{"id":4138,"date":"2019-04-08T18:55:17","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T13:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4138"},"modified":"2019-04-08T18:55:21","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T13:25:21","slug":"kashmir-stand-for-freedom-of-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/kashmir-stand-for-freedom-of-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Kashmir: Stand For Freedom Of Press"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

PUNCHLINE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kashmir: Freedom Of Press\nImperilled <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Z. G. Muhammad <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The\nliberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state. Every\nfreeman has an undoubted right to lay what he pleases before the public: to\nforbid this is to destroy the freedom of the press.\u2019 – \u2018Free speech must be\nkept free even in wartime, even when passions are high because that is when the people need to hear both sides of the\nargument, not just what the government wishes to tell them.\u2019 These lines\nwritten at two different times, in eighteen and early twentieth centuries came\nto my mind on reading a front-page editorial\ntitled \u2018stop state squeeze\u2019 published in this newspaper on Friday. The starting\nquoted lines are from the writings by William Blackstone English jurist, judge\nand Tory politician and later ones are\nfrom an essay by Zechariah Chafee, a Harvard law professor and author of the famed book \u2018Free Speech in the United States\u2019.\n Newspapers ordinarily do not publish\neditorials on front pages; these occur\nwhen a subject or development is considered\nmore significant than a routine matter- and calls a public debate at great\nlength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encapsulating,\nhow the newspapers and journalists during most trying times have endeavoured\nhard to live up to the noble objective of\nconsolidating the \u2018fourth estate\u2019, one of the pillars of democracy, the\neditorial draws our attention towards the perils the institution of journalism\nin itself is confronted with in the\nstate. In a state like Jammu and Kashmir more\nparticularly in Kashmir valley where there is hardly a corporate or big\nbusiness house media spending, it is the government business in the form advertisements\nthat provide economic support to the newspapers. Nonetheless, it is two-way traffic in as much as; if on one side advertisement gives business\nto the papers on the other it enables the\ngovernment to fulfil its administrative, legal and constitutional obligations of sharing the government information\nwith the general masses. The funds provided under the head in the state budget is the taxpayer’s money and not some individual\u2019s\nkitty. It is meant for buying space in the papers for widely publicising tender and recruitment notices,\npromoting, propagating development schemes and carrying out public awareness\ncampaigns, and not intended for promoting an individual or political party in\npower. The whole objective behind giving full\npublicity to tender, recruitment notices\nand developmental projects is to bring\ntransparency and accountability in the working of the government.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the third week of February,\nthe government stopped advertisements to two\nleading English dailies, Greater Kashmir and Kashmir Reader. The Greater\nKashmir publishes from both the summer\nand winter capitals of the state; it is the\nlargest circulated newspapers in the state and over two and half million visits every day the online edition of the paper. So far the government has not assigned\nany reason for stopping the advertisements to the paper; it has not even responded to the concerns raised by the\nKashmir Editors Guild (KEG) against the arbitrary action. Instead, the\nDepartment of Information has stopped sending advertisements to Daily Kashmir Uzma,\na leader Urdu paper and sister publication of Greater Kashmir. So far the\ngovernment has not assigned any reason for subjectively as well as capriciously\ndiscriminating the paper by denying the\nads about public information to it. In stopping the paper publicising the government\nbusiness, those in top echelons have been denying needed  info related\nto the government to hundreds of thousands of people in the state- it can be said without fear of contradiction these\nnewspapers are the only significant\nsource of information about the government business in the remotest parts of\nthe state. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The editorial\nhad rightly pointed out that the newspapers as an alert watchdog had\nobjectively upheld the cause of democracy, emerged as a champion for strengthening the justice\nsystem and human rights. Moreover by not toeing the line of any party and pointing\nout fault lines in the policies of the government in most grim situations it\nhas nothing to remorse about, as we saw some journalist distressed later on\nover their role in having contributed to the Emergency in India in 1975. About\nthe role of his newspaper Blitz in the\nimposition of the Emergency in India, the doyen\nof Indian journalism R.K. Karanjia in an\ninterview in 1978 told a journalist, \u201cWe of Blitz suffer from a guilt complex\nabout Sanjay Gandhi. If only we had exposed the Maruti racket and evolution of\nSanjay into a terror he became, we could have stopped this ugly development. We\nhad all the material with us. If you look\ninto files of Blitz, we did raise the issue of Maruti a couple of times, but we\nallowed ourselves to be silenced by the\npersuasive rejoinders sent to us by\nSanjay.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nappraising the policies of the governments in\noffice honestly and bring out harsher realities about the functioning of the\ninstitutions of the governance to the fore the journalists mostly help in strengthening peoples belief in\ndemocracy. Founder editor of monthly Seminar Romesh Thapar whose journal during\nEmergency had to close down for six months rightly observes, \u201cI believe that as\na journalists it is your duty to play a\ncertain role. Otherwise, you should not\nbe a journalist. You can be a businessman\nor a politician\u201d Had not in 1975, an important\nsection of journalist crawled, Indian democracy would not have got the ugly\nblot of the Emergency on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

True, Jammu and Kashmir was not officially brought under the Emergency. Nonetheless, ripple effects were felt in banning the Jammat-e-Islamia Jammu\nand Kashmir and some odd press bill.   Forty-two\nyears after the 21, month-long emergency\nsome of the ugly legacies of this nightmarish period still exits, and one of them is\nusing the government advertisements as weapons for making the press to crawl on the dotted lines. R.   Madhavan Nair, infirm but indefatigable Editor\nof The Tribune during Emergency in an article\nwrote, \u201cIn Chandigarh, the Tribune paid its price in the shape of a denial of\ngovernment advertisements and other kinds of harassments, including change of\neditor in favour of one more pliable from government\u2019s point of view.\nRegardless, the trustees provided me with\none year\u2019s extension when my retirement was due. But, I had the pleasure of\nseeing my tormentors ousted from power before I retired.\u201d Similar views about\nthe government using advertisement for\nchoking the freedom of expression during the Emergency were expressed by many important editors of the seventies including\nC. R. Irani then editor of the Statesman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such policies towards the press in the past have not\nprovided any dividends to the State; instead, these have proved counter-productive.\nLet me reiterate what I said at the start of this column \u2018freedom of the press is the main edifice for a democratic\nsociety. Let us uphold it.\u2019  <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PUNCHLINE<\/p>\n

Kashmir: Freedom Of Press
\nImperilled <\/p>\n

By <\/p>\n

Z. G. Muhammad <\/p>\n

Author<\/p>\n

\u2018The
\nliberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state. Every
\nfreeman has an undoubted right to lay what he pleases before the public: to
\nforbid this is to destroy the freedom of the press.\u2019 – \u2018Free speech must be
\nkept free even in wartime, even when passions are high because that is when the people need to hear both sides of the
\nargument, not just what the government wishes to tell them.\u2019 These lines
\nwritten at two different times, in eighteen and early twentieth centuries came
\nto my mind on reading a front-page editorial
\ntitled \u2018stop state squeeze\u2019 published in this newspaper on Friday. The starting
\nquoted lines are from the writings by William Blackstone English jurist, judge
\nand Tory politician and later ones are
\nfrom an essay by Zechariah Chafee, a Harvard law professor and author of the famed book \u2018Free Speech in the United States\u2019.
\n Newspapers …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-take","category-point-of-view"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4139,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions\/4139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}