International Federation of Journalists

South Asia Media Solidarity Network

Kathmandu 3-5 August 2012

In Defence of Press Freedom in South Asia: Journalists Organise for a New Deal
Physical safety has justifiably gained attention as a necessity for press freedom in a region which has proven among the most hazardous for journalism. And experiences over the year underlined SAMSNs belief that security of employment and the assurance of decent wages and working conditions the all too often neglected dimensions of press freedom are also of extreme urgency in the South Asian context. A number of journalists struggles for fair wages and decent working conditions are currently underway in the region. Most recently, Bangladeshs journalists forged a common platform, the Sangbadik Shramik Karmachari Oikya Parishad (SSKOP, or United Committee of Working Journalists and Newspaper Employees) and organised in early March to demand the formal notification of a new wage fixation body by March 10. This followed the failure of Bangladeshs Ministry for Information to formally constitute the Eighth Wage Board for the newspaper industry through gazette by the end of February, despite an assurance given by Information Minister Abul Kalam Azad to the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists (BFUJ) on January 22. Within days of Bangladeshs journalists resolving to press their demand for a new wage deal, the Newspaper Owners Association of Bangladesh (NOAB) mobilised in opposition. "Forming a new wage board three and a half years after the seventh wage board award will put the newspaper industry into a big crisis," NOAB said in a statement issued on March 19. The SSKOP responded within a day with the suggestion that the newspaper owners, rather than resist the formation of a body mandated by law, should adopt a strategy of cooperation in a spirit of transparency and openness. Seven wage boards have been formed so far under a law adopted by Bangladeshs Parliament in 1974. The newspaper industry has resisted each of these and only complied with the statutory wage awards after losing legal battles that have reached the countrys highest courts. The record of compliance remains patchy and uneven, with several of the new media outlets that began operations in recent boom years choosing to ignore the imperative of decent wages. The Eighth Wage Board was announced by the Government of Bangladesh after representations from the countrys journalists about increasing costs of living and growing job insecurity. A chair has been nominated for the board and the various stakeholders from the side of news industry employees, including both sides of the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists (BFUJ), have named their representatives for the board. Yet the formal notification remains to be issued and the news industry owners continue to resist. The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), a SAMSN partner and IFJ affiliate, recently won a significant victory when the Supreme Court of Pakistan directed the body charged with implementation of statutory wage scales, to submit a report on the level of compliance in the news industry within a month. The decision was handed down by a three-member bench of the court, headed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan, on March 22. At the urging of the PFUJ, the bench summoned the chairperson of the Implementation Tribunal for Newspaper Employees (ITNE), Nasir Hussain Haidri, to explain the situation.

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South Asia Media Solidarity Network

Kathmandu 3-5 August 2012

Pakistans journalists have gained from the active interest of the countrys higher judiciary. On May 31 last year, the Sindh High Court in Karachi, dismissed identical petitions filed by the All Pakistan Newspaper Society (APNS) the apex body representing the industry and the Herald Media group, which sought to quash the Seventh Wage Award for journalists and newspaper workers, announced in 2000. In welcoming this decision, SAMSN and the IFJ had called on the newspaper industry to accept the judicial ruling in good faith and implement the long-delayed wage award. The South Asian collectivity also endorsed the PFUJ demand that the Eighth Wage Board be constituted without further delay. The matter though, went in appeal to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which declined to issue any form of temporary restraint against the implementation of the Seventh Wage Award. At a hearing of the case in July 2011, Pakistans Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhary wondered out loud why the seths (or newspaper owners) were not implementing the award. Workers, he said, are part and parcel of any industry, almost like its backbone. In October 2011, the Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld the constitutional validity of the Newspaper Employees (Condition of Service) Act of 1973 under which the Seventh Wage Award was determined. In a 75-page judgment written by the Chief Justice, the Court held that the Seventh Wage Board Award dated October 25, 2001, shall hold the field until it is modified or varied by a later decision of the board published in the manner provided in section 11(2) of the Act. It is learnt that since then, a number of newspaper groups have begun implementing the Seventh Wage Award. The decade that has been lost to litigation of course, cannot be regained. And Pakistans journalists believe that an Eighth Wage Board has long since fallen due, to be set up with a time-bound mandate and the prior understanding that no further litigative delays will be permitted. Nepals journalists gained significant recognition with the major amendments to the Working Journalists Act (WJA) that were enacted in 2007. The law as amended has important provisions on security of employment and periodic wage revisions for media workers. A basic minimum wage can be specified under the act, subject to periodic revision. The law also makes it mandatory that working journalists be issued letters of appointment by all media establishments, assuring them of security of tenure. Short-term contractual employment would be permitted when circumstances warrant, but would not under any circumstances, exceed 15 percent of the total number of working journalists in the news organisation. A committee formed under the WJA pointed out in a report submitted November 24, 2010, that 37 percent of the countrys journalists are paid below the prescribed minimum wage, while 45 percent are working without letters of appointment. Among the media houses surveyed, 48 percent had failed to introduce basic measures such as retirement and welfare funds, medical cover and insurance. Among the media groups reported by the FNJ to be in default on basic obligations under the WJA is the government-owned Gorkhapatra. Though statutory wage levels are formally notified within this group, which publishes the Nepali language Gorkhapatra and the English-language Rising Nepal, a large number of working journalists well beyond the 15 percent limit sanctioned under the WJA are believed to be employed on contract. SAMSN partner and IFJ-affiliate, the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court of Nepal on January 26, seeking a direction to government to fully implement the provisions of the WJA in state-owned media organisations.

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International Federation of Journalists

South Asia Media Solidarity Network

Kathmandu 3-5 August 2012

The FNJ petition highlighted that state-owned media enterprises in Nepal have been conspicuous defaulters on their obligations under the law. The media organisations named in the FNJ petition are the broadcasters Radio Nepal and Nepal Television, the newspaper publisher Gorkhapatra Corporation, the news agency Rastriya Samachar Samiti, and the Office of the Press Registrar. No fewer than 45 percent of the journalists working in government owned media houses and 37 percent of the entire community of journalists in Nepal still do not enjoy the minimum salary fixed by a duly empowered committee. Only 14 percent of Nepali journalists have been receiving regular salaries. In India, where the process of wage fixation through statutory bodies began as far back as 1958, the status of the most recent wage award remains ambiguous. On October 25 last year, Indias Union Cabinet formally approved the recommendations of the G.R. Majithia Wage Boards for Journalists and Non-Journalists, which laid the ground for an all-round increase in wages for newspaper workers. Indias newspaper industry, both individually and collectively through the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) filed a petition before the Supreme Court of India, claiming an infringement of their fundamental rights in the statutory wage fixation process. It emerged at the first hearing of the petition in May 2011, that the administrative ministry of the Union Government dealing with the matter, had not provided copies of the report, submitted in December 2010, to the INS. In July 2011, the Supreme Court declined to order a stay on the implementation of the wage award, preparing the ground for its formal acceptance by the Union Cabinet. The record of implementation though, remains indifferent so far, with only two newspaper groups Assam Tribune in the northeastern Indian state of Assam and Madhyamam in the southern state of Kerala having done so. The Assam Tribune group has had a tradition of maintaining an open and cooperative relationship between management and unions. The state government in Assam has also been proactive in ensuring that newspaper managements remain accountable in terms of their statutory obligations. In September 2010, the Assam state government constituted two joint inspection teams to survey the newspaper industry in the state and assess the level of compliance with the wage board stipulations. Each team comprised representatives of the larger newspapers, those belonging to the small and medium category, the government, as also the main journalists unions in the state the Journalists Union of Assam, the Assam Union of Working Journalists, the Assam Tribune Employees Union, among others. All newspapers were given a date when they would be visited by the inspection teams and told to keep relevant records ready. Following a comprehensive process of inspection and assessment, the two teams concluded early in 2011, that barring two the Assam Tribune and Prantik no other newspaper had implemented the wage scales proposed by the R.K. Manisana Singh wage board as far back as 2002. They recommended that the state government initiate measures, if necessary by withdrawing advertisements and other forms of implicit support, to induce a more cooperative attitude on the part of the newspaper industry. Other sanctions were recommended against the newspaper groups that had failed to provide the needed information to the inspection teams. Alarmingly, news agencies such as the Press Trust of India (PTI) and United News of India (UNI), have departed this time from their tradition of being among the first to implement wage Supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

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Kathmandu 3-5 August 2012

awards. On April 20, 2012, employees nation-wide at PTI went on a days strike to protest this unexplained delay. The Maharashtra Media Employees' Union (a composite union, i.e., one that includes both journalists and other employees of the Mid-Day group of publications) has filed suit in an industrial court in Thane, near Mumbai, asking for immediate implementation of the new wage award. And the Indian National Press Group Employees' Union (representing the Free Press Journal and Navshakti publications) has filed another in the Mumbai Industrial Court. The National Confederation of Newspaper and News Agency Employees, meanwhile, continues to argue its case before the Supreme Court. As a positive incentive for honouring the wage award, the state government in Goa announced a matching grant to newspaper groups that implement the wage board award. This incentive was worked out after negotiations with the Goa Union of Journalists and is supposed to help media groups overcome the initial dent in its financial balances till the revenue streams adjust to the rise in employee costs. The record of implementation of the Majithia wage award especially the example set by the Assam Tribune and Madhyamam which are both on the lower side of the medium newspaper category -- shows that it is not revenue that is the constraint here. Rather, the insistence of the bigger newspapers that they will not implement the award is more about their determination to keep independent journalism on a tight leash. SAMSN and the IFJ believe that these struggles of South Asias journalists for decent wages and working conditions have a wider resonance, most notably in Sri Lanka. In other countries of the region Afghanistan, Bhutan and the Maldives media industries remain weakly institutionalised, though the enforcement of core wage and labour standards should be an integral component of any effort to legislative an enabling and regulatory environment for media development. SAMSN believes that the campaigns and struggles underway in South Asia have much to learn from each other. In the years ahead, SAMSN intends to function as a platform coordinating strategies and sharing experiences between its member countries. Drop in media standards In Bangladesh, the media audience is aware of the major incursion in recent years, of various business interests and political groups into media ownership. Since business groups tend to have well-defined political loyalties too, the media is seen to be on most issues, mirroring the rivalries between the countrys two main political parties, rather than fulfilling the public need for reliable information. This deepens the countrys existing political polarisation and journalists are under pressure from their managements and owners to constantly choose sides. A media analyst in Pakistan recently wrote about the maddening paradox of working journalists waiting long years to gain their legitimate entitlements under the Wage Board, while top media houses and news channels continued brazenly to hire executive level staff at absurd salaries: What makes it so frustrating is that the bulk of reporters, sub-editors, proofreaders, layout artistes, copywriters, assistant producers, producers, cameramen, photographers and support staff currently get salaries that are not commensurate with their efforts and skill set. They are forced to look for other avenues of income and quite often fall prey to well placed predators on the lookout for favours or seeking to promote their personal agendas.

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International Federation of Journalists

South Asia Media Solidarity Network

Kathmandu 3-5 August 2012

Ironically, through years of rapid quantitative growth in the media in South Asia, there is widely believed to have been a decline in journalistic standards and a fall in public esteem for the profession. In recent times, these issues were highlighted in Pakistan, when well-known television news anchors were captured on camera seemingly coaching their guest, a businessman with vast interests in real estate, on how he should respond to particular questions that would be put to him on a petition involving possible corrupt practices the Supreme Court was taking up. The off-air conversation was posted on the video-sharing site Youtube and soon led to a major debate within Pakistan on the ethics and credibility of the news industry as a whole. But as a leading Pakistan journalist, active in the trade union movement commented later, there was little effort to ensure accountability for the serious breach of media ethics. This corruption within the media is spreading like a cancer and there seems to be no antidote, he concluded: If it is not checked, it could prove fatal for the media industry. We must take steps to address this problem ourselves. If not, Pakistan's journalists could lose the credibility they have earned from years of struggle. In a recent set of reports drawn from extensive surveys on the state of journalism in the various provinces of Pakistan, the IFJ found evidence of a sharp erosion of wages and working conditions, which had contributed to a loss of morale and a decline in the standards of newsgathering and dissemination. The report from Pakistans Punjab province spoke for larger realities in the entire country, when it pointed out that a combination of poor and unstable economic rewards ... and an insecure reporting environment (are) undermining freedom of expression and press freedom... Despite the statutory protections available for journalists, the report found that the majority of media personnel in the big cities are working on short-term contracts, which enables big media organisations to avoid paying salaries mandated by the Wage Board. Competition for viewership and television ratings, meanwhile induces serious departures from basic ethical norms. There was much public outrage in January 2012 when popular channel Samaa TV aired a programme in which the anchor, Maya Khan, was shown accosting young people in public and challenging them on their supposedly lax moral conduct. The programme titled Subah Saverey Maya kay Sath (Early Morning with Maya), was soon suspended after a chorus of protests. The host issued a qualified apology, while insisting that her purpose had been sound. She was sorry only that she had often induced her subjects to speak after falsely assuring them that recording had been turned off. The same TV personality was shortly afterwards again caught up in controversy when a programme she was hosting for the ARY TV channel featured a live religious conversion by a young boy from a minority community in Pakistan. Though she later took to the air to explain that the conversion was entirely genuine, renowned Pakistani human rights activist Ansar Burney has denounced it as a staged affair, possibly underpinned by a material inducement to the young boy who was in any case, too young to arrive at an informed judgment on his own. Dawn, one of Pakistans oldest and most respected English-language newspapers, commented editorially that the programme concerned, was another example of how the industrys commercial goals trump ethics. Pakistans media, it observed, is missing a responsibility chip, hurtling ahead with what seems like exciting content without stopping to consider the ethical implications Sri Lanka has an ordinance enabling a notification by statutorily empowered Wages Boards, of minimum wages in a range of professions, including journalism. The last such notification was made in 2005. A media commentator recently wrote of the appallingly low level of the statutory minimum wages for journalists. Though the absolute paltriness of the minimum wage is mitigated in practice, since many of the larger news organisations are known to pay well beyond Supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

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Kathmandu 3-5 August 2012

the stipulated level, this is done on a selective basis, based more on the whims and fancies of those who are the decision makers in such organisations. This selectivity in the process of rewards and incentives means that journalists are vulnerable to pressures from the commercial and advertising demands, often leading to an impairment of the credibility of news gathering. When general elections were held to the legislative assemblies of a number of states in India in May 2011 and then again in February and March 2012, the Election Commission of India (ECI) took the extraordinary step of forming district level monitoring bodies to closely track media coverage of the campaign process. The idea was to detect any possible case of paid news by which candidates obtained favourable media coverage for a monetary consideration. This was from the point of view of the ECI, an electoral malpractice, since it enabled candidates to evade the statutory ceiling on campaign expenses. In elections to five state legislative assemblies in 2012, a total of 626 suspected cases of paid news were detected by the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) functioning under the ECI. On the basis of these figures, the ECI issued notice to over 300 candidates, seeking their opinion on why their abuse of the media should not be regarded as an electoral law violation, warranting disqualification. A large number of the candidates conceded that they did indeed buy space and time in the media to pitch favourable stories about themselves and agreed to the inclusion of the funds spent within their campaign accounts. A few candidates failed to respond, while some have challenged the MCMC findings. The ECI with its statutory powers has managed to enforce a degree of accountability on candidates and political parties in the matter of paid news. On the other side of the coin, there is among Indias journalists a growing perception that the yawning ethical deficit in the functioning of the media -- that paid news is a symptom of -- calls for urgent correction. A significant achievement of 2011 was the publication in full of the report of the Press Council of India (PCI) sub-committee on paid news, prepared in March 2010 after rampant evidence of the abuse was found in the 2009 general elections to the Indian parliament. Newspaper industry representatives on the PCI had then successfully mobilised to get much of the detail in the subcommittee report including some of its strongest recommendations stripped out when the final report was adopted by vote. Among the conclusions of the sub-committee report was a positive affirmation of the need for safeguarding the autonomy of the editorial function. Also underlined was the importance of journalists job security in restoring the integrity and credibility of news gathering and dissemination. The two-member sub-committee had recommended that media organisations cease the practice of engaging stringers and correspondents who double up as agents collecting advertisements. All such media personnel, it recommended, should be given stipends or retainers, if not regular salaries. Union representatives on the PCI had also then argued the case for strengthening the Working Journalists Act to assure journalists of job security and fair wages. The system of employing journalists on short-term contracts needed to be ended and the primacy of the editor as the pivotal decision-maker on news selection restored. All these suggestions were deleted from the report prior to its adoption by the PCI. Also excised, were references to the practices that preceded the full-blown advent of paid news such as the initiatives known by the euphemistic names of Medianet and private treaties. Medianet was the practice of publishing content that was paid for, but with the explicit understanding that there would be full disclosure. Private treaties was the practice of media Supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

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Kathmandu 3-5 August 2012

companies acquiring shares in enterprises in exchange for advertising space. When the concerned enterprise grew to a level where it could conceivably go public with an issue of shares, the media company that had advertised its merits would cash in. This example was one that most media enterprises, including the broadcast companies, eagerly followed. In August 2010, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), statutory watchdog of Indias stockmarkets, introduced new disclosure norms, requiring that media companies reveal their holdings in companies they report on. These norms were evolved in consultation with the PCI, in response to growing public concern over the prevalence of news content that was paid for by corporate entities. This directive remained under-reported in the Indian media. And the degree to which it has since been complied with, remains to be monitored. The damage caused to basic ethical standards by the competition for television rating points was again highlighted in India by the shocking incident of the public molestation of a young girl by a mob of more than twenty men being captured on video camera by a news channel reporter. Video images of the incident, which occurred late evening on July 9 in the city of Guwahati in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, soon went viral on the web, provoking mass public outrage and questions over the role of the news reporter in the incident. Human rights groups in Assam state analysed the entire video recording and concluded that a reporter with the NewsLive channel may have provoked and instigated the attack. There were reports that the video featured some of the twenty strong mob striking a pose for the camera and at least one occasion when the camera focused on the face of the victim and a microphone was thrust forward and inquiries made about her name and identity. The news channel management defended the reporters conduct, on the grounds that his video footage helped local police in identifying the perpetrators of the crime. The management claims that the reporter happened to be passing by the area at the time of the incident and reacted as any newsperson would, summoning the sole cameraman on duty at the news channels nearby office. The reporter resigned shortly afterwards from his job with the channel, which is owned by a powerful local politician and minister in the Assam state cabinet. He has since been arrested along with a number of others for involvement in the crime. The news editor in charge of the programme, whose postings on the micro-blogging site Twitter soon came to light, suggesting a rather disdainful attitude towards the victim of the crime, also resigned. Media commentators concluded soon afterwards that the news channel had "dumped" its ethical responsibilities for television rating points. On July 28, a crowd of moral vigilantes raided a holiday resort in the south Indian city of Mangalore with video-cameras in eager accompaniment. They roughed up and severely abused a group of young adults that had gathered at the resort for an evening party. The footage was soon aired over the news portal daijiworld.com, which claims to bring the west coast of India to the world. The incident was strongly reminiscent of an attack on a pub in the city in 2009, when too young girls were brutally assaulted with video cameras in attendance. Though these recordings have some retrospective utility in identifying those responsible for serious crimes against women, their immediate motivation remains the boosting of viewership. The ethical issue of a reporters responsibility when he is given advance information about the intention to commit a crime, continues to trouble media professionals. Physical security Physical security remains an issue in most countries of South Asia. Journalism was a hazardous pursuit through long years of internal conflict in Nepal and Sri Lanka. And now with conflict at an end and processes of political reconciliation underway, journalists are finding that several of the passions of the years of open warfare are yet to subside. Verbal aggression against journalists who dare to report all sides of a story and stand up for basic norms of fair treatment, continues Supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

International Federation of Journalists

South Asia Media Solidarity Network

Kathmandu 3-5 August 2012

to be a threat. And if the record of the past is any indication, verbal aggression is normally a precursor to physical violence. In Pakistan, the year under review continued to be one of serious hazard. Within this frontline state in a global conflict, the combatant parties are many and norms of accountability and international humanitarian law are dishonoured by all. Journalists in Pakistan have to steer a perilous course between these hostile elements. Sectarian conflict in the urban centre of Karachi and an insurgency in the sprawling but sparsely populated province of Balochistan, have become additional elements of risk. In one of the most shocking incidents since Sri Lankas civil war was officially declared over in May 2009, the news editor of Uthayan was attacked with iron rods on the streets off Jaffna and left for dead shortly after elections to local bodies in the northern province were concluded in July 2011. The newspaper had editorially supported the opposition parties which registered significant wins in the elections. Nepals journalists suffered days of trauma in May 2012, as agitations erupted across the nation following a deadlock in the constitution writing process. A clear intent to intimidate journalists was evident in the press releases issued by the sponsors of some of the agitations. Deep divisions on the restructuring of the Nepali state with some of the parties advocating a federal pattern based on ethnic units and others bitterly opposing it fuelled violence on the streets. And many of the aggrieved political factions showed little compunctions about targeting journalists and particular media organisations that they saw to be holding an opposing point of view. The larger context for journalism in Afghanistan is the steady deterioration in overall security indicators. Ahmad Omaid Khpalwak, a reporter with the BBC Pashto Service, the Pajhwok Afghan News Agency and the state broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), was killed on July 28 2011, in Tarin Kowt, capital of the troubled province of Uruzgan. Khpalwak was at the spot of a coordinated triple bomb blast and armed attack near the citys market, where the office of the RTA is also located. It was determined after a brief two-month investigation by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), that an American soldier had, in a case of mistaken identity, killed Khpalwak. The soldier apparently mistook the journalist for an insurgent when ISAF personnel responded to the militant attack and sought to clear out the targeted building. Two suicide bombers had detonated their lethal devices within the premises and created considerable mayhem when ISAF personnel came in. Khpalwak may have been sheltering within a safe space in the building and seeking to escape when the ISAF personnel entered. He may have been reaching for his press identity card when he was shot, on the mistaken belief that he had a lethal explosive device concealed within the folds of his clothing. The physical insecurity faced by journalists elsewhere in South Asia though, fades into insignificance in comparison to the situation in Pakistan. The targeted killing of journalists continues with little effort in evidence to check the climate of impunity. The most recent instance recorded was in the killing of Abdul Qadir Hajiza in the troubled province of Balochistan on May 28. A recent estimate by the Balochistan Union of Journalists, a constituent unit of the PFUJ, suggests that Hajizai is the twenty-second journalist killed in the province in the last three years. Other provinces of Pakistan, especially those which have experienced the spillover effects of the western intervention in Afghanistan, have also been hazardous. The militant group Tehreek-eTaliban Pakistan (TTP) has in particular claimed responsibility for certain targeted killings, as with the murder of senior journalist Mukaram Khan Atif on January 17, 2012, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. On June 26, 2012, the TTP carried out an attack on the studios of AAJ TV in the southern city of Karachi, injuring two employees and causing some damage. In a statement released shortly afterwards, the militant group warned other media organisations of similar attacks for supposedly ignoring their point of view. Supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

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Legal and political threats In June 2011, journalists in Afghanistan who were fresh from a celebration of World Press Freedom Day, were reminded of the legal and political difficulties they face, when the Ulema Council a grouping of the countrys most influential clerics and religious scholars called for a ban on a particular TV channel and denounced the editorial practices of a prominent newspaper, ostensibly on grounds that they were acting contrary to religious belief and practice. The Media Violations and Complaints Assessment Council, which under Afghanistans media law, is empowered to deal with specific issues off this nature, called an emergency meeting to discuss the issues raised by the Ulema Council. It held the TV channel to be in error in telecasting a soap opera of Turkish origin, dubbed in local languages, but absolved the newspaper of any blame. It was, for the media industry, a mixed outcome, though without direct implications for the practice of journalism. In June 2012 though, the government of Afghanistan circulated a draft set of amendments to the media law which was adopted in 2009 after a five-year long struggle to safeguard its most salutary provisions against the demands of religious bodies and the insecurities of government officials. Among other things, the amendments proposed would greatly increase the power of the Ministry of Information and Culture to determine the composition of the regulatory bodies envisaged under the media law. One among the amendments proposes that the Minister would head the High Media Council, which sits above the Media Violations and Complaints Assessment Council, as the guiding hand behind policy. Others propose that the High Media Council itself would have greatly expanded powers, to set policies and determine their mode of implementation. Heightening political confrontation in Bangladesh created serious difficulties for journalism. In February 2012, a coup attempt by Islamist elements within the army was seemingly discovered and thwarted. Around then, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid raised the temperature in her war of words with the opposition. Press freedom as an issue was debunked. As the Prime Minister then said, the media was guilty of exaggeration. Under the newly gained freedom under her regime, the press was writing at its will, no matter what is right and what is wrong. This was a freedom that it did not enjoy under the reign of the parties now in opposition, said the Prime Minister. As she said it then, the press used to receive invisible advice from certain quarters all through the BNPs tenure in office that began in 2001. Not one of the cases of the sixteen journalists killed during that time had been properly investigated, she said. At a mass rally that the ruling party organised on 7 March 2012, seemingly to preeempt an opposition show of strength on 13 March, severe disruptions were caused to civic life in Dhaka city, which were widely featured in media reporting. The government then took recourse to extraordinary measures to ensure that the opposition rally of 13 March was deprived of mass participation and denied due media coverage. This caused further embitterment within Bangladeshs journalists. The tribunal set up to bring to justice war crimes committed during Bangladeshs war of liberation in 1971, enjoys wide public endorsement, though its procedures have often elicited media criticism. Journalists have been summoned to face the tribunal on charges of contempt and a few have been convicted. Though the punishments decreed have been symbolic, the possibility of a stricture from the tribunal is believed to be exerting a chilling effect on free reporting and commentary on its procedures. In the unsettled situation in Pakistans frontier regions, officials are known to threaten legal action against journalists using the Frontier Crimes Regulations, a draconian inheritance from days of British colonialism, which still remains on the statute book as a last recourse when Supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

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customary laws fail. That aside, Pakistan during the last year acquired a Press Council that has been duly empowered to enforce an agreed code of conduct on the media. Sri Lanka was a particularly hostile terrain for the new media, with the Government dashing all hopes that it would actively promote a process of national reconciliation after the end of the quarter-century long civil war. Several websites that carry news and current affairs content on the country were blocked in November 2011. A petition filed in the Supreme Court under the fundamental rights provisions of the constitution was not entertained. And in July 2012, the Government decreed that all websites that carry news and current affairs content on the country would have to pay an initial registration fee of LKR 100,000 (Sri Lankan rupees one hundred thousand, which works out at current exchange rates to USD 780), and an annual renewal charge of LKR 50,000. In India, there have been a number of questions raised in public forums over journalistic standards and the need for new modes of regulation over the media. The Chairman of the Press Council of India, Markandey Katju, for instance, wrote an editorial page piece in a national newspaper arguing that journalism needed to be governed by clearly laid out norms, much like the legal and medical professions: "If red lines can be drawn for the legal and medical professions, why should it be any different for profit-making newspapers and TV channels?" This mirrored in some ways, the ongoing debate in Bangladesh for the need to license journalists. Meanwhile, a member of parliament belonging to the ruling party proposed a draft bill on media regulation which caused considerable worry within the industry with its very severe provisions, including the suspension of media operations and seizure of assets. Indias Supreme Court, meanwhile, continues to hear a batch of petitions dealing with media coverage of matters under active judicial consideration. Its stated purpose is finally, to lay down a comprehensive media code. These events have triggered a major debate among journalists, the media community and wider civil society, over what best serves the larger public good. Journalists have pointed out that the media in India has no special protection under the law. Reasonable restrictions on the right to free speech were introduced under the first amendment to the Indian constitution. Yet till date, there is no clear or consistent norm laid down by the judiciary on how reasonableness is to be assessed. In this conceptual vacuum, a variety of abuses have flourished against legitimate press reporting and exercises of the right to free speech. In April 2012, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court issued a decree banning any form of media coverage on the January 16 military exercises conducted by units of the Indian army based locations near the national capital. In pronouncing this ban, the court held that the issue of movement of Army troops is not a matter of the kind which requires public discussion at the cost of official secrecy and the security of the country. There have been several instances in recent years, of journalists and media being charged with offences under archaic provisions of the law, such as official secrets, sedition and various others. In June 2008, the commissioner of police in the city of Ahmedabad, brought charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy against two journalists and the Times of India. This followed a series of reports in the newspaper, noting serious complaints against the newly appointed police official and indicating that the inconclusive inquiries that had followed, made him ineligible for the top post in the city. It was a form of censorship through legal injunction and even if the Gujarat High Court quashed the charges in April 2012, there can be no denying that while they remained on the active judicial docket, the charges had a chilling effect on media reporting on a matter of public importance. Supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

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K.K. Shahina, then a reporter with the weekly news magazine Tehelka, was charged with criminal conspiracy to intimidate witnesses, after a story she published cast doubt at the prosecution of a prominent Islamic cleric and political figure on terrorism charges in December 2010. An example of investigative reporting in short, was transformed into the basis for criminal prosecution. It took till January 2012 for Shahina to secure provisional protection against arrest from the High Court of Karnataka. In May 2011, Tarakant Dwivedi, alias Akela, then a reporter with Mumbai citys morning tabloid, Midday, was arrested under Indias Official Secrets Act, after he reported on poor security conditions in the metropolis main railway terminus. Akelas arrest, itself conducted under highly suspicious circumstances, was believed to be direct retribution for this reporting. When consistent norms are still to be evolved to prevent this manner of direct threaten the rights of free and fair media reporting, the larger debate on regulation may seem a rather superfluous pursuit. Indias journalists will forcefully intervene in the debate. All journalists involved in SAMSN need indeed, to forcefully intervene in the complex of issues that they confront in upholding the principles of press freedom and the public right to know. For further information contact IFJ Asia-Pacific on +612 9333 0950 or Sukumar Muralidharan (+91-98105 -18009; sukumar.md@gmail.com) The IFJ represents more than 600,000 journalists in 131 countries Find the IFJ on Twitter: @ifjasiapacific Find the IFJ on Facebook: www.facebook.com/IFJAsiaPacific

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