BBC raids present India’s shrinking media freedom underneath Modi, some journalists say – World
At round 11am on February 14, some 20 Indian tax officers and police burst into the BBC’s offices in New Delhi, shouting at employees to step away from their computer systems and hand over their cell phones, in response to two individuals current.
On the firm’s bureau in India’s monetary capital, Mumbai, tax officers launched a second raid. The federal government mentioned the BBC had failed to answer repeated requests to make clear its tax affairs associated to the income and remittances from its Indian operations.
The BBC has mentioned it’s cooperating totally with tax authorities and hopes to resolve issues shortly, including its journalists would proceed to report “with out concern or favour”. It declined to remark for this story.
Three weeks earlier than the raids — which the federal government referred to as a “survey” — the BBC launched a two-part documentary that included an examination of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s function in sectarian riots in his house state of Gujarat in 2002 when he was chief minister there. The documentary, which was solely broadcast in Britain, accused Modi of fostering a local weather of impunity that fuelled the violence.
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Modi’s authorities has referred to as the documentary “biased” and reflecting a “colonial mindset”. Overseas Minister S. Jaishankar advised the ANI information company final week it was “politics by one other means” and steered its timing was meant to undermine help for Modi. The BBC has mentioned it stands by the reporting.
The 72-year-old prime minister enjoys excessive approval scores and is predicted to run for reelection subsequent yr for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP).
In late January, Indian authorities ordered the removing of social media posts sharing the documentary and police detained some Indian college students who tried to display screen it, saying it might disturb the peace. They have been launched shortly afterwards.
The tax inspections on the BBC’s places of work — throughout which officers cloned the cell phones of some senior employees and searched computer systems, in response to the 2 individuals current — have highlighted the considerations of some journalists and media rights watchdogs about what they are saying is a decline in press freedom underneath Modi.
Reuters spoke to eight Indian journalists, trade executives and media analysts who mentioned that some media which reported critically on the federal government have been focused with inspections by authorities companies, the suspension of state promoting and the arrest of reporters.
“There’s by no means been a golden age of Indian journalism,” mentioned Abhinandan Sekhri, chief government of impartial on-line media group, Newslaundry, whose places of work in New Delhi have been surveyed twice by tax officers in 2021 after vital protection of Modi’s administration. “However it has by no means been like it’s now.”
A prison case filed by the tax division in opposition to Sekhri alleging tax evasion and forging a valuation report was thrown out by a decide in Delhi in November. Sekhri has sued the federal government for assaults on his basic rights and freedom of expression; the case is being heard within the Delhi Excessive courtroom.
Modi’s authorities has vigorously denied the BBC tax inspection — the primary in opposition to a world information organisation in a long time — was a response to the movie.
“The BBC operates underneath two non-public firms in India: like another overseas firm, they’re open to scrutiny and tax legal guidelines apply to them,” mentioned Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser to the Ministry of Info and Broadcasting. The BBC had acquired greater than 10 tax notices earlier than the documentary aired, he mentioned.
Reuters was unable to verify this independently. The tax company didn’t reply to a request for remark for this story.
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Since Modi took workplace in 2014, India has slid from one hundred and fortieth in World Press Freedom Index, an annual rating by non-profit Reporters With out Borders, to one hundred and fiftieth place final yr, its lowest ever.
Modi’s authorities rejects the Index’s findings, questioning its methodology, and says India has a vibrant free press.
The world’s most populous democracy with 1.4 billion individuals, India has 1000’s of newspapers and a whole bunch of TV information channels.
Gupta denied any authorities company had focused the media in response to protection or suspended any promoting. He mentioned the federal government had said repeatedly that harassment of journalists was unacceptable and in opposition to the legislation.
Choking funds
The Editors Guild of India, an industry association, said the BBC raids were part of a trend of “government agencies being used to intimidate and harass news organisations.” It cited four similar tax inspections against media in 2021.
In one of those, the offices of Dainik Bhaskar, one of India’s largest newspapers by circulation, were raided in July 2021 by tax authorities, who alleged it evaded taxes on income worth 7bn Indian rupees ($84.47 million). The paper has contested the charge and the case is ongoing.
The newspaper — part of DB Corp, one of India’s largest newspaper groups — had published a series of articles alleging authorities mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic and underreported deaths. The government has denied mistakes in its response and undercounting.
A senior Dainik Bhaskar executive, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the raids followed an unexplained halt in advertising by the federal government and six BJP-controlled states from February 2021. The suspension lasted until August 2022 and cost the newspaper more than 1bn rupees ($12.25m), he said.
A spokesman for the newspaper declined to comment. The state governments did not respond to requests for comment. Asked about the case, Gupta said the government did not pull advertising because of critical reporting.
In a report last year, Reporters Without Borders said that, despite high readership, many Indian news organisations were vulnerable to economic pressure because of their reliance on government advertising.
The acquisition of some media groups by billionaires seen as close to Modi has also led to the silencing of independent voices in the Indian press, it said.
Between 2014 and early December 2022, the federal government spent 64.9bn Indian rupees ($784.34m) on advertising in print and electronic media, it said in a statement to parliament at the end of last year. However, the figures showed spending has declined in recent years.
Gupta said there had been complaints after the government reduced its advertising spending but that was not an assault on media freedom.
“Government doesn’t exist to fund media. We don’t want a media which is loyal to us or beholden to us because of the money that we give them,” he said.
‘Critics as an enemy’
Reports from international press freedom watchdogs, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), say that — in addition to the financial pressures on media organisations — the federal and state governments in India have detained an increasing number of journalists for their reporting.
At least seven journalists remained behind bars in India as of December, the highest number in 30 years, according to the CPJ’s annual global tracker released on Dec 14.
In some instances, reporters have been detained by state governments — which control local police forces — after reporting on minor issues.
On March 29, 2022, Ajeet Ojha, a reporter with the Hindi-language newspaper Amar Ujala in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, wrote a story about high school examination test papers being leaked to students in advance in the town of Balia. Ojha wrote that an investigation into who leaked the papers was ongoing.
The next day, the 42-year-old reporter was arrested by police and accused of leaking the test papers himself, according to the police report, reviewed by Reuters.
“I spent 27 nights in jail,” Ojha said, adding that he is still accused on two counts, though police dropped some criminal charges. Balia police did not respond to requests for comment.
Gyanendra Shukla, a veteran reporter who led the campaign for Ojha’s release, said the BJP-controlled state government viewed “critics as an enemy”.
“They have forgotten that the work of a journalist is to highlight problems and criticise the system,” he said.
The Uttar Pradesh government did not respond to requests for comment. Gupta said the arrest was a matter for the state authorities.
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