Pioneering cartoonist Shankar spared none in his illustrations. In his political cartoons, he mercilessly lampooned the top leaders of the time including then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Still Nehru once famously told the veteran cartoonist: “Don’t spare me Shankar”. 

The principle of ‘speak truth, spare not’ was practiced by the journalists of the bygone era, without fear or favour. Unfortunately, down the line, journalism has been debased and the cardinal principles, veterans of yesteryears diligently practiced, have gone for a toss.
 
With the NDA government under Narendra Modi coming to power, a new tag has been attached to journalists -- godi media. Journalists rarely go chasing the real news. They have stopped looking for the loopholes and leaks in governance. Their interest in doing follow-up stories on the appealing assurances of the government is waning. 

They prefer to go after post-truth rather than try to ferret out truth. The former is like a knife cutting through butter, but the latter could spell danger. One doesn’t have to look far for the reason for this servile attitude in the media. It is the fear of physical assaults, intimidation or even annihilation; of character assassination; of fake cases, detentions and arrests; and above all, the fear of losing job. 

To state that journalists in today’s India are working under duress is stating the obvious. As many as 194 journalists, including seven women journalists, were targeted across the country in 2022, according to the Rights and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG). These journalists were targeted by state agencies, non-state political actors and criminals. No state can boast of a holier-than-thou attitude as journalists have faced attacks and humiliation in every State, though some may be more hostile than others. 

While some journalists have been charged under the infamous sedition law, some others have been booked under the stringent UAPA and similar laws. While some have been killed by land and mining mafia some others have to give up lives on the line of duty. There are also idiotic instances where journalists have been put behind bars for asking questions to Ministers. The administration has stooped to the level of even arresting photojournalists for covering protests or exposing instances of caste discrimination. 

Despite repeated commitment by those in power to the inviolability of the fourth estate, journalists remain vulnerable to severe attacks from the state and non-state players both online and offline. The recent incident of filing an FIR against the members of the Editors’ Guild of India, who visited Manipur to report on the unprecedented violence there, under various sections of Indian Penal Code is one of the rarest of rare cases wherein journalists’ probe team has been charged with criminal offences.
 
The fourth pillar is being pounded like never before. Journalists are pushed to a predicament that they are unable to do justice to their work. Governments want us to believe that social evils do not exist in themselves, rather they are being produced by the media. Only a free media can defeat this narrative. The World Press Freedom Index, 2023, in which India has reached an abysmal low rank of 161 out of 180 countries, holds a mirror to the government. If freedom of speech is something to be practiced, and not to be merely preached, the government has to get back to the constitutional and democratic track.