In its series of reports, Dainik Bhaskar carried a critical look at official claims during the pandemic as raging infections left people desperate for oxygen, hospital beds and vaccine.
The reports also exposed the grisly sight of bodies of Covid victims floating in the river Ganga and washing up on the banks of towns in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, possibly discarded because of the lack of means to cremate them. The reports also revealed bodies buried in shallow graves by the river in UP.
The New York Times had published Dainik Bhaskar editor Om Gaur's op-ed on Covid deaths in India, titled: "The Ganges Is Returning the Dead. It Does Not Lie." The opinion piece was extremely critical of the government's handling of the coronavirus peak. The holiest of India's rivers "became Exhibit A for the Modi administration's failures and deceptions", he wrote.
Recently, Dainik Bhaskar also carried the Pegasus spyware report released last week, by seventeen media organizations led by the Paris based group Forbidden Stories.
Taxmen searched 35 locations of Dainik Bhaskar in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra. The homes and offices of the group's promoters were also raided. A senior editor of Dainik Bhaskar told media that raids were on at the group's Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bhopal and Indore offices.
An Uttar Pradesh television channel, Bharat Samachar, was also raided. An Income Tax team searched the Lucknow office and also the editor's home to examine tax documents. The channel has been critical of Yogi govt.
In just over seven years years under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration, India's place in the World Press Freedom Index has been dropped year after year. Journalists in India have been beaten, arrested, and forced to resign for trying to report news about the government or other contentious issues.
Today's media is under either grave threat, or manipulations. It is not only crawling but is happily licking the 'boots' of the present regime and wagging their tails to appease their 'masters' by overzealous publicizing government's narratives." a journalist wrote sometime back. "Not only owners but most of the journalists have towed the line, either as a survival, a instinct or willingly. And that is the beginning of the end of journalism which used to be in India and which ought to be in India," he added.
As a pressure tactic, Modi govt cuts off state advertising for newspapers and other media houses for being critical of the govt. The advertisement freeze is done to counter the news reports criticizing the lawmaking body. "We're at a point where officials aren't even trying to hide the fact that they're manipulating the the freedom of the press", said Foreign Policy.
Its a bitter truth that newspaper houses are surviving by staying in the good graces of govt. And as such media has been called as "Godi media". Its darkness everywhere but truth is democracy dies in darkness.
(Chander Sharma)
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