this is
heartening
that
at very shortly which the press club
was able to take this initiative pull
together
other media bodies
and
hold a meeting which
has grown on you here
if i have any anyone any uh issued
phrase it is that
we refer to this as a creeping
infringement
uh i think the time of
keeping incidents has long passed
we are today in the midst of
a full-blown attack on media freedom and
using
these words with a great sense of
responsibility
and we are i regret to say still some
distance away
from
the peak of the high water mark of this
offensive
so there will be more
not just attacks
on individual journalists
and media platforms
but there will be
attempts to create new laws new rules
and
resort to
gross violations of legal procedure
will
only escalate and we've seen all of
these in the
most recent case of
what i believe is the illegal arrest
enhancement
of our colleague
the case against aware in many ways
captures the essence of all that is
wrong with this government's approach
to media
zubair is part of one news
founding founding editor a founder
and orc news
performs
one of the most vital
and crucial tasks of journalism today
which is that factory
fact trekking is an integral part of
responsible journalism
and it's precisely because large
sections of the media have abdicated
that responsibility
and
allowed the free flow of misinformation
and false news
that
pratik sinha and roman zubair and their
wonderful
media platform came into existence
so you had
in the run-up to the 2014 election
the
manufacturing of
fake news on a larger and larger scale
escalating to industrial scale
coupled with
the full-fledged weaponization of social
media as
a transmission built for
the production of the state views and
this needed to be countered and
countered in real time quickly
and it is precisely that task that
all news and others whose life
perform
and i don't think i'll be exaggerating
if i say that those of us who
work for different news platforms or
those of us who are freelance
who are editors
it's a it's a daily habit to check
what on news
is has put out whenever i receive
anything
slightly alarming or dodgy on whatsapp
i instantly forwarded it
and say you may want to look at this
because i know that they have a team
that will responsibly
add in an efficient manner
be able to
shed some light
so fact checkers are an integral part of
journalism man
the reason why
fact-checking is
a vulnerable profession in india
and the reason why muhammad should bear
an old views and practice
also
is very much in the crosshairs
of
this
entire campaign against against afraid
the reason they have been targeted is
because
all news's consistent debunking of
false lies and malicious propaganda has
become a major roadblock
in the government's attempts and i'm not
missing any words here we are talking
about government
we're talking about the ruling party
org news has become an obstacle in
their attempts to manipulate public
opinion
and
the road to that lies in
confounding and misleading and
misguiding
people
views and information
and of course as a priority
first undermining through slander
defamation trolling targeting
and then
attempting to
shut up possibly those who will
oppose you in your spreading of this
information
so there is a reason
why
zubair has been
picked and another reason which i think
we should squarely say is the fact that
he's muslim there is a pattern
in this government's targeting of
journalists who happened to be muslim it
was not happenstance
that of all the people who
tweeted that about that incident of the
old the elderly gentleman whose beard
was pulled last year
thousands of people maybe many of his
room tweeted
but
all the people who are implicated
so there is a method in this mattress
journalists are going to attack muslims
are
especially under attack and if you're
these are the ugly realities of
the life that we are leading right now
and where this country's heading
i want to say that the
manner in which
the particular charges against
uh mormons would bear and i want to just
spend two minutes on this i know that
what mr neiner said is
the primary takeaway is that we have to
leave this meeting with which is that we
have to face up to these attacks in the
united fashion
we have to be smart like to plan
and i think having the legal fund having
a team of boys that we can turn to and
maybe
debating and decorating other ways of
being proactive in this fight these are
all things that we
have to do
we will leave this meeting with but i
think
i want to underline
the
complete illegality in the case against
government because under the crpc
a three-year-old
so-called crime
which carries
a sentence of three years or less is
barred by the statute of limitations
from
which you cannot be proceeded against
so the very charge that was filed
pertaining to a 2018 fee should never
have been entertained
by the duty magistrate or
another
and
it's really because the police and
the government realized that
153 a and 295 are not going to take you
very far
as it is the tweet clearly suggests that
those charges are not made up
without even going into
how old these channels are
and that's precisely why this entire
nonsense of an fcrds has been fabricated
out of thin air
and what is truly shocking
is the manner in which the
police officer who heads the department
investigating
bombers there
pronounced
the verdict on the very trade
application
to the media and was transmitted for a
couple of hours
until somebody pointed out that
maybe you shouldn't have said that
and then he came up with this ridiculous
explanation
that i was talking to the i o
and mr what he said i want to know what
combination of words was used by either
the dcp and his i o or his i o
to produce the kind of statement that
the dcp
subsequently gave with the media that
not only is real denied but 14 days
initial custody
and
why is this not a bigger issue
in the media why is this not a bigger
issue
in
the higher judiciary here you have
an open attempt
to subverts upon
the process of justice delivery
somebody
in a position of authority and certainly
the media of course needs to ask delhi
police
did you have any contact with the judge
who told you about this
are you willing just like the ones who
bear his phone is the dcp believed to
have his full exam
to see what time and who called him
around the time that he made this
statement maybe a lot would emerge out
of this kind of investigation
so we are dealing with a situation where
the recklessness
and brazenness of those in authority has
reached new levels
and as i said this is going to escalate
we found in our investigation into the
network that the complaint against
demand
originates from an activist of the
bharti delta yugabocha and the whole
network that they run through tech form
and
we wrote earlier about how tech fog is
used to harass and
target
other journalists and critics so we're
dealing with an entire
ecosystem of
herring
targeting
and silence in the media that doesn't
work here
and obama dubai is
the most egregious and of course latest
example of this but there were been
others before
fires have been filed during covert
against freedom freelance reporters are
especially vulnerable
but all kinds of cases will be fired in
different states
uh against reporters and more will be
so i think that uh it is really really
crucial and essential that
journalists remain
united and
as mr ryan said we
you know not allow whatever differences
whatever commercial priorities there may
be
to stand in the way of an attack of the
sky because
this attack
if it is allowed to stand
will tomorrow be replicated against
any journalist anywhere any editor any
media platform
where false charges are controlled out
of thin air when the charges that they
initially level don't stick
and
the judiciary appears to be happy to go
along with this
so we need to speak loudly and clearly
that we will not
uh
you know
sit by and allow this to happen
so
being united and being proactive
are absolutely essential because that's
the only way that you can fight
this this offense thank you very much
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