A grim year in review

BY sevanti ninan| IN Opinion | 26/12/2013

TALKING MEDIA
Sevanti Ninan

It is difficult to recall another year when the news media itself has been such a consistent newsmaker. Right through the year. For closures, job losses and fair wage demands, for being subjected to free speech impediments including surveillance tools, for killings and attacks, and then for its hounding of others.

It began with the demonstrations in January in Kozhikode in Kerala for the Majitha wage board recommendation implementations. One newspaper, Mathrubhumi reacted with transfers and terminations. When an article in Malayalam described these actions, a takedown notice was sent to the website Bodhicommons by the Mathrubhumi management.

February saw the year’s first killing of a journalist in Chhattisgarh, for which the Maoists took credit. In December this year there was again another killing of a freelance journalist in the same state for which the Maoists were suspects.

March was grim in terms of attacks, there were three including an acid attack on a district correspondent who had been exposing the gutka mafia in Parbhani district. The second was in Kashmir where the CRPF thrashed a journalist, and the third, a Mumbai incident where the organisers of a celebration turned on a television journalist.

Also in March, a Ghaziabad court ordered the blocking of 78 web pages, at the request of Arindam Chaudhuri of the Indian institute of Planning and Management, for being allegedly critical of the Institute. They were later unblocked again on court orders.

April marked the use of SLAPP suits (strategic lawsuit against public participation) by media organisations. Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd sent a legal notice for an article in Mint on the Financial Times title issue to the journalist, but not to the newspaper! (This was followed up in April when the Group sent another legal notice alleging defamation and threatening both civil and criminal action to a law student, Aparajita Lath who wrote about the Financial Times issue and referred to Thakurta’s piece on the blog SpicyIP where intellectual property rights issues are discussed.)

April also marked the first of year’s major closures with journalists losing jobs. Sudipto Sen, the chit fund media baron from Kolkata had some six publications in addition to a TV channel, and the former shut shop when his business came under scrutiny. One newspaper alone, The Bengal Post, had 117 editorial staff when it closed down.

And then there were the attacks. Two different ones on a print and a TV journalist in Orissa, both by the police. Also, Mangalore journalist Naveen Soorinje was arrested while covering a moral police attack. He subsequently spent 17 weeks in jail. 

In May, a Maoist attack on the Doordarshan Kendra in Jagdalpur saw two jawans killed. The following month Trinamool Congress supporters attempted to burn a journalist alive in Barrackpore.

Also in June, efforts of restructuring at Network 18 and ESOPs related issues led to the exits of an editor and three senior staff at Forbes India. They declined to accept an ESOP that was substantially different from what they had been promised.

There were three incidents of physical attacks on journalists and photojournalists in July—in Ara in Bihar, in Betul in Madhya Pradesh, and yet another thrashing of journalists by CRPF personnel in Srinagar in Kashmir.

July also saw developments on the media business front: the CBI filed an FIR against Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd and its auditors on July 8, alleging that DHCL entered into a criminal conspiracy during 2009-11, to cheat Canara Bank, Secunderabad branch. Then on July 26 the closure of Marie Claire, People India and Geo in the Outlook Group was announced.

August brought major retrenchment at Network 18 estimated at 325 or so job losses, it also brought a rash of attacks and deaths on media personnel. BJP workers attacked them in Singur in West Bengal for covering a clash between two factions of the party. Later that month Asaram Bapu’s supporters assaulted a journalist in Jodhpur. Three journalists were killed that month in different parts of Uttar Pradesh, Etawah, Bulandshar and Lakhimpur Kheri.

In September, the Muzzafarnagar clashes claimed the life of a TV journalist and a photographer. And Asaram supporters attacked media people again near Indore.

2013 has been the year in which media owners asserted themselves, in The Hindu, in Open magazine, and then in The Indian Express where Vivek Goenka took back the reins of management. The first instance in October at The Hindu, leading to the departure of the editor, made the most news. November saw the departure at Open magazine of the political editor, because, according to the magazine’s editor, his reporting was making the proprietor Sanjiv Goenka uncomfortable. 

By the third week of November came the allegations of sexual assault inside a lift of a reporter at Tehelka by the magazine’s chief editor.

In December, as mentioned before, yet another journalist was killed in Chhattisgarh. And in Tamil Nadu, the SRM group announced that its plan to start an English news channel had been shelved, and 40 journalists lost their jobs.

Most of the above was only fleetingly reported. Only one incident of all of the above became a huge breaking news story that ran for two weeks continuously. I don’t have to tell you which one.

Reprinted from Mint, December 25, 2013