An Awkward Silence

Massive layoffs at newspapers expose professional conditions that undermine the public sphere / Media

- Hartosh Singh Bal

The historian Mukul Kesavan’s column in The Telegraph on 12 February was titled “A Delicate Balance: The state of the fourth estate.” In it, Kesavan begins by saying that “Midway through Narendra Modi’s term in office … [a]s someone who writes opinion pieces, I can report that the papers I write for haven’t suddenly begun to censor me. No edit desk has returned a copy with sentences underlined in red because it has felt uneasy with the political implications of something I had written.” Then, he moves on to less rosy thoughts: “the intimidation of reporters and correspondents is more commonplace and easier to cite,” and “the NDA government and the prime minister and the BJP’s online army exert real and concerted pressure on liberal journalists.” Kesavan observes at one point, rightly, that it is “increasingly the case that journalists who don’t enjoy the institutional shelter that big newspapers supply, are constrained and unfree.”

Less than a fortnight earlier, the ABP Group, which owns The Telegraph and the Bengali-language Anandabazar Patrika, notified hundreds of staff at its papers that they were being laid off. This was preceded by a similar exercise at the Hindustan Times a month earlier, with four editions and three bureaus being shut down. Kesavan, in over 1,200 words of writing, does not find space for the slightest mention of any of this. If The Telegraph’s edit desk did not encourage such wilful and convenient blindness, Kesavan must have taken the initiative himself.