Centre's 'Index Monitoring Cell' to meet for plan to improve press freedom ranking

NEW DELHI: The recently appointed Central Index monitoring Cell to improve the country's press freedom index will meet on Thursday to explore a framework to include both legislative changes and outreach efforts to improve the country's press freedom index.

The committee, mostly of government officials and two journalists P Sainath and Rajat Sharma, was formed in May to "put in place a mechanism for States to come up with their own rankings of press freedom, coordinate with stakeholders and improve visibility of steps taken by government for journalists. This group will also engage with international agencies on the process followed to rank the countries.

Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), or Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit organisation that works to document attacks on journalists around the world, ranked India 142 out of 180 countries in its annual Press Freedom Index report published on April 22 this year. India is now ranked below neighbours like Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, and has slipped two places since 2019. The parameters that are evaluated for these rankings include pluralism, media independence, environment and self-censorship, legal framework, transparency among others.

The panel appointed by the Centre has director-general of the Press Information Bureau, officials from the Registrar of newspapers of India, Bureau of outreach and communication, and from the press facilitation unit, apart from the secretary of the Press Council of India and Niti Aayog. The Press Council of India was asked to suggest names of journalists for the panel, but in the coming days, the IMC will also reach out to more journalists from TV, digital and print media, officials said.

Apart from possible legislative changes that can offer a "layer of protection" to journalists, ideas being discussed include a proposal to have one comprehensive body that can look at complaints of "incorrect or misleading" reporting on all media platforms, and can carry out deliberations, instead of the matter going to police or legal authorities, a member said.

This comes at a time when many State governments, including in J&K and Manipur are facing criticism. for criminalising journalistic work. Several media bodies have also raised the issue of defamation cases being filed against journalists for their ground reports on the plight of the poor during nation-wide lockdown due to Covid-19.

The IMC is among several cells formed in different ministries as part of the Modi government’s decision to track the performance of India in 32 selected global indices. It has already had one meeting. "This meeting will be to decide the roadmap. We expect the committee to finalise its recommendations in three months," an official said.

The monitoring cell would also be regularly in touch with the RSF to inform them about the work India is doing to improve the parameters, and also inform the agency about the various welfare measures taken for journalists, the official added.