New Delhi: The global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders downgraded India by three notches down in the World Press Freedom Index 2017 citing “threat from Modi’s nationalism”.
Amongst a list of 180 countries India currently stands at 136, down from a position of 133 it held last year. Mapped by Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) India was colour-coded red which marks a situation as “difficult”, reports The Telegraph.
With India’s “red” mark the entire sub-continent is marked red now, except for Nepal which is just one shade better positioned with “noticeable problem”. The worst ranked among the lot is China with “all black” lying at the bottom which denotes the media there is in a “very serious situation”.
“With Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of ‘anti-national’ thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media,” the report says.
“Prosecutions are also used to gag journalists overly critical of the government, with some prosecutors invoking Section 124A of the (Indian) penal code, under which ‘sedition’ is punishable by life imprisonment. No journalist has so far been convicted of sedition but the threat encourages self-censorship.”
Interestingly, global lookout also looked depressing. “Media freedom has never been so threatened,” it notes, adding,”In the past year, nearly two-thirds (62.2 percent) of the countries measured have registered a deterioration in their situation, while the number of countries where the media freedom situation was ‘good’ or ‘fairly good’ fell by 2.3 percent.”