Negotiating our freedoms

IN Media Practice | 06/04/2010

To keep unwanted incursions on our many freedoms at bay, a society needs to be watchful. Vigilance requires a flow of information.

The Hoot unveils a Free Speech Hub because the time has come to track who stops whom from doing what.

The television free for all over Sania Mirza and Shoab Malik’s engagement woes exemplifies what Amartya Sen once described as the media’s propensity for targeted invasion of privacy. They were rowdy at the press conference, they clambered over the wall of the Mirza family home, they pursued the family making the allegations for leads, and have been happy to go to town with anything they got. You begin to wonder whether there is any editorial control left any more in any TV newsroom in the country, any news editor who believes that the media’s job is to report new developments but not live off a personal dispute, however high profile the parties involved.

Media excesses lead to a decline in public sympathy for the tribe. So even as some members of the media run amuck, countless others doing their jobs in vulnerable circumstances find little sympathy for their plight. The climate is inhospitable these days for free speech and all the related freedoms the term implies. It is increasingly so every year. This year in Karnataka two people actually died in clashes over protests against a newspaper publishing a piece of writing by Taslima Nasreen. Is anybody in civil society losing sleep over this shrinking space?

The Hoot unveils a Free Speech Hub because the time has come to track who stops whom from doing what and how many such incursions on free speech occur every month. Our tracker which you will find on the Hub also tracks battles won: bans lifted, censorship by the mob pushed back.

If you look at the forty plus incidents which have occurred this year, what do they tell us? That freedom of access to cultural products is subject to many sensitivities. Therefore one Marathi film has some scenes deleted, another has to insert a disclaimer along with its title, the Andhra Pradesh High Court bars release of a film which depicts a relationship between a teacher and a student, My Name is Khan has its pre release encounter with the Shiv Sena but is the only film under attack which suffers no censorship of any kind.

The Shiv Sen in Mumbai protests the staging of a play but finally the performance goes ahead. Trinamool MP in West Bengal, Kabir Suman, upsets his party by releasing an album of songs in a tribute to the jailed tribal leader Chataradhar Mahato. The Bombay High Court upholds a ban on a book on Islam because the good judges say it reeks of hatred and could stir communal passions. The Lucknow government recalls a book on the Nehru Gandhi family for derogatory comments made about a politician. But in Mumbai the police withdraw a criminal complaint against another author, filed a year ago, for the use of the word ‘ghati’. Cultural freedom has to be constantly negotiated.

Then we come to the media which since January, has borne a lathi charge in Hyderabad, an attack from the sand mafia in Thane, arrests in Dantewada, Hyderabad, Manipur and Allahabad, been shot at in Srinagar, and had an office in Thiruvananthapuram stoned by BSP workers. A TV channel has been shut down for alleged obscene display, two channels have been served notices for shows, one has had curbs ordered on it by the A P High Court. The media may not be blameless in some of these cases, but it helps for civil society to be aware that the attacks are constant.

Finally there is hate speech, and forced speech•the MNS attacks mobile phone companies to impose the use of Marathi in caller voice systems in Maharashtra.

To keep unwanted incursions on our many freedoms at bay a society needs to be watchful. Vigilance requires a flow of information. You should not only track the incidents recorded on our free speech tracker, you also need to enter the loop and tell us of incidents we may have not have heard about.

Our constitutional right to free speech comes with restraint. We will also track issues of privacy, contempt, and defamation. A climate of increasingly terrorism is a blight upon our cyber freedom. What do we need to do to balance security with free speech on the Internet? Watch our newly created space.