Ripples of the ongoing tug of war between the Kerala government and prominent Malayalam news channel Asianet News was felt at the state legislative assembly on Monday, March 6, after the Opposition UDF moved an adjournment motion to discuss the matter. The Opposition, in its motion, sought to discuss the protest march conducted by the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) to the Kochi bureau of the news channel against a news report on drug abuse and sexual assault of minors, which was telecast by the channel in November 2022. Also, the Kerala police on Sunday, had conducted a raid at Asianet’s Kozhikode office based on a complaint that the news channel, in one of its reports, used a minor to enact the statement of a class 9 student, who was a victim of drug abuse and sexual assault. Calling it police excess, the opposition wanted the government to explain the police action too.
However, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that there was no need to discuss the SFI protest as the police had already booked a case against the SFI activists under various sections of the IPC. ‘Since action has already been taken against the activists who barged into the news channel office, there is no need to stop the assembly proceedings only to discuss the issue,” said Pinarayi.
The police raid however had become the matter of a national media, with many in the media as well as the general public accusing the CPI(M)-led Kerala government of resorting to intimidation tactics. Senior journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai also equated the raids on Asianet to that of the recent raids at the BBC office.
Responding to accusations about the state government attacking press freedom, Pinarayi Vijayan said that the issue of press freedom does not feature in this particular incident. “Legal action against a person who commits a criminal offense does not depend on the occupation of the person. Making a fake video and broadcasting it cannot be classified as a media practice. It is not brave journalism to involve a minor girl without her knowledge and claim protection under press freedom,” the Kerala CM said.
Pinarayi Vijayan also said that action against Asianet news cannot be compared to the BBC raids as the action against BBC was a result of “bringing to light a ruler's role in communal riots”, unlike in this case, where the raids had nothing to do with any anti-government report by the channel.
“Our IPC or the CRPC does not say that if a person who commits a crime is a journalist, then there should not be any action against them. Freedom of the press is not the freedom to tell lies, but the freedom of the reader to know the truth,” said the Kerala CM.
The whole controversy is with regard to a video interview that was featured as part of a series on Asianet News on November 10, 2022. The series covered the increasing drug use among the youth in Kerala, including school students. In the episode telecast on November 10, a class 9 student can be heard talking about how she she was subjected to drug abuse and sexual assault by her classmate.
However, this was the second time that the channel was airing similar content. The first report appeared in August 2022 as an interview with a minor girl, who was a victim of abuse. In the second report which appeared in November, another minor was allegedly made to enact the statement and the audio of the old interview was overlaid on the visual. The channel failed to mention that this was aired earlier. This has become a huge point of debate in Kerala with questions being asked whether it was ethically or legally right on part of the channel to do so.