SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
A democracy can survive bad weather, bad policies and even bad governments. What it cannot survive for long is the absence of people willing to tell it the truth. That is the job of the journalist: to stand with the crowd, see what power would rather hide, and carry it back to the public. When that person is dragged away mid-sentence, the loss is not the journalist’s alone. It belongs to every citizen who was waiting to be told what happened.
What happened at Jantar Mantar
At the protest demanding the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation over irregularities in the SIR exercise, journalists found themselves part of the story. On September 25, at least two reporters said they had been forcibly detained and manhandled, one saying his microphone was snatched and broken. The Press Club of India said it was shocked that journalists wearing press IDs were detained, noting that one reporter was taken away while asking police why they weren’t wearing name tags.
A week later, on October 2, the pattern continued. Police detained and manhandled several journalists, particularly independent ones, and many videos showed reporters showing their press cards again and again and still being forced away. One journalist alleged that police were trying to detain independent reporters who had no ID cards. Delhi Police sources said that no permission was sought for the protest and that they denied manhandling journalists. Those denials deserve to be heard, and they deserve to be tested against the footage.
The complaints that followed
Then came the most serious allegations. Three women journalists alleged sexual harassment during the protests, and their complaints were transferred to the Crime Branch. Two days after one of them filed her complaint, no FIR had been registered. These allegations are under investigation and have not been proven. But the law is clear that when a complaint discloses a cognizable offence, police must register an FIR. Why did journalists have to gather and demand what the law already guarantees?
Delhi Police later issued guidelines asking reporters to carry valid ID at protests. The request sounds reasonable until one remembers who is most affected: the freelancer, the small digital reporter, the YouTuber with no employer to issue a card. In today’s media, many of the most fearless questions come from exactly these people. Press freedom cannot be a privilege of those with a corporate badge.
The silence of the loudest
Here the story turns inward, to journalism itself. The people who shout loudest on prime time every evening were, in many cases, strangely quiet. Debates about the detention of their own colleagues were rare. The anchors who find a national crisis in a film controversy or a celebrity spat could find little to say about reporters being pushed into police vans. This is an observation, not a charge against every channel or individual, and some outlets did cover it. But the contrast is hard to miss; an industry that talks endlessly about everything else went quiet about itself.
It is important to be fair here. The reporter on the ground is not the anchor in the studio. A Newslaundry report noted that reporters from mainstream channels were themselves heckled at Jantar Mantar in July and that people on the ground often pay the price for the editorial line set by owners, editors, and prime-time anchors. The squeeze is therefore double; some reporters face the crowd’s anger for the narratives their channels set, others face the baton of the state.
Why does the silence matter? Because solidarity is the press’s only real shield. A journalist beaten in the street is protected by the knowledge that thousands of colleagues will say loudly that this is wrong. When the biggest platforms stay silent, power learns that the price of attacking the press is low. The independent reporters who stood around their detained colleague and forced police to release him, as one journalist described, were doing what newsrooms should have done together.
What journalism owes, and what it is owed
Journalism is not a favour to the powerful, and it is not a fan club. Its duties are plain: verify, be fair, report an individual’s act as an individual’s act, not as a community’s, and give space to people who cannot buy attention. Those duties are the source of its authority. Yet the state, too, owes something: a space where a reporter can ask a question without being dragged away and a prompt, fair investigation when she says she was harmed.
A free press is not only about big newsrooms. It includes the young woman with a phone camera, the local reporter with a borrowed microphone, and the small outlet without a legal team. They deserve the same protection, because their questions often reach where television cameras don’t.
The added risk women face
Journalists of every gender were pushed, dragged and detained at Jantar Mantar, and the principle that protects one protects all. But women reporters faced an additional danger. With their complaint of sexual harassment by police personnel, the three women journalists raise a serious question: can a woman do her job in the field and expect to be heard when she says she was harmed?
A woman reporter carries every risk her male colleague does, plus the risk of harassment, plus the burden of not being believed. Many choose silence instead of a complaint, because filing one is itself a professional risk. A press that cannot protect its women reporters cannot credibly speak for the women in the stories it covers. Their safety in the field is not a side issue to press freedom; it is a test of it.
The question we must keep asking
So, is a reporter dragged away despite showing a press card a sign of a free press? And is it enough that a few journalists speak up, while the biggest voices look away? Journalism’s importance has never been in doubt. What is in doubt is whether we will defend it when it is inconvenient. Whether the reporter detained is a man or a woman, a staff correspondent or an independent journalist, the principle is the same. A press card is a public identification of someone working on behalf of the public, and it deserves respect from the state and solidarity from colleagues.
The next time a journalist is detained, the question should not be “Which channel is he or she from?” but “Why was this person stopped?”
SOURCE : SIASAT
