India has slipped two more places, from 140 to 142, on the 2020 World Press Freedom Index compiled by the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reports without Borders). Which means, the freedom of journalists in India to do their job has shrunk every year since 2015, the year after Narendra Modi came to power.…
The Bangalore-based daily Deccan Herald has an editorial on India’s continuing slide on the World Press Freedom (WPI) index. The index, compiled by the Paris-based advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, shows India’s position slipping from 133 to 136, to 138, to 140 in the last four years, out of 180 countries in the world: “There…
Media freedom in India has slipped a further two points to 140 and is back at 2014 levels when Narendra Modi‘s government took charge. India is behind Afghanistan, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka on the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by the Paris-based media advocacy group Reporters sans Frontiers (RSF). The only…
*** The weaponisation of Indian broadcast and digital media by Hindutva forces has been a key force-multiplier in coarsening the discourse and manufacturing consent, to be encashed at the ballot boxes. In this, the first of a two-part excerpt from his new book Freedom, Civility, Commerce, journalist and academic Sukumar Muralidharan argues that the eagerness…
Since modern Indian civilisation began in 2014, the Guinness Book of Records has kind-of replaced the Constitution of India and the Bhagwad Gita as the epics to emulate. Under Narendra Modi, the preferred goals are Olympian—citius, altius, fortius. Therefore, the world’s largest khichdi, the world’s tallest statue, the world’s largest yoga gathering, the world’s longest monologue…
Lasantha Wickrematunge, the editor of the Sri Lankan weekly newspaper The Sunday Leader, was killed in Colombo last Thursday, 8 January 2009. As he was driving to work, four assassins on motorcycles stopped his car, smashed its windows with crowbars, and attacked him with sharp objects. The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) blamed…
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