The Emergency of 1975 is in danger of becoming a cliche, pulled out with rhetorical flourish around June 25 each year to remember Indian democracy’s darkest 21 months. It’s used so loosely as a catch-all scare-word—even by those who have much to hide, especially by those who have much to hide—that for the 81% of…
Tag Archives: Censorship
‘The Hindu’ calls gag order on 49 media organisations in Tejasvi Surya case “poll-time censorship”; could set precedent to prevent media from doing its job
The Hindu has an editorial on the open-ended “temporary injunction” obtained by BJP’s Bangalore South candidate, Tejasvi Surya against 49 media organisations. It says the pre-publication gag order is contrary to the law and the Constitution; violative of free speech; and authorises prior restraint. “Even if the argument is that the order only prevents ‘defamatory’…
The Editor who declined the Padma Bhushan
Today, 3 November 2013, is the birth centenary of Nikhil Chakravartty, the “barefoot reporter” who founded the journal Mainstream. NC or Nikhilda, as most who knew him called him, plunged into active journalism as a special correspondent with the Communist Party organ People’s War (1944-46) and People’s Age (1946-48), and later Crossroads (1952-55) and New…
What they said when Shankar shut his Weekly
The capitulation of the Congress-led government at the Centre in the Ambedkar cartoon controversy was welcomed with the thumping of desks by parliamentarians who seemed to have little appreciation of the legendary Shankar‘s work and even less of what its inclusion in a school textbook meant. From Congress president Sonia Gandhi (whose mother-in-law Indira Gandhi…
MUST READ: ‘Shankar’s Weekly’ final editorial
Media freedom in India id est Bharat has never been a more scarce commodity than in the year of the lord 2012. The fourth estate is under concerted attack from all three pillars of our democracy—the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Organisations mandated to protect media freedom (like the press council of India) are…
An Emergency-style witchhunt of the media?
The top item (above) in the gossip column of The Indian Express today lends further credence to the conspiracy theory doing the rounds in Delhi that there may be a pattern to, and a devious intent behind, all that is happening to the media in recent weeks: the sweeping remarks of press council chairman Justice…
Is UPA hitting back at ToI, India Today, DNA?
There has been plenty of buzz in recent days that the Congress-led UPA government has quietly begun hitting back at the media for the manner in which it has exposed the scams and scandals, and for the proactive manner in which it backed the middle-class led “Arnab Spring”. There have been rumours, for instance, of…
‘Indira exploited Western media outrage in ’75’
William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of The Times, London, on the Emergency of 1975 and media censorship, in his book, Memoirs, to be published by Harper Collins on July 7: “We attacked in a Times leader Mrs Indira Gandhi‘s suspension of Indian democracy. I only saw Mrs Gandhi once. She was insufferably arrogant, and very…
A blank editorial, a black editorial & a footnote
When Indira Gandhi introduced media censorship as part of the Emergency in 1975, Indian newspapers ran blank editorials as a form of protest. The Kannada newspaper Vijaya Karnataka, belonging to The Times of India group, runs a blank (and black) editorial today, in protest against what happened in the State legislative assembly on Monday, during…
One paper’s 40% threat is another’s 60% dud
The relationship between India and China has in recent months become, as the cliche goes, the cynosure of all eyes. Border roads and dams; military incursions; a row over the Dalai Lama; illegal Chinese workers on Indian soil, Google™ maps, all have become milestones in the steady escalation of tensions. The media has been at…
How Cisco helps China in internet censorship
It’s not just authoritarian governments that are preventing citizens and activists from accessing news and views that they would not like them to lay their eyes and ers on. Transnational corporations that supply the technology to make access possible in the first place are playing a hand, according to Al Jazeera‘s media show, The Listening…
Should the media be honouring politicians?
Should a designated prime ministerial candidate of a mainstream political party be chosen and given an award by a television channel which might have to cover him if and when he takes charge? Should the candidate so eagerly accept such a public honour? The candidate is L.K. Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the…
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