Paris, July 15, 2023 (PPI-OT): The Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters without Borders (RSF), has criticized the French government for inviting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to France where he was guest of honor during France’s Bastille Day celebrations, yesterday. Narendra Modi was the guest of honour during France’s Bastille Day celebrations, yesterday, where he watched French and Indian troops parade on the Champs Elysées avenue along with French President Emmanuel Macron.
The RSF in a series of tweets said Modi is not a friend of journalists. It said India is ranked 142nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index, adding Modi is in the list of 37 heads of state or government that the RSF has identified as ‘predators of press freedom’. It cited various examples of victimization of journalists and media houses by the Modi government.
The Modi regime arrested journalist Irfan Meraj from Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir under “sedition” for simply wanting to do his job and 11 journalists are currently being arbitrarily detained in India. In February, the premises of the BBC World in New Delhi were raided in retaliation for the broadcast of a documentary critical of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the broadcast of the film has since been banned in India.
India is among the deadliest countries for media workers. On June 2, near Bombay, reporter Shashikant Warishe was brutally murdered for having investigated the activities of a local potentate. The last major independent channel in India, New Delhi Television (NDTV) has seen its journalists resign en masse since it was acquired by the multi-billionaire Gautam Adani, who openly displays his closeness to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. RSF denounces, behind this takeover, a phenomenon of oligarchic capture of the media landscape which clearly jeopardizes the pluralism of public debate in India.
Journalist after journalist, editorial erosion continues. The latest example, on January 31, journalist Nidhi Razdan, former editor-in-chief of NDTV’s all-info channel, announced that she was leaving the group that employed her. Three days earlier, another star NDTV presenter, Sreenivasan Jain, announced his resignation after nearly three decades of service. At the head of the flagship shows “Reality Check” and “Truth vs Hype”, he joined the channel in 1995.
Modi is preparing to pass a law that will allow him to decide what information he considers “true” or “false” on the Internet, regardless of its journalistic legitimacy. After becoming Gujarat’s chief minister in 2001, he used this western state as a laboratory for the news and information control methods he deployed after being elected as India’s prime minister in 2014. His leading weapon is to flood the mainstream media with speeches and information tending to legitimize his national-populist ideology. To this end, he has developed close ties with billionaire businessmen who own vast media empires.
This insidious strategy works in two ways. On the one hand, by visibly ingratiating himself with the owners of leading media outlets, their journalists know they risk dismissal if they criticise the government. On the other, prominent coverage of his extremely divisive and derogatory speeches, which often constitute disinformation, enables the media to achieve record audience levels. People also staged a protest demonstration in Paris against the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s visit to France when Narendra Modi was attending the military parade of France to mark Bastille Day.
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