To Speak or Not to Speak : Censorship in Journalism

“Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy” - Walter Cronkite

The advent of technology in the recent past has greatly aided the spread of knowledge and information across the world. We can learn about events as they happen in real-time even if it is halfway across the globe. While this has greatly increased their coverage across the world, and empowered journalists to a greater extent, it has also greatly increased the impact any journalism has on the people; and with increased power comes a greater responsibility for misinformation, hatred and bias can mould the opinions of millions.

Journalism’s power in impacting public opinion has always been greatly respected. For example, during the British Raj, the Indian nationalist movements and sentiments were spread to the common man through newspapers and magazines until the British recognized this and tried to put an end to it through the Vernacular Press Act. The French Revolution too saw journalists such as Abbot Sieyes first touch upon the ideals that later shaped the famous revolution and brought down the monarchical era.

It’s no secret that people in power today respect the impact journalism has on people and have utilised it for their personal gain, all-the-while being vary of its ability to bring them down just as easily as it pushed them up. Understandably, they also would want to have control on what journalists say and how they say it, so that their interests are protected.

From a humanitarian and democratic standpoint, a free press is extremely important to keep governments accountable to people and prevent it from committing atrocities or shady practices. But in reality, rarely do we see a true “free press” even without government censorship. Almost all major media houses across the globe have a general political bias, some more so than others, and it is accepted that their allegiance is to a particular political party and its stance.

Hence, one can argue that censorship furthers this ongoing practice, by ensuring no opposing view is even presented. This isn’t an era of “no journalism” but an era of “you’ll see what I want you to see,” which is in orders of a worse magnitude. People today are fed biased views and coverage on almost every single event across the world. Such journalism force fits the opinion of the author (and his masters), and presents the perspective they want you to see - essentially ending any factual reporting at all. This murders not only freedom of speech but also the freedom of thought of its readers.

In such a scenario, it is potent to understand why increased censorship would further hurt the general public. By censoring all opposing views and pushing only the views the government backs, large chunks of the population buy into this coverage and become protractors of them. This steady brain-washing creates a population that is threatened even by the mention of raw facts as they’ve become steadfast believers of the political spin regularly provided to them. This is harmful to a free society, and breaks down a democratic system with ease. The government is no longer accountable for anything it does since it can get away with almost everything by spinning the narrative and blocking true reporting. As we have seen in the recent past, some governments have gone to great lengths to block the opposing viewpoint by making arrests over the sharing of Twitter posts, and jokes which haven’t been made.

While this was censorship by threat of police action, some governments have made more active steps towards censorship by placing OTT and social media platforms under the ambit of the government censorship board; thus, ensuring that all content citizens see will first go through the government’s eyes. Such censorship regulations resemble the situation in France prior to the French Revolution, when people fought for the re-institution of a free press.

This systematic suffocation of journalism and the free press is not just the effect of more insecure governments. Money-hungry media houses who have sacrificed their ethics and morals, and completely ignored their responsibility to the public while they bow down to the orders of their cashiers—some of whom also have deep ties with the incumbent governments—are equally to blame. Journalists are now no longer reliable sources of data, but instead are puppets that spew out clickbait articles, biased reporting and sensationalism media, bridging the gap between journalism, governance and entertainment for monetary good.

There is a lot of evidence to back the suppository that media houses are nothing more than commercial business entities, devoid of morals, whose sole existence is to maximise the monetary value of their work. The recent TRP scams in countries like India, where a certain media giant went to great lengths to increase its ratings through inorganic and illegal ways, all just to increase their ad revenue, is a salient example of this. Though this is illegal and in itself a great ignorance of established ethics and laws, it is even more disturbing and horrifying to see such media houses having no boundaries, even when it comes to matters of national security. Recently, leaked WhatsApp chats of a media behemoth who is known for shouting louder than his panelists on his show, making a mockery of the entire exercise, while his channel makes a mockery out of journalism as a whole, very recently absurdly pestering a regular postman for news about the demolition of a celebrity’s building, show that he had confidential information regarding international strikes by the army, hours before it took place. Having such sensitive, confidential information, that can lead to large amounts of damage diplomatically and physically, in the hands of a seemingly out-of-control journalist who has a history of doing anything and everything to boost his television ratings with no moral compass, is definitely extremely horrifying.

In such an era it has become increasingly difficult to find unbiased reporting of events and has greatly increased the responsibility of citizens to not just believe everything they see and read, but to seek out the facts and form an opinion based on that—to have a mind of their own.

As history has shown us, choking the free press may allow for years of desecration of democratic and ethical principles, but by no means does it promise perpetual power. Unlike what governments think, people CAN think on their own and cannot be kept shut for too long.

Article by-

Abhilash Madabhushi

Editor, For The Record