in government-sponsored projects like the NREGA, illegal activities of elected representatives, and have been covering spontaneous student protests or those of families of victims of medical negligence.
Media in Orissa:
Alongside the threats and attacks on journalists, the print and broadcast media are witnessing a major boom. Factors that have fuelled this growth include increasing urbanisation, higher literacy, access to modern printing technology and, very significantly, the entry of big business and the promise of advertising revenues.
Several new Oriya dailies and Oriya television channels have been launched over the last few years. The Eenadu-group's ETV has an Oriya channel and the entry of big business into Orissa over the last 15 years has resulted in a marked interest of major English-language media houses too. Among the national English dailies which have an edition from the state capital
The first Oriya newspaper, 'The Utkal Deepika', was launched in 1866 and several newspapers in Orissa were strongly nationalist, supporting the cause of the Oriya people as well as the freedom movement. Post-independence, the strong connection between politics and the media continued, with several Chief Ministers of the state launching their own newspapers. Today, there are over 85 Oriya newspapers and the interest of politicians in the media has remained a constant factor.
OTV, the biggest Oriya television channel, is owned by Ortel Communications and its managing director is Jaggi Panda, wife of the Rajya Sabha MP from the BJD, Baijayant Panda. The latter, is also non-executive chairman of Ortel and a promoter of the Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys Limited (IMFA) group. Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, son-in-law of former Congress-I Chief Minister J B Patnaik, owns Sambad, Orissa's leading ‘Odia' daily. Another daily, Dharitri, is owned by Tathagatha Satpathy, the son of former Congress-I Chief Minister Nandini Satpathy and presently BJD MP from Dhenkanal.
Naxatra TV is owned by businessman Pravat Ranjan Mullick, also the promoter of Bhubaneswar College of Engineering and Kaustav group of technical institutes. The well-known Oriya newspaper Pragativadi, is currently edited by Samahit Bal, son of the newspaper's founder, the late Pradyumna Bal. Along with Dr Achyuta Samanta, the latter had also founded the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), which became a deemed university in 2004.
Rapid Industrialisation
Orissa is experiencing an unprecedented pace of industrialisation, fuelled by the influx of large-scale investments by international and national corporate houses, including the Tatas, Jindals, South Korean steel giant POSCO, UK-based Anil Agarwal group Vedanta and Arcelor-Mittal. The state government has signed around 100 Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) for thermal power plants, iron and steel mills, with capacities up to 12 million tonnes, aluminium factories and mining for iron ore, coal and bauxite. Roads and rail networks are also being set up, as are a host of ancillary industries and services.
The massive scale of industrialisation has displaced scores of villagers in project-affected areas. Here, resistance movements have sprung up and people of these villages have been pitted against various agencies ??" the administration, the police and security personnel of the disputed industrial plants. While the role of the media in covering these conflicts has been far from uniform, almost everyone agrees that the attacks on journalists are inextricably linked to the changing equation between the state and civil society, brought about by the triumvirate of aggressive industrialisation, political interests and competitive media houses.
Voices from the media
"This phenomenon (of media growth) has been visible for the last ten years and coincides with the opening up of mining in the state," said Sudhir Pattnaik, editor of a fortnightly news-magazine ‘The Samadrusti'. It is no coincidence that most of the advertisements the media bags come from the mining industry, he said, adding that the lack of scrutiny of the operations of the industry contributed to the alienation of the media from the people of the state.
Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, also editor of ‘The Sambad', concurs, "Odia (The Sambad has been championing the name-change from Orissa to Odisha and its news-reports religiously use ‘Odia') media is highly politicised. The mining boom has also attracted attention and money, and the investment is huge. The media has also benefited from this money."
The government is insensitive to the media, he felt, because it does not depend on the media for electoral outcomes (the BJD is in its third term in power). "The Chief Minister doesn't even speak the language of the people of Odisha and feels he can hold onto power without the media's support," he said.
The attacks on the media, Soumya Patnaik felt, were symptomatic of the larger state of affairs in Orissa, where corruption has reached a head and administration in several parts of the state, is practically non-existent. A divided opposition and a divided media do not help matters and the government is in a very convenient position to ignore the media, he said.
Most journalists work or write for media houses that are run by business groups having interests in mining, real estate or education. While the staffers are hamstrung by these interests, the stringers who are attached in an informal manner to several newspapers or television channels are in a pathetic condition. Usually working for years with a newspaper, they are paid a fixed rate and on the basis of articles used. They are also given the task of space selling and collection of advertisements.
On several occasions, it is these stringers - in the field, closest to the scene of action in their district who become the first targets of local powers. They have no status, documentation or identity proof of their role as journalists. Often, they get very little empathy from media-persons who hav a more formal association with a news organisation.
Nigamanand Mohanty, a senior journalist and stringer for Oriya daily ‘Surya Prava', said, "In Jajpur, there are now so many district correspondents, more than 150 in number. We have numbers, but no security. We can't write what we want and if we do and get beaten up, you think our press or media owners support us? And even if we try to write about something illegal, we are implicated in false cases and silenced."
Mohanty is Working President of the Jajpur District Journalists Association and is blunt about the plight of stringers: "It is very difficult to do any independent news-gathering in this situation. I am working for the last 25 years but I was with Samvad. I had no job security, no documents and no identification. That is the plight of so many of these stringers. The government said it would enumerate the number of stringers and identify the journalists but this process has been going on for the last two years and nothing has been done so far.
Although most attacks on journalists may look like isolated incidents, usually there is a background of some powerful person or agency being rubbed the wrong way. Akhand, who reports for Sambad, Kanak TV and Anupam Bharat, was beaten up by a local politician, Pravakar Behera, for writing about the latter's illegal tree-felling in Pipili, Puri district. Akhand said that Behera had threatened him in 2006 over another matter and assaulted another journalist, Deenbandhu Beuria in 2008.
Some of the scribes may even be local activists who write and agitate on a host of civic, environmental and other issues. Rabi Das, for instance, is editor of Ama Rajdhani and an active member of the association. He is also involved in the agitation against POSCO.
"Today, the government manages media on behalf of corporate forces," said Das, adding that most national newspapers don't step out of urban areas to cover any issues. When journalists do go out to cover something and are attacked, their proprietors don't back them, he pointed out.
Das, who decided to launch his own newspaper that would reach a readership beyond urban Orissa, also believes that the electronic media helps shape public opinion and has a far greater reach than print media. "Yes, they are all owned by business people with mining interests, but they have talk shows, they are competitive and need us to make their discussions lively," he said, adding that he uses the electronic media to get a point of view across.
While corruption is a major issue, it is in the coverage of conflict and resistance to displacement or to industrial projects that the freedom to report without fear or favour has been most tested.
"I have been writing consistently against police repression in the area and reporting the demands of the tribals. I think they should be heard. I agree with part of the proposition that there can no development without industrialisation - but industrialisation at gun-point? The government itself admits that it'll take 20 years for the mineral reserves in this area to be mined. What happens afterwards?," asks Amulya Pati, the New Indian Express correspondent from Jajpur who was beaten up in Kalinganagar on April 5 this year.
Other journalists, he says, don't ask these questions and are happy with the ‘pay packets' they get from the steel companies. The latter is clearly on a divide and rule course, not just with the media, but also between tribals who have taken the compensation and those who are still holding out.
Basudev Mahapatra, editor of a news features site, hotnhitnews.com, said there is a tendency to undermine journalists in Orissa. The police act as protectors of corporates and the people said to be the most powerful in a democracy are cowering in fear, he said.
He talks of the pressures he faces: "Corporate houses tried to pressurize me to remove the reports on my site. Vedanta offered me advertisements on condition I do not write anything against the company ??" obviously indirectly. Recently, I kept getting telephone calls from someone criticising my articles on Kalinganagar. When I asked him his name, he refused to identify himself. He kept calling from different STD booths," Mahapatra said.
On another occasion, his site was hacked and articles he posted on issues of displacement due to industrial projects were deleted! In 2008, his site was blocked for 15 days after an article on Kashipur. Sometimes, articles come on the web as gibberish, though they were uploaded correctly. It is only after changing the web administrator and becoming more technologically savvy himself, that he has been able to counter these attempts.
Sampad Mahapatra, while acknowledging the protection his association with a national media organisation like NDTV gives him, nevertheless feels that there is an ever-present sense of danger lurking for journalists in Orissa. He said that most average people in the state believe that the media and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) criticise the government's policies because they are against development.
"Politicians have said as much in public speeches. There's no civil society in Orissa, there's no debate or discussion on this ‘development', where the entire state is being dug up and sold. Ultimately, the job of questioning will fall on the media," he said, adding that, when the government refuses to respond to the attacks on the media, it is actually sending a clear message to the media not to mess around.
Role and response of state
Despite the frequency of these attacks, some of them violent, and the constant threat to freedom that it represents, the response of the State government, headed by Naveen Patnaik, has been tepid.
Numerous representations to Patnaik don't yield any response beyond a polite ``we'll look into it'', says senior journalist Prasanta Patnaik, a driving force behind the Media Unity for Freedom of the Press (MUFP).
Indeed, Man Mohan Praharaj, Orissa's Director General of Police, told this reporter that there may have been a few attacks "once in a while, here and there but these were not of a scale that should be of great concern." He added, "Suddenly, there is a media explosion, especially with electronic media. Earlier, there were fewer journalists and there were a few unpleasant situations, but these were sorted out. The print media is civilized and writes in a responsible manner. But television journalists enter everywhere with their cameras and privacy issues do come up."
When asked about the beating up of Amulya Pati in Kalinganagar, he said he had never heard of this case and did not wish to comment on individual cases. Regarding the case of Akhand in Puri where the Orissa State Human Rights Commission had directed police to take action within six weeks, the DGP said, "Offhand, I can't respond to each and every case, but the police have limited resources and within this, we are trying to do our best."
In Behrampur, for instance, where journalists were beaten up for covering a clash between medical students and relatives of a deceased patient, the police were working on the razor's edge, he said. "The doctors are a powerful group and now have an act to protect them against assault while on duty. The media is all-powerful too and when journalists tried hectoring the doctors, trouble broke out," he said.
The debate on industrialisation was a major one in Orissa, he added. "People have strong points and counter-points in this regard as a developmental model. This gets reflected in the media and journalists are on both sides of the divide. The unkindest cut is that the media becomes a pawn when two industrial houses compete for business,'' he felt.
Competing business interests apart, what also queers the pitch is the role of the state government, perceived as supporting big business. Consider this: On
On April 6, 2010, the Lok Pal received a communication from the Secretary of the Public Grievances & Pension Administration Department to initiate appropriate action as per Section 15 (5) of Orissa Lokpal and Lokayukta Act 1995 against journalists and media organizations that, according to him, have violated Section 15(4) of the said Act (No person shall publish any proceedings relating to investigation which is pending before the Lokpal or a Lokayukta, as the case may be, nor shall any person publish such proceedings after the investigation is complete) by publishing recommendations of the Lokpal on irregularities in the award of land to Vedanta University. So far, the Lok Pal has not responded to the letter.
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