<\/p>\n
New Delhi, July 5 (TNS): With seven Indian journalists killed in the last 18 months, media watchdog Reporters without Borders (RSF) has expressed an \u201calarm\u201d about the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2017, the deaths of at least three journalists killed in connection with their work were recorded, and a fourth case is still under investigation. In 2018, four journalists were killed in the country in the first six months,\u201d the RSF has said in its \u201cIncident Report\u201d released on 4 July.<\/p>\n
The report also mentions a sharp rise in \u201conline abuse and harassment\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition, there has been a sharp increase in online abuse and harassment, and in the self-censorship which looms over the environment in which journalists carry out their work in \u2018the world\u2019s largest democracy\u2019,\u201d says RSF.<\/p>\n
RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi informing him of this Incident Report and urging him to take \u201curgent action\u201d.<\/p>\n
In its letter sent on July 3, the RSF notes that \u201cin the first six months of 2018, at least as many reporters were killed as for the whole of 2017, while hate speech directed toward journalists has increased massively, causing serious concern for their safety\u201d.<\/p>\n
The RSF report \u2014 an \u2018alarm\u2019 about the \u201cdeterioration of press freedom in India\u201d \u2014 is the first the organisation has prepared for any country.<\/p>\n
The Incident Report, released\u00a0in the wake of an \u201cincrease in breaches of press freedom in India\u201d in the past six months, examines the country\u2019s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index, a global benchmark for media freedom.<\/p>\n
According to the RSF, an Incident Report is issued \u201cwhen events are observed that could affect a country\u2019s ranking based on one or more of the indicators that are used in the evaluation for the World Press Freedom Index\u201d.<\/p>\n
The RSF comes out with an annual World Press Freedom Index and India is currently placed at 138th position in the list of 180 countries \u2014 2 spots down from its 2017 ranking.<\/p>\n
The report released warned that India risked falling further down on the index.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, July 5 (TNS): With seven Indian journalists killed in the last 18 months, media watchdog Reporters without Borders (RSF) has expressed an \u201calarm\u201d about the country. \u201cIn 2017, the deaths of at least three journalists killed in connection with their work were recorded, and a fourth case is still under investigation. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70554,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70552\/revisions\/70554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}