Media in the time of Modi https://www.mid-day.com/amp/news/opinion/article/media-in-the-time-of-modi-23605658 01 December,2025
Fear and greed apart, ideology, too, has turned the media into becoming the government's voice, an aspect that came across in Modi's speech in the sixth Ramnath Goenka Lecture. He hailed Goenka, the founder of the Indian Express Group, for his courage in opposing the British and then, decades later, Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. But he also, in the same breath, vividly described Goenka's proximity to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the previous incarnate of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which won him a Lok Sabha election on its ticket. Modi, in a way, affirmed that Goenka's opposition to Mrs Gandhi was as much about fighting for press freedom as it was about bolstering Hindutva.
A large segment of owners of legacy media belongs to a social group that has traditionally patronised the RSS and its Hindutva ideology.