How Modi Controls the Mass Media and its Narrative

The Wire

06-08-2025

Government
From pushing the government line, the mainstream media has moved to activism against the opposition parties.
Adi Shankara had propounded two levels of truth – truth as seen by the common man and what those who realised brahman perceive. The first is ephemeral and the second, eternal.
But in Narendra Modi's India, we have three levels of truth. The first is what the obedient mass media presents, which becomes the public narrative. The second is the counter-points presented by the alternative media, mostly on web portals and YouTube and other social media platforms.
And the third is the ultimate truth or what actually happened.
When unfulfilled promises accumulate, totalitarian regimes routinely block free flow of information at the source. They fudge data to prevent adverse remarks by statutory institutions and find ways to silence independent think tanks.
In India, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Greenpeace India, Oxfam and Amnesty International have had their access to foreign funds blocked and have faced raids. On the other hand, pro-establishment thinks tanks have been given government assignments.
The print media has been the worst victim of the content control and armtwisting. Its working dynamics, with heavy investment and cost of production, make it vulnerable to pressures and intimidation. At the same time, the print media's very survival depends on the trust it builds with the readers. It cannot get away with irresponsible behaviour like television channels can. Newspapers are under pressure to maintain a balance between complying with the official line and trying to appear free and fair. So, while television channels were quick to fall in line with the new information control system, the mainstream print media took longer.
Going by political reporters, the PMO sends all of Modi's speeches to journalists, who use these as the basic material for their reports. A set of headlines are also provided with important stories, from which they can choose the intro. These are reproduced without any negative remarks.
When this writer began political reporting in the 1970s, we were repeatedly reminded that such political stories should be accompanied with the right contextualisation. Often, we carried responses from the other side, together with implications and relevant background, to make it a balanced presentation. Now all this has been done away with.
In the past two years, there has been a change for the worse. The mainstream media is now proactively aggressive towards the Opposition. They dig out every available issue, often trivial, to project the regime's rivals as a divided, ever-quarreling crowd incapable of providing a viable alternative to Modi.
Look at the persistent reports of sharp differences within the India bloc on the issue of leadership. Kanhaiya Kumar has had to state more than once that his party had no problem with the leadership of Tejashwi Yadav in Bihar. Sections of the media came out with big stories saying that a divided Opposition had failed to corner the government on Operation Sindoor in Parliament. Another report got reactions from various Opposition parties to gleefully cite how 'divided' the India bloc was. However, Parliament's monsoon session showed how erroneous the report was. The ' leadership tussles ' of the India bloc have long been a favourite theme for the mainstream media.
In the normal course, there is nothing exceptionable in such media projections. But the problem arises when it is selectively applied to the Opposition under pressure from the bosses. Can you find such critical stories about differences within the ruling party unless the tussles play out in the open?
Whenever Opposition leaders comment on the ruling party's policies, the newspaper reports include a formal reaction from the latter, preferably in the second para. Some even lead with the ruling party's denial, dumping the original accusations in a couple of sentences at the bottom. Not surprisingly, the statements of the BJP bosses are standalone, often on the front page and not below the fold. The other practice has been to push the Opposition's statements into the inside pages and below the fold, preferably in a single column — unless they generate a damaging controversy.
The tug of war between partisan presentation of news and reader pressure for free and fair facts has left the mainstream media in a deep survival crisis. They are resorting to several subtle strategies to bridge the credibility-compliance gap. An example is the paywalled special stories, many of them more critical of the regime, which largely go unnoticed. Critical stories are often deliberately kept for the online pool so that they escape the much-dreaded blue pencil even while sending the right message to the readers who care. Such initiatives though are denting the 'complete' newspaper claim. The latest trend is to sensitize the Delhi editions to the Modi government and allow the regional editions to adjust to the requirements of local politics.
We also have the worst kind of media activism. The editor-in-chief of Adani-owned NDTV was alleged to have asked the channel's then Mumbai bureau chief to 'disrupt and create a ruckus' at Rahul Gandhi's press conference at a hotel. Another channel conducted a quick survey to prove that 88 per cent of the people supported the Prime Minister on Operation Sindoor. It also reported that 87 per cent had a poor opinion of Rahul Gandhi's 'Narender-Surrender' remarks.
Narendra Modi, like other spin dictators, has always had a mistrust of the free media. Two years ago, India amended the Information Technology Rules to tighten its control over news, the amendments allowing it to order intermediaries like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube to take down any content that the government decided was fake.
Intimidation of the media happens at two levels — threatening the owners with cases of financial irregularities and punishing individual journalists for their 'defiance'.
The mainstream print media, largely owned by business houses who can be harassed with income tax notices and ED threats, is always a vulnerable target. Few details have come out of such intimidation because the owners don't want bad publicity. So, the information we have is from foreign media and international agencies.
Two years ago, the BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai were raided and phones, laptops and other communication equipment were seized. This was after it broadcast a two-part documentary on Modi, covering the 2002 Gujarat riots as well as his relationship with the minorities as Prime Minister. Some 20 officers trooped into the office and shouted at the staff to step away. The government agencies alleged that BBC had failed to respond to requests to clarify its tax details and remittances abroad.
The Time magazine wrote that think tanks, journalists, and civil society members were being targeted as ' part of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's growing crackdown on dissent '. It spoke of critics being charged under opaque terrorism and sedition laws, and allegations of financial misconduct and improper foreign funding being used to freeze bank accounts. The report mentioned Oxfam, the Media Foundation and the CPR.
At the same time, several Indian media organisations were also subjected to intimidation. The Quint, Dainik Bhaskar and Bharat Samachar were raided by income-tax authorities, NewsClick by the Enforcement Directorate, NDTV (before the Adani take-over) by the CBI, and Greater Kashmir by the NIA. NewsClick, an independent portal, was charged with money laundering and accepting foreign funds.
At the second level, many journalists who criticised the regime were arrested and some even charged with sedition. Shashi Tharoor, before he became a Modi fan, had spoken of his own experience when he and six journalists faced criminal charges on the grounds of 'misreporting' the facts about a protester's death. He referred to the Caravan case and pointed out that in 2020, 67 journalists were arrested and 200 were physically attacked.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said there were a record seven journalists in jail at the same time, including Gautam Navlakha, Prabir Purkayastha, and Asif Sultan. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for the withdrawal of charges against journalists and for their release. Navlakha is out on bail but cannot return to his hometown Delhi, Purkayastha was freed on the Supreme Court's intervention after seven months, and Asif Sultan walked out of jail last year after five and a half years behind bars.
P. Raman is a veteran journalist and political commentator.
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