ASKING QUESTIONS HAS NEVER BEEN SO DIFFICULT

Versão em Português

Translated by Isa Mara Lando

Editorial director of India’s Newslaundry website, Manisha Pande often carries out an exercise with young journalists of her country. She gathers them to show what a press conference used to be. “I tell them, ‘Look how things used to be. We asked lots of questions. Asking questions of people in power is a basic journalistic task and should not be something extraordinary. But that has changed over the last twelve years.’”

The change in the way journalism is practiced in India coincides with the arrival of Narendra Modi to power, elected Prime Minister in 2014. Since then, according to Pande, Modi has not granted any press conferences at all. He makes his statements on social media or in interviews with artists. “They ask him ‘Which way to you prefer to eat your mango?’ ‘Do you have a best friend?’ My task at Newslaundry is to show that this is not journalism,” said Pande.

Manisha Pande was interviewed on Saturday, September 5th, by piauí reporter Danilo Marques and Folha de S.Paulo journalist Patrícia Campos Mello, at the piauí Journalism Festival. The event, now in its tenth edition, took place at the Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo, with the main theme In the eye of the storm – Newsroom directors in times of turmoil. Events also took place on Sunday, September 6th, with the festival bringing together eight journalists from seven countries, who spoke about their experience of leading important outlets in tumultuous times.

Pande states that Indian journalism has been hollowed out over the past twelve years. She says repression does not occur in a “dramatic” way, but through control of the narrative. “This is the atmosphere we have to work in. When one talks about repression, people might think there are soldiers and tanks in the streets. But in fact there are still many newspapers functioning in India. The problem is, they are all aligned with the government.” The acquisition, at the end of 2022, of the New Delhi Television channel by magnate Gautam Adani, a man close to Modi, signaled the end of pluralism in mainstream media.

On television, according to Pande, it is common for the narrative about the country to be nearly unanimous, featuring three mantras: that Modi is the best thing that has ever happened to India; that the opposition is controlled by Pakistan or by the CIA; and that Muslims are enemies of the people.

Pande says the task of Newslaundry is to dismantle these narratives. In addition to reporting, she hosts a segment called TV Newsance (a sound pun with “nuisance”), broadcast on YouTube, aimed at media criticism in the country. The programs mix news and satire. “Humor has become a tool for us to bring lightness to our coverage and not sound like a sermon,” she explains. “But what’s happening in the country is so crazy that I don’t even need to come up with jokes.”

The country ranks 157th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index. In 2015, Pande and her colleague Sandeep Pai  used the Right To Information Act (RTI) – a mechanism similar to Brazil’s Access to Information Law (LAI) – to obtain highly sensitive documents, exposing corrupt transactions between politicians who profited from businesses with state-owned companies. Pande believes it would be difficult to reproduce such an investigation today. “That law has practically died. But we need to keep going, we have to beat the authorities, even if it's through sheer exhaustion."

Since May of this year, India has seen the emergence of the Cockroach Janta Party, the CJP. The acronym, satirizing Modi’s party BJP, engaged young Indians dissatisfied with the state of education and unemployment in the country. Initially boosted by Instagram, the mobilization gained traction in the streets and was violently repressed by security forces. Despite seeking repercussion, the young protesters refused coverage from mainstream press. “They didn’t want traditional media over there, since they knew their demands would be distorted. Newslaundry was well received, while mainstream TV stations were expelled,” said Pande.

She believes Indian youth are tired of the government’s monolithic discourse in the media and want a more pluralistic journalism. This confidence in new media outlets has allowed the site to survive solely on subscriptions, without any advertisements or state money at all. “We wanted to escape from advertisers. Everybody called us crazy – twelve years ago there was no tradition of paying for news. Fortunately, we managed to build a loyal subscriber base that supports our projects.”

“People are eager for their point of view to be challenged. And for me, if I can cut through all the ideological thinking and overcome polarization, helping people to see the facts more clearly, that is success,” Pande added.