Anupreet Singh:
NEW DELHI: A panel of senior officials from the ministries of Information and Broadcasting, external affairs and journalists whose names have been approved by the government, will look at potential ways to improve India’s ranking at the World Press Freedom Index.
Called the index monitoring cell, this group will also put in place a mechanism for States to come up with their own rankings of press freedom, a memorandum issued by the ministry on March 27 said. This group will also engage with international agencies on the process followed to rank the countries.
The committee is also likely to have researchers on media-related topics from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, the government’s premier journalism school.
Ministry officials said they are working on a system to start engaging with the States on this issue, by asking them to appoint nodal officers to send in regular updates about the state of journalists and complaints from media houses. A senior official said field publicity and Press Information Bureau officials in States have already been asked to send in names of journalists, both stringers and those accredited by State governments, in every district, to the center.
“We are in the process of getting questionnaires made by experts on the challenges that journalists face which will be sent to them. We will also get our bureaucrats on-field involved in this process,” an official said.
Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF), or Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit organization 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.