India’s Proud Tradition of a Free Press Is at Risk

 

Feb. 12, 2023

Credit...Rebecca Chew/The New York Times

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom. 

The misuse of their powers to intimidate, censor, silence or punish independent news media is an alarming hallmark of populist and authoritarian leaders.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India has fallen squarely into this camp, and his actions to suppress freedom of the press are undermining India’s proud status as “the world’s largest democracy.” Since Mr. Modi took office in 2014, journalists have increasingly risked their careers, and their lives, to report what the government doesn’t want them to.

India ranks 11th in the “global impunity index” of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a tally of reporters whose deaths remain unsolved, and in the annual press freedom index published by the organization Reporters Without Borders, India fell to 150 in 2022, its lowest-ever rank out of 180 countries. The United States is 42; Russia is just below India at 155, China 175.

As a result, self-censorship has spread, along with a shrill Hindu nationalism in news reports that echoes the government line.

continued    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/12/opinion/modi-bbc-documentary-india.html