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A Mumbai based lawyer has moved the Supreme Court in response to the slew of FIRs fired against Arnab Goswami and Sudhir Chaudhary of Republic TV and Zee News respectively, for allegedly inciting violence and hatred between religious communities.
The petition states that these FIRs curb the media houses’ Right of Free Expression and are part of an ‘anti national’ conspiracy. The petition further goes on to say that the two channels in questions have been performing a national duty by bringing to attention the condemnable acts of the Tablighi Jamaat in spreading the coronavirus and calling out Congress party’s silence on the lynching of two Hindu saints in Palghar. The petitioner claimed that the channels were merely performing their ‘professional duty’ and they were being ‘targeted by vexatious and frivolous FIRs’.
The FIRs were filed after Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami linked the gathering of migrant laborers in Mumbai’s Dharavi to their religious identity by saying that there was a mosque nearby around which they gathered. It was later revealed that these claims were unfounded and the laborers were from all religious backgrounds and merely wanted to return to their native places as they were not able to sustain themselves.
It remains to be seen whether the court finds this petition maintainable and tenable but initial response to it has seen it being criticized on being ideologically motivated and retaliatory in nature.
The petitioner wants that such FIRs not be entertained unless they are sanctioned by the Press Council of India or by an appropriate authority as determined by the court. The objection in law, however, is that the FIRs are filed against individual people for their statements and not the media house as a whole.
Therefore, both Goswami and Chaudhary have agency in what they’re saying and there is no provision in law which requires FIRs against them to be vetted or supervise, they are, after all, individuals and have control over what they’re, hence they must bear the consequences as well.
Both the accused journalists have been criticized extensively from diverting discourse from issues of national concern like unemployment, poverty, farmer crises and the economy to politically and religiously charged issues which communalize, divide and erect walls between communities. Their primetime debates center around warmongering with Pakistan, Hindu – Muslim religiously charged issues, targeting the opposition or demonizing people who hold political views divergent from the establishment.
This issue brings to light an underlying but growing concern with discourse in the country, where even during a pandemic, when people need to come together to tackle a tremendous disease that we’re all plagued by, the media in the country choose to politicize every issue to the extent that communities turn against each other and the discourse shifts from tackling the pandemic to a partisan issue.
This incident also alludes to the larger question, that when media becomes defunct in a democracy, and becomes a tool of propaganda for the establishment, then is it the prerogative and the duty of our judicial system to institute certain checks and balances, which prevent these influential journalists from spreading hate speech and communalizing issues which turn communities against one another.
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