They say a country stands strong on four pillars. But what if one of them begins to crumble? What if the mirror that once reflected truth now only reflects what it’s paid to show?
We believed that the media is the voice of the people, the lion of the jungle (brave, bold and unbreakable). But considering today's scenario, it has become a hungry wolf devouring its own democracy from within. The fourth pillar doesn’t resemble a stone anymore, instead it behaves like a chalk, eagerly waiting for someone powerful enough to wipe it.
Journalism was once a profession that shook the power, but now wags its tail around the powerful. Those who stick to their jobs, suffer the consequences.
Reporters and editors more often find their names on charge sheets than on front pages. A notebook is now suspected as a weapon, a camera becomes a barrel of a gun which turns the truth into a commodity to trade. Prime time has now turned into “prime trade time”, where bidding starts with TRP headlines. The newsroom once worshipped as a temple of facts now becomes a “Macchi Bazaar” with echoes of lies and drowning truth. Freedom of speech comes with a hidden risk, valid only until it offends the power.
Jailed For Truth-Telling
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 2024 report, since 2000, 25 journalists have been imprisoned in India for their work under the charges of anti-state or terrorism-related. In CPJ’s 2022 prison census India ranked 11th in the world for jailing journalists.
Take Aasif Sultan, a former assistant editor of Kashmir Narrator. His article on militant commander Burhan Wani became the reason for his arrest in 2018. Despite no links proven with militancy, he spent years behind bars and was granted bail in 2022, only to be re-arrested on the same day under Public Safety Act, and spent two more years locked away. In May 2024, he was finally granted bail. But can freedom still feel the same after years of unjust confinement?
Similarly, Siddique Kappan, a journalist from Kerala working for azhimukham.com (a malyalam news portal), was on his way from south to north to cover the Uttar Pradesh’s 19-year-old Dalit girl rape case in Hathras in 2020 when he was arrested under charges of UAPA, sedition, and other sections, including conspiracy and incitement. For almost 28 months, Kappan was put in jail without a trial, even after being granted bail in his terror case by India’s Supreme Court in September 2022. His final release came on February 2, 2023, and after his release he declared, “Journalism is not a crime. I will continue my fight.”
Likewise, an activist journalist and former editor of Lankesh Patrike magazine from Bengaluru, Gauri Lankesh was shot dead in front of her house in 2017, because her pen was burning the manufactured lies made-up by the right-wings, so they chose to silence her forever. This served as a warning to us, speak without permission, you will be next.
In Kashmir, reporters like Irfan Mehraj, working with a digital portal TwoCircles.net and Fahad Shah, the founder and editor of the independent news portal The Kashmir Walla, have faced multiple repeated arrests.
In the latest report by Human Rights Watch in 2022, minimum 35 journalists in Jammu and Kashmir have faced unnecessary police interrogation, raids, or fabricated cases since the region’s special status was revoked in 2019. Many of them had their laptops seized, passports revoked, or travel restricted.
The South Asia Press Freedom Report by IFJ in 2023-2024 also notes that journalists in India continue to face “digital censorship, police threats, surveillance and sedition charges.” In their world, reporting is not a profession, it’s a gamble with freedom.
Echoes of a Gagged Past
India has a history of silencing voices. In 1975, when India slipped into the darkness of the Emergency, at that time many newspapers also turned paralysed bodies under censorship. Often, entire paragraphs were cut out, leaving white scars on the page. Editors received calls at midnight, telling them what not to publish. Cartoonists were put in jail for drawing satire, writers were slapped with sedition. A brand new term “anti-national” was coined for speaking inconvenient truths. The printing press became a printing pawn.
What we see today are not fresh wounds but just some reopened scars. The face in power may change, but the process to delude innocents remains the same like a hereditary disease passed down from regime to regime.
The Endless Trial
Leo Tolstoy’s “God Sees the Truth, But Waits” is a story about a man who was punished for years by the state for a crime that he never committed. His truth arrived too late, that his freedom became useless. Every time a journalist waits years behind bars while on trial, the story re-awakens.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) declared that bail is often delayed or denied indefinitely, effectively making pre-trial detention a form of punishment.
Here is the truth that no textbook will ever admit: the trial is not only on the journalist, it is on journalism itself. Each arrest breaks one brick from that fourth pillar, and each FIR file takes away a piece of freedom from democracy’s foundation. We do not lose the press with dramatic collapse, we lose it behind bars, delayed bails, endless hearings, terrified sources, suppressed truth, at bargaining tables, press conferences, in the families of reporters waiting outside courtrooms with bags of food and fading hope, and all of this for just raising your voice, deciding to showcase the truth, and trying to have our own opinion.
As the IFJ, HRW, and CPJ data collectively show that Indian journalism is enduring one of its hardest times over the decades. Laws are being compromised, institutions are being silenced, and truth is being punished.
The Broken Pillar
Now the real question is whether the building of democracy can stand tall with a broken pillar. Will the people wake-up before the last voice gets silenced? Because when a journalist is being beaten, arrested, or erased, everybody’s freedom is threatened, as the journalists bring the reality of society to us.
This fourth pillar might look like chalk now, but don't forget, even chalk leaves its mark when written on a blackboard that no duster could erase. “Let her and Falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter,” wrote John Milton in 'Areopagitica’, reminding us that we should not forget that truth is stronger than falsehood and will always win out. You can trap the truth, but you cannot silence it.
(Anushree Bhattacharya is an independent writer and media observer exploring social and media issues.)
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