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It is difficult to recall another year when the news media has been such a consistent newsmaker
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It is difficult to recall another year when the news media has been such a consistent newsmaker. For closures, job losses and fair wage demands, for killings and attacks, and then for its hounding of others.
It began with demonstrations in January in Kozhikode in Kerala for implementation of the Majitha wage board recommendations. One newspaper, Mathrubhumi, reacted with transfers and terminations. When an article in Malayalam described these actions, a takedown notice was sent to the website Bodhicommons by the Mathrubhumi management.
February saw the year’s first killing of a journalist, in Chhattisgarh, for which the Maoists took responsibility. In December, there was another killing of a freelance journalist in the same state for which the Maoists were suspects.
March was grim in terms of attacks. There were three including an acid attack on a district correspondent who had been exposing the gutka mafia in Parbhani district in Maharashtra. The second was in Kashmir where the Central Reserve Police Force thrashed a journalist, and the third in Mumbai, where the organizers of a celebration turned on a television journalist. The same month, protests over a Facebook post saw several policemen injured.
Also in March, a Ghaziabad court ordered the blocking of around 70 web pages at the request of Arindam Chaudhuri of the Indian institute of Planning and Management for allegedly being critical of the institute. They were later unblocked again on court orders.
April marked the use of SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) by media organizations. Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd sent a legal notice for an article in Mint on the Financial Times title issue to the journalist, but not to the newspaper. This was followed up in April when it sent another legal notice alleging defamation and threatening both civil and criminal action to a law student who wrote on the same issue on the blog SpicyIP.
April also marked the first of the year’s major closures with journalists losing jobs. Sudipto Sen, the chit fund media baron from Kolkata, had some six publications. All these shut shop when his business came under scrutiny. One newspaper alone, The Bengal Post, had 117 editorial staff when it closed down.
Then there were the attacks. Two different ones on a print and a TV journalist in Odisha, both by the police. Also, Mangalore journalist Naveen Soorinje was arrested while covering a moral police attack. He subsequently spent 17 weeks in jail.
In May, a Maoist attack on the Doordarshan Kendra in Jagdalpur saw two jawans killed. The following month Trinamool Congress supporters attempted to burn a journalist alive in Barrackpore.
Also in June, efforts at restructuring at Network 18 and issues related to employee stock options (ESOPs) led to the exits of an editor and three senior staff at Forbes India. They declined to accept an ESOP plan that was substantially different from what they had been promised.
There were three incidents of physical attacks on journalists and photojournalists in July—in Ara in Bihar, in Betul in Madhya Pradesh, and yet another thrashing of journalists by Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Srinagar in Kashmir.
July also saw developments on the media business front. The Central Bureau of Investigation filed a first information report against Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd and its auditors on 8 July, alleging a criminal conspiracy during 2009-11 to cheat Canara Bank’s Secunderabad branch. Then on 26 July, the closure of Marie Claire, People India and Geo in the Outlook Group was announced.
August brought major retrenchment at Network 18, estimated at 325 or so job losses. It also brought a rash of attacks on and deaths of media personnel. Bharatiya Janata Party workers attacked journalists in Singur in West Bengal for covering a clash between two factions of the party. Later that month, self-styled godman Asaram Bapu’s supporters assaulted the media in Jodhpur. Three journalists were killed that month in different parts of Uttar Pradesh—Etawah, Bulandshahar and Lakhimpur Kheri.
In September, the Muzaffarnagar communal clashes claimed the life of a TV journalist and a photographer.
2013 has been the year in which media owners asserted themselves, in the Hindu, at Open magazine, and then in the Indian Express where Vivek Goenka took back the reins of management. The first instance in October at the Hindu, leading to the departure of the editor, made the most news. November saw the departure at Open magazine of the political editor, because, according to the magazine’s editor, his reporting was making the proprietor Sanjiv Goenka uncomfortable.
By the third week of November came the allegations of sexual assault inside a lift of a reporter at Tehelka by the magazine’s chief editor.
In December, as mentioned before, yet another journalist was killed in Chhattisgarh. In Tamil Nadu, the SRM group announced that its plan to start an English news channel had been shelved, and 40 journalists lost their jobs.
Most of the above was only fleetingly reported. Only one incident of all of the above became a huge breaking news story that ran for two weeks continuously. I don’t have to tell you which one.
Sevanti Ninan is a media critic, author and editor of the media watch website thehoot.org. She examines the larger issues related to the media in a fortnightly column.
HT Media Ltd, the publisher of Mint and Hindustan Times, competes with the publishers of some newspapers mentioned in this column in some markets.
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