Giving Compass' Take:

• Revati Prasad explains that despite the abundance of news in India, there are concerns about the quality of journalism. 

• How can funders work to effectively support high-quality journalism in India and around the world? 

• Learn about local journalism as a tool for community change. 

With nearly 400 television news channels, an expanding newspaper market driven by regional languages, and the second highest number of internet users in the world, journalism in India can appear vibrant and thriving. But amidst the din of breaking news alerts, voices of critique and quality independent journalism grow fainter in the face of aggressive nationalism and robust state and corporate power. News outlets here need more than just financial stability and legal support; they need greater credibility with their readership.

Since the election of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) in 2014, news media in India must contend with an increasingly hostile climate. Journalists are more frequently threatened, detained or arrested. Some journalists known for their investigative work or criticism of right-wing Hindu extremism have been killed. These attacks are conducted in an atmosphere in which state actors denigrate journalists with terms like “presstitutes” and coordinated online trolling to shout down voices critical of the government as “anti-national.” Terms like “presstitutes” indicate the gendered nature of the abuse, especially directed at female journalists, but other marginalized identities such as Muslims are also frequent targets

The BJP government has been accused of trying to strong-arm news media that has questioned or contradicted the Modi regime—an English-language news channel was raided by the country’s top investigative agency in 2017, and more recently the signal of a Hindi-language news program was reportedly blocked. The state frequently reaches for the colonial-era sedition law to stifle dissent, and the evergreen pretext of national security to justify internet shutdowns and control the flow of information. The most common tack to chill speech and discourage investigative reporting employed by both politicians and corporations are lawsuits that claim defamation—a criminal offense in India.

Read the full article about quality journalism in India by Revati Prasad at Media Impact Funders.