7 Press organisations held meeting at Press Club of India against ” Creeping infringement of media freedom and assault in personel liberty of journalists

Seven media organisations today held a protest meeting at Press Club of India against creeping infringement of media freedom and attack on personel liberty of journalists.

The meeting was attended by good number of main stream journalists with senior journalists former editor of Business standard T. N. Ninan, editor of The Wire Mr. Vardharajan, president of Delhi Union of Journalists S. K. Pandey, Sandeep Shankar, president of Working News Cameramen Association Sandeep Shankar, president of Press Association of India Jai Shakar Gupt and Press Council of India Umakant Lakhera addressing it.

All the speakers in one voice urged the journalist fraternity to unite despite differences and strongly oppose the ill conceived designs and dictatorial attitude of the government to pre strategically crush the media freedom, independence of free speech and constitutional democratic rights of the fourth estate and creating an environment of terror, arbitrarily framing some journalists under false and fictitious charges and putting them behind bars. They said thag their is an undeclared emergency in the country and people and a, section of journalists n people are being radicalised than deliberating on serious and burning issues of inflation, economic issues, improving the lot if the people etc.

Majority of the speakers demanded crowd funding to generate financial support to arrange panel of lawyers to be deputed for fighting cases in courts in support of journalists arbitrarily arrested on fake and fictitious charges as the trend is going on presently.

An urgent need was also felt to organise media fraternity to the fullest strength and hold a massive protest demonstration at a pan India level to solidly raise the journalists’ voice against the ongoing repression and attitude of the government to stifle the voice of journalists and freedom of speech and writing.

The media organisations who’d convened the meeting were – Press Club of India, Editors Guild of India, India Women’s Press Corps, Press Association, Delhi Union of Journalists, Digipub news of India Foundation, and Working News Cameramen Association.

A resolution was also passed with a voice vote read by the secretary general Vinay Kumar with all the journalists present in the meeting raising their hands in unison expressing their solidarity with the cause.

The resolution said that there have been a series of discerning events relating to the journalistic profession and the freedom to practice journalism in a free and safe atmosphere. The plethora of FIRS against many of the journalists in the recent past and ED raids in media offices sends an ominous signal to the future of the profession as a whole. The memorandum says that the recent arrest of the ALT news co-founder for cognizable offences is a case in point, who had been at the forefront to expose fake news of all varieties. It reminded the government of its commitment at the G 7 summit to protect the freedom of thought, conscience, religion n belief and of interfaith dialogue but not adhering to it’s commitment saying futher that it is this principle, that has been spelt out in our Constitution and needs to be upheld and protected at all costs. The memorandum also urged the government to restore access of coverage of government events to the media as before in the interest of robust democracy as well as expressing their concern at Kashmiri journalists being systematically stopped flying out of the country giving the latest instance of Pultizer Prize recipient Sana Matoo becoming the victim.

In his hard hitting speech – The Wire’s founding editor Sidharth Varadarajan accused the government agencies for arbitrarily arresting the journalist of Alt news saying that despite fact finding being the integral part of transparent journalism those who are exposing the fake news are being put behind bars. Since the ALT news had become the greatest obstacle in the way of the spreaders of fake news n information , the genuine journalists are being targetted – especially of a particular community. Vardarajan added that the media freedon, impartial and fearless journalism and journalists are today facing a full blown attack and new laws would be brought to curtail the media freedom in the near future. We should come forward to counter these dictatorial attempts strongly and decisively said The Print’s editor.

The former editor of Business Standard T. N. Ninan has urged journalists at the pan India level to unite and arrange crowd funding to fight the case of journalists arrested on false and fictitious grounds. He also urged to form a panel of like minded advocates to ensure that the journalists in distress wanting adequate legal aids are helped at the time of need.

The Press Club of India president Umakant Lakhera while strongly condemning the ongoing attack of press freedom and arbitrary arrests of journalists said that all journalists should unite forthwith as today our friends are under governmental repression tomorrow it can be your turn. This is the time to unite and fight for our genuine rights said Lakhera.

The IWPC president Shobhna Jain also extended her full support and solidarity to the cause and said that even their premises are facing the notice to vacate it despite our request to extend its lease. She also urged that the need of the hour is to unite and fight decisively for the journalists rights and press freedom currently at stake. The protest meeting was ably moderated by veteran journalist and president PCI Umakant Lakhera.