The impugned order is overtly regulatory in that accredited media persons seeking to pursue some exclusive story can meet concerned official(s) on prior appointment within the intimation of security agencies, thus prohibiting officials from being spotted for subsequent action against them if reporting of such journalist annoys the high echelons or embarrass the government. This means covertly a virtual ban on entry and movement of accredited journalists in that Ministry. The order is anti-democratic intending to curb freedom of the press, a basic structure of the core values of India’s democratic functioning.
A recent order of the Union Ministry of Finance restricting entry and movement of accredited media persons in that Ministry is fascistic in nature as it points to curb and control of the media being witnessed under the current NDA Union Government where the media house owners are arm-twisted under threat of some frame-up and punitive action or lavish advertisements. The result has been willful neglect of highlighting people’s problems in their reporting, analysis and comments limiting themselves toall eulogizing the government. It prevents journalists to update their knowledge of the workings of the government in that Ministry, pursue some exclusive story, seeking clarification on some policy permutations and combinations in order to get to the truth as also scrutiny of the government.
The impugned order is overtly regulatory in that accredited media persons seeking to pursue some exclusive story can meet concerned official(s) on prior appointment within the intimation of security agencies, thus prohibiting officials from being spotted for subsequent action against them if reporting of such journalist annoys the high echelons or embarrass the government. This means covertly a virtual ban on entry and movement of accredited journalists in that Ministry. The order is anti-democratic intending to curb freedom of the press, a basic structure of the core values of India’s democratic functioning.
In the Indian system of rule of law based democratic governance, media persons are accredited to the government on the platform of Press Information Bureau (PIB) after rigorous verifications and checks by security agencies. This facilitates accredited media persons’unhindered access to government offices except in high security areas where they are escorted to the concerned officials as per the norms. PIB, by its nature, cannot fulfil demands of media to get totality of picture on any issues. Accreditation, therefore, enables media persons to report special stories, news and views.
In terms of the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules read with the Manual of Office Procedure, PIB has been cast as the centralized media for dissemination of all governmental information, which is positive in nature and what government of the day wants it to dish out. The fine print or between the lines of such PIB information is sought through leg workings and contacts by accredited journalists to keep the people informed in correct perspective the issues facing them in such information. In the process, such reportings are at times critical that scrutinize the government. This aspect of media functioning is altogether prohibited in the Finance Ministry order, which is draconian, anti-democratic and anti-people, intended to curb and attack press freedom. Media bodies like Editors Guild of India, Press Club of India, Press Association etc. have rightly raised their voice and protested against the press curb by the Finance Ministry.
The said curb on the media forms part of the broad design of the one-man Union Government to regiment media further, a characteristic functioning of fascism and not democracy, where media can report, comment and scrutinise one-sidedly favouring the government only that withholds real picture and issues facing the nation. In the process, people are administered bitter pills of untruth hindering developmental information that have been witnessed by the people since 2014 in the ever-widening gap between the rhetorics of the government and the ground reality.
In democracy, media is known as the Fourth Estate (Fourth Pillar) along with the three other pillars, Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. The Forth Estate performs onerous role in reporting, commenting, analyzing and evaluating the performance of the government in order to keep it under checks and for better accountability of the transient elected government to the people. Media, as a matter of fact, functions as a watchdog of public interests, which have been attacked by the government under a willful design to subjugate the media to make it fall in line, among other anti-media measures. It is time, this order was revoked in the interests of justice, equity and fair play balancing the overall functioning of all the four pillars of democracy of which press freedom is the most sacrosanct!