Editors Guild of India on IT raids on media houses

New Delhi: The Editors Guild of India on Friday said it is worried that government agencies are being used as a "coercive tool" to suppress free and independent journalism.

Its remarks come after the Income Tax Department's raids on Thursday across several states against prominent media group DainikBhaskar as well as Uttar Pradesh-based TV channel Bharat Samachar for alleged tax evasion.

"The Editors Guild of India (EGI) is concerned about the income tax raids on July 22 at the offices of country's leading newspaper group DainikBhaskar as well as a Lucknow-based independent news channel Bharat Samachar," it said in a statement. "They come against the backdrop of in-depth reporting on the (COVID-19) pandemic by DainikBhaskar, which brought to the fore the gross mismanagement by government authorities and the immense loss of human lives," the guild said. It claimed that in a webinar hosted by it recently, DainikBhaskar's national editor Om Gaur had stated that their advertisements from government departments have been cut down after recent critical coverage of state authorities.

"He had also written an Op-Ed in the New York Times, headlined 'The Ganges is Returning the Dead. It Does Not Lie'," the EGI noted.

It said, "The EGI is therefore concerned that government agencies are being used as a coercive tool to suppress free and independent journalism. This is all the more disturbing given the recent media reports on the widespread surveillance of journalists and civil society activists using the Pegasus software."