my guest today is one of india's best—known, most—experienced journalists, n ram, director of the hindu publishing group. in today's india, is it possible to speak truth to power? n ram, welcome to hardtalk. it's a pleasure, stephen. it's a pleasure, stephen. well, it's a great pleasure to talk to you. your journalistic career seems to me to symbolise the vigour, the vibrancy the vigour, the vibrancy of the indian media scene. of the indian media scene. you began your career, you began your career, let's say, in the late �*60s. let's say, in the late �*60s. you're still hard at it today at the hindu publishing group. it's a positive story, it's a positive story, isn't it? isn't it? yes. i'm quite...

i'm privileged and i feel very, very good about being injournalism for so long. although the world around us has changed, the media ecosystem has changed, there's a lot of disruption, but i'm still at it. i don't do active journalism in the newspaper, i don't get involved in the editorial decision making but i'm a director on the board of the publishing company, the hindu publishing company, and the holding company as well. and i'm witness to the... ..flourishing of the press in india and then the problems it has got into later. and it's still challenging and quite exciting. you talk about the problems that the media has encountered. let's try to be very specific. there are allegations, some of them coming from outside india, some coming from inside india, that under prime minister modi, freedom of speech, but in particular

the freedom of the press, has been savagely curtailed. how do you see it? yes, that has happened. not that there were no attempts to suppress press freedom and independence before. we had the emergency of �*75, �*77. we've had laws inherited from colonial times which are quite illiberal. very often we got by because they were not implemented. for example, the sedition act or the official secrets act,

then how come the indian media scene "we have hundreds of broadcast news channels." vibrant feedback mechanism. i mean, that's a pretty strong defence. in the indian media ecosystem, and that reflects they are multilingual, we are multipolitical, multicultural, multi everything. all that's being put out in different parts of india. but overall, they have a strategy

to make the media fall in line. and i can't do better than to recommend if somebody wants there's excellent chapter in rajdeep sardesai's book, "you are the godi media," it says. they're a lapdog of the central government and the bjp governments in different parts of india. now seem to dominate ownership of key mainstream media organisations, particularly in broadcast, in television. but i would put it to you that that is the case

who happen to be close to those who are in power. owns a lot of channels, tv18, and then gautam adani, they took over ndtv, in the english language, that people were watching in a very brutal fashion. one can look at some of the richest men in the world this isn't necessarily a case in which india is suffering a form of media constraint or repression, which is fundamentally different. yes, i'm not particularly

complaining about television, in tamil nadu, for example, where i come from, television news channels. but when it comes to the so—called national, and i'm not particularly complaining. it's the media monopoly. ben bagdikian wrote about it a long time ago in the us. well, let's talk about the mindset of journalists today in some journalists minds

about speaking truth to power, a while ago on hardtalk, i spoke to rana ayyub, going back years, has tried to tell stories, uncover truths about mr modi's past in gujarat, amongst many other things. she has faced online intimidation, including use of fake pornography and other things. in fact, there is a title of an interview i did, she did, she interviewed me for the washington post, rana ayyub is the bravest woman around, the woman journalist i know.

and this repression. and some other publications abroad. she's respected. and there are some others as well. i suppose the indian government will immediately latch on to that idea that she's now writing for an outside, "that some of ourjournalists it's interesting that reporters without borders, talks about india now ranking

only 159th out of 180 and they talk about a series of different incidents in which they say, according to research, in the last decade or so, 20 journalists have actually been murdered... yes, in connection with their work. ..in india, yeah. yes. for mostjournalists most of the time seeking to dig out a lot, a lot of them live in fear of their liberty because they are using anti—terrorism laws orjust, you know, subversive activities laws, that is instead of the old sedition law, which was stayed lives, of course, 20 is very bad. the previous decade was ten. we're looking atjournalists who were murdered in connection with their work,

because of their work, particularly investigative work in different parts of india. in the global impunity index brought out by cf], the cases are not resolved one way or the other, neither. about who was responsible for those deaths. one of the arguments of the critics is there is deterrence. the godi media has arisen because of this fear of... well, you seem to be convinced that the government is using extreme measures who are trying to uncover awkward truths about the use of power. has involved spyware bought, you allege, by the indian government from

an israeli software company. in other parts of the world too. now, the government has adamantly denied this. so where's your proof? the proof is, i think there have been stories. this is the ns0 group's military grade spyware, and it just refused. and we were disappointed it didn't, but it set up a committee which then reported on it. it's kept in a sealed cover. sure. you don't have proof this is happening.

the new york times did a story on this, pretty much indicating that this had been used. there have been, you know, the wire did investigations on this, siddharth varadarajan. to be brutal about it, do you think they're surveilling you? i don't think so, because i'm not in that. i'm very open about what i do. colleagues of yours doing investigative work do you think they may well be being surveilled? i think it's very targeted, selectively—targeted. you know, the targets, they don't know who to target. so it's not that efficient a system. there were indications and we are... to a certain point by appointing a committee headed by a retired supreme courtjudge, and that committee

gave its report, about the way the media is working in india today. you rose through the ranks at the hindu, and you've been awarded prizes for your own in the last few years, and so much of it now is being done online, but by individuals who have massive followings on platforms like youtube. critical voices. and more subscribers on youtube. so where's the repression there? they are trying to stop that. they're struggling to see

what can be done there. there was opposition, so it's been referred to a committee because the government has no majority, and maybe but isn't this precisely the point, that india is a noisy, who's not a journalist, he was a sort of an educator on youtube, called �*is india a democracy?�* 50 million views. and, you know, we've seen

a telecommunications act which you just referred to, which might put new controls on the youtubers. but the government's defence of all these new measures is quite simple. this is the words of the minister of information. he says, "we need new legal frameworks "to ensure accountability and safeguard and he has a really important point, doesn't he? the ruling party, the bjp, with direct or indirect support from the government, central government, union government is the prime generator of disinformation in this country. and so on, not that the

others don't do it, but they don't do it on the same scale. so disinformation is, perhaps after the united states of america, india is a country that has been plagued disinformation. of the information space, but the fact that we see in india at times of particular local crisis, for example, in a tragic rape case going back to 2015, and misinformation, not by the government, hate speech and fuelling tensions in communities.

if that were the... if that were the sincere motivation, the government's policies, or anything against and they invoke laws which make it in cases and have filed cases which make it impossible for you to get, or very, very difficult to get bail. that's the bright, bright side. but they're really using it to muzzle dissent, any criticism, particularly of the prime minister and the home minister and the ruling party. you, throughout this conversation, have been the truth is, mr modi

is an extraordinarily for more than a decade. isn't the truth that you just deeply resent the fact that he, in ways that you old media types just can't stand? i don't want to go back to extreme examples. i'll restrain myself on that point. you mentioned trump, modi, and there are many others as well, indira gandhi was one such.

no, but here's what he says. he says that the media in india, mainstream media, "have become biased with their own agenda and ideology." i... he says, "..work hard to reach out to each household "of the poor." i'm glad you mentioned that figure, the total number of, i looked it up, users of x, formerly twitter, now, where does the rest come from? all abroad. i saw the figure, 101 million or something followers. a lot of it is bots. a lot of it is artificial. there's very few people have noted the incongruity of this. the numbers speak for

themselves in this case. so his reach is far less than what they claim. that's part of the propaganda and you can say it's a brilliant achievement by their media machine. but then there is evidence that, particularly in the hindi—speaking states, this barrage of information proved to be counterproductive. because the propaganda got so... ..far too much for people to swallow. here's the words of an interesting young thinker of foreign policy magazine. "modi's idea of india, which believes that a powerful "even if it means the curtailment "of individual rights and liberties."

in other words, he's saying that, you know, indians sort of appreciate collective prosperity and put a priority on that more than your liberal philosophy of individual rights. i wouldn't consider myself a liberal in any classical sense. i'm certainly to the left of that, but... ..yes, we have to make a choice. no, i think modern india has fought back, some of modern india has fought back and the young are fighting back. we did this in 2021 when it was very, very dark. freedoms. but now i think a lot more voices are out there. by what's available in the social media space. there are lots of good things

happening there as we saw with ravish kumar and the dhruv rathee, and there are others in various indian languages who are doing this. how are they going to suppress this? so politically—speaking, i think they'll have to decide on this a free media in india, isn't over? in fact, it's actually being fought right now? yes, it is. and i'm sure, i'm hopeful, which you and i have stood for for some decades now, several decades, perhaps,

freedom of the media, independence, is going to win out. n ram, we have to end there. thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. sunday was a wet and a windy day, the strongest winds across the western side of the country. of port ellen here in argyll and bute.

the centre of low pressure was actually some way away through the irish sea. but a few stronger gusts, 79mph gusts at capel curig. park or eryri national park. there were a few gusts elsewhere that reached the 70s amber weather warning that remains in force it will continue to blow a gale out west. quite mild. and south—east england.

broadly speaking, though, monday is a day of sunshine and showers, the showers frequent for scotland and england with time, so it's one of those days where most of us will see a downpour at some point. through the afternoon. around the london area. but this time the majority of the showers will be across western areas of the uk, eastern scotland, central relatively few showers and mostly dry weather with some sunshine. for the time of year. showers or probably more longer spells of rain. given that there's not going to be that much sunshine with temperatures closer to average, around 7 to 10 celsius.

a change to drier, sunnier weather conditions. but there'll probably be some frosts as we head bye for now.

has won the election, while the far—right afd

up his presidency if it will mean peace for ukraine. the vatican says pope francis remains in a critical condition in hospital, but hasn't had any respiratory in snap elections. of the centre—right christian democrats, as afd, came in second, with a record 20%. boosting the eu's biggest economy and immigration reforms were the top issues for voters, following the collapse