In its South Asia Press Freedom Report 2023-2024, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has painted a bleak picture of media freedom in the region. According to the report, the appearance of democracy faded under autocratic regimes amid political polarisation, economic turmoil, and digital disruption, with journalists increasingly facing wage threats, job losses, shuttering of media houses, and precarious working conditions.
The report titled “Artificial Independence: The Fight to Save Media and Democracy” was released on May 3, commemorated as World Press Freedom Day. It studies the intersections of democracy, media economies, and the fundamental freedoms of the press across the eight nations of South Asia from May 1, 2023, to April 30, 2024.
With six nations in South Asia and over two billion people globally participating in elections in 2023 and 2024, the period was characterised by threats to democracy across the region, including physical violence, misinformation, political, religious, and ethnic divides, and polarised media coverage, according to the report.
“Democracy may have been the most successful political idea of the 20th century, but across South Asia as multiple countries headed to the polls, it became increasingly apparent that its progress in this part of the world has at the very least, stalled,” said Jane Worthington, IFJ’s Asia-Pacific director. Worthington, however, lauded “a determined network of media workers” in the region for its pushback.
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While the study rings alarm bells on risks facing journalists in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan, it said that despite Maldives and Bhutan showing signs of democratic progress, access to information remained embedded only in law. Talking about the challenge of “irresponsible media enterprises” in Nepal, it added that a united front of media workers continues to fight the endemic industry.
“Without media, there is no democracy, and as press freedom in South Asia continues to come under attack amid government crackdowns, political polarisation, economic crises, and digital disruption, journalists have persisted to hold the powerful to account and ensure the real story is told,” the IFJ warned in a statement, stressing that “real investment is needed to ensure ongoing media viability in the region, with journalists actively involved to find solutions, drive agendas and uphold media as crucial democratic infrastructure”.
Challenges of AI and disinformation
The entry of artificial intelligence (AI) in the newsrooms and its rapid advances in the digital space have been posing new risk to the media credibility. “Disinformation that has been ‘scaled up and weaponised’ on social networking platforms presents a major challenge and threat to democracy and media credibility,” said N. Ram, director, The Hindu Group of Publications, at a media summit in December 2023, according to the report. Ram added that AI and disinformation were “two key areas in which major and potentially disruptive challenges could become opportunities for the media to do well, empower themselves in new ways, and pursue a path of sustained development.”
Citing myriad challenges facing the media in India, the report noted: “If 2022 and the years before were bad for the Indian media, 2023 has been worse.”
Further, it stated that YouTube was emerging as a major source of news, noting that a deeply polarised legacy media had pushed the discourse onto digital media and social media platforms. Maintaining that independent journalism has been suffering in the mix of the online mire, the study said that for want of editorial oversight, social media has been exacerbating existing social cleavages of gender, religion, caste, and ethnicity.
Noting that the churn in Indian media is happening in a very polarised atmosphere, the report said: “What provides a glimmer of hope is the coming together of journalist organisations to protest against attacks on journalists, subtle and overt forms of harassment and the hounding of the media community by agencies of the state.”
It underscored that new forms of regulations by the government under the pretext of curbing disinformation or protecting sovereign interests must not be used to muzzle the media. “There is also the realisation that self-censorship is not healthy and if democracy has to be defended it can only be done if the media is protected and allowed to function independently by all the stakeholders,” the report added.
Media rights violations
The IFJ also recorded a total of 232 media rights violations last year, which included the targeted killings of eight journalists and media practitioners. In India, it stated that some journalists paid the ultimate price for performing their professional duties.
The report noted the deaths of journalists Abdul Rauf Alamgir of Assam (June 2023), Shivam Arya of Madhya Pradesh (July 2023), and Vimal Kumar Yadav (August 2023). It also cited the incident when cops roughed up some photojournalists covering the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on March 21, 2024.
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In October 2023, the killers of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan were brought to justice after 15 years. Vishwanathan, a journalist with the television news channel Headlines Today, was shot dead in 2008. “Her killing brought into sharp focus the insecurity that women journalists faced in even in the capital,” the report said, underlining incidents of assaults on journalists in many other States.
‘Punching bag’
In neighbouring Pakistan, a six-month constitutional limbo and political transition saw media practitioners—journalists and bloggers included—become a punching bag in the fight between the security establishment and former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party, the report said. According to the report, eight journalists were charged with sedition, terrorism, and incitement to violence, while dozens of journalists were arrested for durations between several hours to four weeks. Nearly 60 individuals were served legal notices or summons for their journalism work or personal dissent online.
Similarly, Afghanistan continued to witness a decline in press freedom and media rights after the Taliban takeover on August 15, 2021. “The achievements that Afghanistan had made in media development were swiftly eroded, plunging the years that followed into one of the darkest periods for press freedom in the country’s history,” the report stated.
Incidentally,India ranked 159 in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index published annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) whereas Pakistan and Afghanistan had ranked 152 and 178 respectively.
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