'Nothing Wrong In Rihanna Or Greta Talking About Protesting Farmers'

The Caravan’s Twitter handle was among more than 250 accounts suspended after the Republic Day violence at Red Fort in Delhi. The magazine’s executive editor Vinod K. Jose tells Jyotika Sood how the social media scene, journalists and the Indian government are panning out in India. Excerpts:

The current times are equated with the Emergency. Do you think the term is justified?

There may not be a formal declared Emergency in India. But certainly when journalists are targeted for doing their jobs, an impression is created that the space for free and fair journalism is fast reducing in India. Qualitative experiences such as The Caravan’s sits with the quantitative rankings  of The Economist Intelligence Unit, for example, where India’s rank slipped from 27 to 53 in six years, and the global press freedom ranks where India today is at 142, compared to a higher two-digit rank we were a decade ago.

The government used the genocide hashtag to move against 250 Twitter handles, including that of The Caravan. Did either the magazine or prominent personal ­handles associated with it use it?

We did not use it.

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Don’t you think there is a problem when social media turns into a battlefield where journalists engage in a gladiatorial ­fashion, when they come to occupy a ­continuum of dissent on one side along with activists, some of whom do use such hashtags?

On the first part of the question, I can’t ­answer without specific instances raised. If you are talking about highlighting a lie, a contradiction, then that’s part of journalism. As long as the journalist is factual and can back it up, why should she remain ­silent? The tension is bound to increase when people who do not believe in rule of law and freedom of press sit in positions of power. Does that mean the journalists should quit, and journalism should redefine itself as publishing what the government likes to see published?

Does anger have a role in journalism? Can you feed anger and participate in it—­especially if it’s to do with, say, a farmer’s death due to unverified causes? Where would you draw a line? How can one find balance when responding on social media? Does open exp­ression of dissent not harm and subvert your own cause of objective truth-telling?

Your question is too generic. If your question is did The Caravan do anything wrong journalistically when it ­published the death of farmer Navreet Singh, I can say none. Our journalists spoke to eye witnesses, asked police for response, spoke to family members, went to the hospital where the autopsy was done, showed the postmortem report to independent pathologists, and asked police questions again. Isn’t that how a journalist is supposed to take a story forward? And when you do that, if it raises questions that the government needs to answer, how is that a question of “anger,” or “open expression of dissent”?

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What do you make of this phenomenon of ‘global dissent’ or of celebrity activism…Rihanna, Greta Thunberg et al? And as a traditional journalist, what do you make of social media in general?

As a journalist, I welcome all open ­conversations. Firstly, that’s the right thing to do in a democracy. Secondly, as a ­journalist I’m glad it happens because it generates news, and larger public interest. If Rihanna or Greta Thunberg talks about the protesting farmers, I find nothing wrong in it. Didn’t we talk about George Floyd and Black Lives Matter? The problem started when the government of India started ­responding to it the same way how one ­political party spokesperson would respond in the afternoon to the rival party’s press conference that took place in the morning. We made ourselves look petty internationally when the MEA went out of its way with its press release for two tweets from two non-state actors, with its hashtags and so forth. Later the film stars and cricket ­players res­ponded with similar texts and hashtags, and it all looked like an act of desperation, a country that was shaken because it could not take some critical ­attention. Such ill-planned kneejerk behaviour will hurt India in the long term. We say we are a democracy all the time, but we can’t take the tweets of some global celebrities? Social media is like a village square, it has all kinds of people. I think it will ­continue to be the case. What might get fixed are bots that act like humans.

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