A free press is not a patriotic press. It is not meant to flatter the State or protect national vanity. It must be independent of both government and corporate control. And if the public does not pay for it, someone else will — and whoever pays decides what survives.
This is the uncomfortable backdrop to the layoffs in The Washington Post, among other publications, in recent times.
Serious conversations about money, sustainability and tech platforms cannibalising journalism are taking place inside newsrooms. On social media, however, everything becomes moral theatre. If a paper stumbles, its ‘agenda failed’. If journalists lose jobs, it is karma. By that logic, every bad story should shut down journalism itself.
Much of the gloating in India hides a familiar irritation.
Abroad, India often appears through unrest, poverty or spectacle; China is framed through supply chains, technology and power. The contrast stings. But the answer is not to blame foreign journalists. It is to stop mistaking televised nationalism for global relevance.
The truth is simpler: the world is not as interested in India as we imagine from Delhi studios. Pakistan, in fact, has often proved more agile at shaping perception. Except for moments like Kargil under A.B. Vajpayee, India has rarely matched that deftness.
News is neighbourhood. Every country’s media focuses first on itself. India or Pakistan rising or falling rarely registers as urgent in Western newsrooms. That is not prejudice; it is priority.
This reality became obvious during Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States of America in 2021 when some Indian anchors leafed through American newspapers expecting front page coverage and found almost nothing.
Nor has India yet become the ‘elephant’ to rival China’s dragon. Even friendly institutions hedge their praise. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank speak of resilience and promise while warning of fragile consumption-led growth, widening inequality, and questionable statistics.
China dominates global stories about trade, technology and geopolitics. India appears only sporadically, usually through politics or conflict rather than economic heft. The outrage this causes at home is misplaced.
Meanwhile, the deeper crisis is financial.
News no longer makes money. Advertising has drained away. Search traffic is falling. Artificial Intelligence is devouring attention. Billionaire owners see newspapers as assets, not institutions. If they don’t perform, they are cut. Sentiment doesn’t enter the calculation.
Yet journalism does not simply die.
In Banda, a group of ordinary women runs a small, local portal exposing administrative negligence. It has earned trust — and the administration’s respect. Across India, such small outfits keep the craft alive. The press is being rediscovered from below.
But the risks are real. Journalists face arrests, assaults, defamation cases, even death. In many districts, the local SHO — the daroga — still acts like the real editor. From Odisha to Bhagalpur, local reporters have paid with their lives to tell uncomfortable truths.
And governments, irrespective of party, follow the same script. Kerala, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh or West Bengal — any story that embarrasses power is branded anti-national or anti-faith. Ministries increasingly behave like policemen, forgetting that the Supreme Court protected press freedom as early as 1950.
This is not just an Indian story. In Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai has been jailed for 20 years under national security laws.
A free press is fragile by design. Even strong democracies chip away at it. It survives only because some journalists refuse to bend. So let us stop pretending that media layoffs
are a moral reckoning for bad journalism.
