To begin with, in further unfortunate transmit for the country’s media, India’s press freedom ranking has fallen to 150 from 142 last year, with the latest World Press Freedom Index saying that the news media freedom is in a cataclysm in the world’s greatest democracy.
Moreover, with an aggregate of three or four journalists killed in interrelation with their work every year, the index placed India as “one of the world’s most treacherous countries” for the media. The 2022 edition of the World Press Freedom Index, which evaluates the state of reportage in 180 countries and territories, demonstrated that the condition of media is on a vanquishing, with India ranking 133 in 2016 and still not enhancing its ranking over the years.
How the ruling parting is affecting media and press rights in a democracy
For instance, the violence against correspondents, the politically partisan press, and the attentiveness of media possession all bespeak that press freedom is in crisis in ‘the world’s largest democracy, reigned since 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the reigning party, BJP and the Hindu nationalist wing.
The details of the report retort to the death of media rights and freedom of the press
Nonetheless, the report retorted that journalists are exposed to physical violence, including police violence, ambuscades by political activists, and deadly counterstrokes by criminal groups or dishonorable local officials. Supporters of Hindutva, the doctrine that issued the Hindu far-right, wage all-out online lambasts on any views that conflict with their thinking.
Meanwhile, the situation is also still very daunting in Kashmir, where reporters are often harassed by police and paramilitaries, with some being subjected to so-called ‘provisional’ incarceration for several years. Journalists have been imprisoned under stringent laws for insubstantial reasons and, on some occasions, faced intimidating remarks about their lives from self-styled conservators of law in the social media space.
