Sana Amir began her lecture by giving an overview about the media landscape in India, including systemic and individual levels. She also talked about the attacks in India on Muslims, specifically Muslim journalists and activists. After that Sana gave an insight on her personal experience of being a minority journalist but explained what the audience could do to support journalists in India.
Sana began her presentation by explaining the media ownership in India. The concentration of media under powerful business figures like Adani Group and Reliance Industries leads to less media independence. On top of that there is a lack of governmental transparency which you notice by the fact that there weren't any press conferences in ten years. Another media landscape issue is the growing media censorship, as well as the restrictions on journalists and the spread of anti-Muslim and anti-minority hate in mainstream media. She continued giving specific examples of attacks on Muslims. Not only is there an issue with online harassment and targeted hate speech, but also many cases where Muslim journalists or journalists critical of the government received death threats, were victims of harassment or even murder. Sana explained the “Sulli Deals” case which sums up the online auctioning of Muslim women to humiliate them and talked about cases of demolition of activists' homes as sanctions. Towards the end of her presentation, she spoke about problems regarding her personal life as a journalist in India. As an example, she mentioned challenges when it comes to employment due to identity. She described self-censorship as resulting from surveillance and cyberattacks. Marginalization and Islamophobia, expressed by discrimination in housing and workplaces, are daily experiences. All this causes a certain fear for their families and avoidance of political expression in public. Her speech included a few tips on what people all over the world could do regarding this topic: Supporting independent media (subscriptions, donations), standing in solidarity with threatened journalists, questioning dominant narratives and practicing media literacy and lastly learning to identify propaganda and fake news.
Author: Josephine Speicher