“Pressing Charges- A study of criminal cases against journalists across states in India” is based on a novel dataset consisting of information on 423 criminal cases registered against 427 journalists across the States and Union Territories of India from 2012-2022.
Journalists around the world face criminal prosecutions simply for doing their job. Yet, there is a lack of data on how criminal law is used against journalists in specific countries. National Law University Delhi, India; the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s TrialWatch Initiative; and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, have collaborated to address this gap and document the trends and patterns arising from the criminalization of journalists across states in India.
The dataset, which comprises 624 incidents of criminalization, was collected primarily through open-source research and consists of both legal information (e.g., offences invoked, arrests and bail information, stage of the case) and profile of the journalists (e.g., their location, medium and language of reporting, job description). While this dataset covers cases against journalists related to their work, a separate dataset of “backlash cases” was created for cases that seemed unrelated to their professional work but were perceived, by the journalists or others, as in retaliation for their work. Additionally, a subset of journalists were interviewed about their experience dealing with criminal cases.
The datasets were analysed to identify (i) the most commonly charged categories of offences, (ii) the profiles of the journalists charged with these offences and what they were reporting on, (iii) the data relating to each stage of the criminal process, including arrests and detention and (iv) the differing impacts on different journalists, and what factors contributed to these differences. This was supplemented by legal analysis, as well as insights from journalists interviewed. The detailed findings and methodology for this project are available in the report.
Despite the significant numbers identified, this was by no means an exhaustive exercise. Limitations of the project included difficulties in accessing data from previous years (more than 60% of the cases in the dataset are from 2020-2022) and the inability to cover all states due to language barriers as well as gaps in the sources and websites accessed.
The hope is that this project can inform a critical public debate on how journalists of all backgrounds can be protected from legal harassment across India—at a time when India has introduced new criminal laws and laws regulating the media—while also contributing to the ongoing global discussion about the criminalization of journalists.