There have been two brutal murders of two eminent journalists.
One in the South in Bangalore where Ms.Gowri Lankesh, a radical writer of, of course, extreme views, was brutally gunned down outside her home. The other murder, after a few days of this one, was in the far Northern state of Tripura where a TV journalist was also brutally murdered.
The extreme irony is that in India with such a vast network of well-established media industry, some print media outlets are more than centuries old and also there is a great tradition of high quality journalism, both in English and in the regional languages, there is not much of an outraged shock and dismay.
There nowhere, as far as we had watched for many days now, that any known veteran journalists or newspaper organisations had come out and expressed deserved condemnations. The TV news channels which had also well-established networks and yet no channel had come out with any meaningful debate or discussion.
This is really surprising and shocking too.
While there are some instances where senior journalist was issued anon-bailable warrant! How many journalists in their routine jobs can afford to engaged high-profile lawyers and get relief?
Also, even the most respected news channel faced a CBI raid!
So, anyone interested in the field of freedoms of the citizens, freedom of the press and also the rights of individuals engaged in sensitive jobs like journalism and news anchoring must be very concerned about the future of news freedom and news gathering.
There is not even a whisper, as we see, from the most senior professionals in media.
Even the very quality of news as we see is far from any standard.
The most vociferous newspapers who talk much about the news quality don’t have any news worth reporting and thus the readers are deprived of genuine news.
So, what is the sort of democracy India is claiming to represent?