COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 05/05/2020
Lewis Page
IN INDIA, THE SPREAD of the novel coronavirus has been followed by a spate of threats against press freedom. On March 24, the day Indian prime minister Narendra Modi announced a strict nationwide lockdown, he gathered about twenty of the country’s top news executives for a meeting. Via videoconference, Modi implored the editors and owners to publish “inspiring and positive stories” about the government’s response to the virus. A week later, after the lockdown stranded hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, the Supreme Court of India issued an order that directed the media to “refer to and publish the official version about the developments,” though it did not prohibit independent reporting. In mid-April, one of the founding editors of The Wire, a popular independent news website, was served a court summons for making an “objectionable comment” about a state chief minister. And after a journalist in Mumbai allegedly reported a misleading story that led to a surge of traffic at Mumbai’s Bandra train station, a local court released an order stating that, although the press enjoys freedom of speech and expression, “the said freedom cannot be said to be unfettered.”