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Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Day One Corporate Ownership and its Effects on Journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta Vanita Kohli Khandekar Sukumar Murlidharan Siddharth Varadarajan S.D. Thakur Persecution of Journalists Geeta Seshu K Vikram Rao P.C. Tiwari Chandrashekhram Kishore Chandra Das Gautam Biswas Vineet Kumar Defamation & Sedition Laws Prashant Bhushan Apar Gupta Karuna Nundy Prasanth Sugathan Pankaj Bhutalia Chinmayi Arun Ujjwal Chowdhury Colin Gonsalves Sexual Harassment of Journalists Sujata Madhok Tanushree Gangopadhyay Discussion with Students from the Film and Television Institute of India Day Two Assaults on Journalists Jatin Desai Vikas Kumar Pankaj Varshney Birendra Panigrahi Mukesh Rajak Samiuddin Neelu Neelabh Rai K.K. Rai Ayan Ghosal Working Conditions in the Media and Victimization of Employees T.K. Rajalakshmi M.J. Pandey S.K. Pandey Piyush Bajpai Prashant Tandon Pankaj Srivastava Shiv Gopal Mishra Mudit Mathur Harendra Pratap Singh Nivedita Shakeel B. Basava Punnaiah M. Somaiah G. Anjaneyulu M. Koteshwar Rao Does Self-Regulation Work? The Role of the Press Council of India, NBSA, and Media Watch Organizations Anil Chamadia Aniruddha Bahal Sevanti Ninan Digital Media, Net Neutrality, and Surveillance Saikat Dutta Nikhil Pahwa Anja Kovacs Prasanth Sugathan Journalists in Conflict Zones Panini Anand Mehboob Jeelani Ahmad Mukhtiyar Asad Ashraf Nava Thakuria Acknowledgements We would first like to thank the Media Legal Defense Initiative, for the outcomes of this consultation would not have been made possible without their support and guidance. We would further like to thank our fellow organizers for their commitment to the aims and objectives of the program: the Press Club of India, the Delhi Union of Journalists, the Mumbai Press Club, and the Indian Federation of Working Journalists. We must give a special thanks to all of our panelists and speakers, who provided us with a nuanced and complex understanding of the intersection between media freedom and law, and offered ways to advance this field that holds great import in our daily lives. Finally, we feel compelled to dedicate this text to all of the journalists and media personnel whose lives have been subjected to quotidian acts of violence and repression. May you find solace and strength in the learnings of this consultation, which we hope will compel you to continue providing unheard yet critical contributions to our democratic setup. Introduction The idea of this meeting was conceived quite some time back when the Human Rights Law Network did a series of meetings around the country on attacks on journalists 3 years ago. We found that journalists were coming under serious attack—physical assaults, threats, and so on—everywhere in the country. Many journalists have even been killed for their efforts. Journalists are languishing in jail, awaiting judgment on their cases that have been ongoing for 7, 8, or even 9 years. And when you meet the families COLIN of the journalists, you find that they are very alone. With this GONSALVES context in mind, the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) is trying to build a network of working journalists across India. Founder Director, Journalists have a major role to play in the proper functioning of HRLN our democratic setup. The power of the pen, therefore, must not be subsumed. It is our job as lawyers, activists, and media persons, to ensure that this does not happen. Our friend Jagendra Singh’s case is emblematic of the current state of affairs for journalists in this country. Jagendra put a post up on Facebook, in which he implicated the Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in the rape of a minor in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He continued to implicate the Minister in other illegal activities, such as sand mining and land grabbing. Can you imagine such commentary? He was basically anticipating his own death. A few nights following the publishing of his Facebook post, the UP Police came with several local hooligans and jumped over the wall into Jagendra’s yard. When Jagendra refused to open the door, the police broke through, went inside, and poured petrol over him, burning him alive. Jagendra promptly filed a petition in court following the incident. He gave a dying declaration to the first magistrate, saying that these people burnt him alive.When his case was transferred to another magistrate, he gave another dying declaration. The magistrate refused to take any immediate action, and left Jagendra to die in the process. His twenty-two year old son then filed a case in his name, seeking justice friends, the idea here is to illuminate the for his late father. Out of nowhere, the boy many stories of repression and oppression of goes underground and begins to send us journalists. Over the next two days, we will evasive emails saying, “Sir, do the case hear countless testimonials, detailing quickly. Sir, do the case quickly. I am under multifaceted experiences of suffering and threat.” After a few weeks of no contact, we rejection. The sessions cover a panoply of received a letter from him asking for the topics regarding media freedom and law, case to be withdrawn. It is at this point that I and bring diverse viewpoints and must congratulate a friend of mine who is perspectives that will provide nuanced sitting in the audience, Mr. Modiv, for understandings of the issues. Those topics, coming forth thereafter and substituting inter alia, include: corporatization of media, himself in the case for Jagendra’s son, solely persecution of and assaults on journalists, because it is very difficult to stay alive in legal regimes pertaining to media freedom, Uttar Pradesh while fighting this sexual harassment in the industry, working government on matters pertaining to conditions in media, issues in media freedom of the press. Jagendra’s case has regulation, net neutrality and surveillance, taken such instances of repression of and journalists in conflict zones. It is our journalists to a new height. It demonstrates hope that at the end of this consultation, we unequivocally the UP government’s will have not only situated ourselves in insouciance towards encounter killings. solidarity with those whom the media They will put a gun to your head and not industry has left vulnerable and unprotected, think twice about it. but also mobilized and strengthened a national network of journalists, lawyers, Another area of persecution journalists often activists, and academics who can come to face is in criminal defamation cases. These the rescue of media personnel who cases will last ten years in the court, and experience such instances of violence. journalists will go through the courts ten Without further ado, we will start the session times over. To cut the long story short, right away. Thank you all for coming. DAY 1 August 8, 2015 Corporatization of Media and its Effects on Journalists I am very happy this consultation has been organized, and I hope that there will be an outcome from this consultation. So hopefully by the end of tomorrow there will be a more formal structure to our communal organizing. For all of us here today, our problems are similar. The problems that journalists have faced in different areas of India, indeed, have a lot of similarities. There are, of course, differences in the problems journalists face in different regions, but there is a lot that is common to the issues that are going to be discussed in the course of today and tomorrow. And I wish that out of this PARANJOY GUHA consultation, we will come up with a concrete plan of action, THAKURTA which I think is not too much of a lofty goal. It is really gratifying to see so many different organizations come Senior Journalist, Delhi together to discuss the issues that concern all of us. Enough with the introductions. I am supposed to be speaking on corporatization of the media. The first point to be made is that there is nothing new about this phenomenon. One section of the media has been controlled by large corporates ever since the media has existed. Perhaps the best example is the jute and the steel press, which our first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, and the First Press Commission, talked about extensively. The jute press was a reference to the South Indian group, New Central Jute Mills. Bennett Coleman & Co—the publishers of the Times of India—was the owner of this jute mill at the time. Another compelling example comes from the The Tata Iron and Steel Company—TISCO, as it was called—which used to have a very close association with the Statesman, the most widely circulated English newspaper in eastern India. And the late Ramnath Goenka—the founder of the Indian Express—made an in real estate, mining, power generation, and unsuccessful attempt to buy the Indian Iron many other industries. Or we can take the and Steel Company. So for many decades, example of VJ Dharkar, a member of we’ve had a situation where the owners of Parliament in the Rajya Sabh. He and his media organizations have had other business family controls Lokmat, the largest selling interests. Therefore, it is not surprising that Marathi newspaper in India. In 2009, Mr. the media organizations--or the newspapers, Dharkar was implicated in the coal or the publications—have historically been allocation scam, a major political scandal supportive of the interests of the owners, concerning the Indian government’s whose economic interests have towed the allocation of coal deposits to public sector line between profitization and attempting to entities and private companies. What these influence governmental policy. This has examples are meant to show, then, is both always been the dominant mode of the increasingly commercialized nature of economic thought running through the media, and the cronyism that has now come media organizations.

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