Where were the Big Media in the six years when scamming through Electoral Bonds carried on uninterrupted? What accounts for the lackadaisical coverage and intriguing silences that marked the coverage of the issue by the big guns — the same big guns that had boomed loud and clear throughout the Bofors years? These words of Chitra Subramaniam, the media heroine of those days, come as a reminder of what could have been.
In many ways, the Electoral Bonds story points to how effective the Modi government has been in dismantling much of India’s mainstream media through a strategy of fear peddling, personal patronage and the systematic courting and control of proprietors. It also points to the emergence of what is often termed the “alternative media” — online news portals, YouTube channels, even single journalist-driven outlets — which far outstripped the mainstream media in the coverage of this story. Not having lost their appetite for credible, establishment-exposing news, they emerged as the true Fourth Estate in the country. Little wonder then that it is this category of the media which has been at the receiving end of the latest raft of media-gagging efforts mounted by the Modi government through various orders issued under Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. The strike launched by the ED and Delhi Police on NewsClick last October is indicative of the very deep anxieties that the political establishment harbours of minuscule players with minds of their own.
16/03/2024