World freedom index is released by Reporter’s Without Border’s (Reporters Sans Frontiers, RSF). RSF is a global non-profit body that works on the freedom of the press.
The findings of the report:
- India stood at 136 in a pool of 180 countries ranked by RSF in 2017, which was a place lower than India’s rank in 2016. In 2018 rankings, India stands at 138.
- Describing the state of press freedom in the country, RSF stated, “with Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of “anti-national” thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media and journalists are increasingly the targets of online smear campaigns by the most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals.
- RSF mentions that government was using prosecutions to gag journalists who are overly critical of it, invoking, among other sections, sedition charges, which are punishable by a life-term in jail. Though it qualified, that no journalist has so far been convicted of sedition but the threat encourages self-censorship.
- What worsens the situation, as per RSF is that “coverage of regions that the authorities regard as sensitive, such as Kashmir, continues to be very difficult”. It added that foreign reporters are barred from the region and the Internet is often disconnected there.
- Also, it stated that Kashmiri journalists working for local media outlets “are often the targets of violence by soldiers acting with the central government’s tacit consent”.
- In 2018, RSF counted 13 journalists killed across the world for their work; of this three were in India.
- As per the Index’s definition, the quality of press freedom in the country is bad. Of the 180 countries ranked, 9 per cent had press freedom that could be qualified as good, 17 per cent were fairly good, in 35 per cent of the countries the situation was problematic, for 27 per cent of the countries including India the press freedom situation is bad and in 12 per cent of the nations, the press freedom quality is very bad.
RSF notes that Hostility, it said is no longer limited to authoritarian regimes and the climate of hatred is steadily more visible. More and more democratically-elected leaders no longer see the media as part of democracy’s essential underpinning, but as an adversary to which they openly display their aversion”. The line separating verbal violence from physical violence is dissolving.